Stars: Ralph Meeker, Nick Dennis, Maxine Cooper, Cloris Leachman, Gaby Rodgers | Written by A.I. Bezzerides | Directed by Robert Aldritch
Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving down the freeway, minding his own business, when he almost hits a woman. Mike is a private investigator, and he knows trouble when he sees it, but he can’t just leave her in the road. His decision to stop and help triggers a confrontation with a group of thugs. When he comes around, the lady is dead – and Mike wants to know what the hell just happened.
With the help of his assistant and lover, Velda (Maxine Cooper), Mike takes a deep dive into the L.A. underworld. Scouring the backstreets, bars and boxing clubs, he uncovers a web of intrigue and violence, involving all the usual men of power, i.e. gangsters and cops. Countless bodies are left in the wake of his...
Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving down the freeway, minding his own business, when he almost hits a woman. Mike is a private investigator, and he knows trouble when he sees it, but he can’t just leave her in the road. His decision to stop and help triggers a confrontation with a group of thugs. When he comes around, the lady is dead – and Mike wants to know what the hell just happened.
With the help of his assistant and lover, Velda (Maxine Cooper), Mike takes a deep dive into the L.A. underworld. Scouring the backstreets, bars and boxing clubs, he uncovers a web of intrigue and violence, involving all the usual men of power, i.e. gangsters and cops. Countless bodies are left in the wake of his...
- 8/15/2019
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
Six decades into his career, Stacy Keach is finally receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The 78-year-old actor muscled into notoriety playing everyone from Hamlet to Hemingway to Mike Hammer. When the New York Times spotted the then-27-year-old up-and-comer in “Henry IV,” it gushed that his “superb” Falstaff was “so freshly observed that it is almost a new character.”
In the late 1960s, Keach was hailed as America’s Laurence Olivier — right when the country decided it didn’t need one. His agent, the powerhouse Sue Mengers, gave him the truth: “Come out of your ivory tower. Forget the classics. Get to Hollywood.”
He obeyed, and today Keach is best-known for playing heavyweights who tend to kill and be killed on film and TV, where the camera can closely observe his intimidating build, defining harelip and what Elia Kazan called “a sense of violence behind the eyes that’s not housebroken.
In the late 1960s, Keach was hailed as America’s Laurence Olivier — right when the country decided it didn’t need one. His agent, the powerhouse Sue Mengers, gave him the truth: “Come out of your ivory tower. Forget the classics. Get to Hollywood.”
He obeyed, and today Keach is best-known for playing heavyweights who tend to kill and be killed on film and TV, where the camera can closely observe his intimidating build, defining harelip and what Elia Kazan called “a sense of violence behind the eyes that’s not housebroken.
- 7/31/2019
- by Amy Nicholson
- Variety Film + TV
Earle Hagen, the Emmy-winning composer who wrote the iconic themes for “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “I Spy” and many others, would have turned 100 years old on July 9.
He was one of the most influential composers in TV history, formally recognized for his landmark work when the Television Academy inducted him, posthumously, into its Hall of Fame in 2011. He was only the second musician to be so honored.
Hagen pioneered the creation of original music for television in the 1950s, when most TV music was cheaply recorded mood music licensed from pre-existing libraries. By the 1960s, he was composing, arranging and conducting for as many as five shows a week — “The Danny Thomas Show,” “That Girl” and “The Mod Squad” among them — and set a high standard that other TV composers would aspire to in years to come.
“Earle was a huge influence on us, and really good with the tunes,...
He was one of the most influential composers in TV history, formally recognized for his landmark work when the Television Academy inducted him, posthumously, into its Hall of Fame in 2011. He was only the second musician to be so honored.
Hagen pioneered the creation of original music for television in the 1950s, when most TV music was cheaply recorded mood music licensed from pre-existing libraries. By the 1960s, he was composing, arranging and conducting for as many as five shows a week — “The Danny Thomas Show,” “That Girl” and “The Mod Squad” among them — and set a high standard that other TV composers would aspire to in years to come.
“Earle was a huge influence on us, and really good with the tunes,...
- 7/9/2019
- by Jon Burlingame
- Variety Film + TV
Let’s take a trip back to Bronson Caverns, but with new and better photos! Once you visit this hiding-in-plain-sight Hollywood location, you’ll start seeing it every time you tune into an old movie.
CineSavant Article
The most frequent ‘unknown’ location in film history?
Part of what was cool about moving to Los Angeles in 1970 was realizing that, since the majority of Hollywood movies were filmed locally, just about every interesting sight in the city has been used as a movie location. You don’t have to be ga-ga about movie stars to see the ‘historicity’ in famous locations, or feel saddened when a special place is torn down. The art deco Pan-Pacific Auditorium was one such example. It featured prominently in the King Bros. movie Suspense (1946) and can be glimpsed briefly in the opening of Steve De Jarnatt’s Miracle Mile (1989), which was filmed just before it burned...
CineSavant Article
The most frequent ‘unknown’ location in film history?
Part of what was cool about moving to Los Angeles in 1970 was realizing that, since the majority of Hollywood movies were filmed locally, just about every interesting sight in the city has been used as a movie location. You don’t have to be ga-ga about movie stars to see the ‘historicity’ in famous locations, or feel saddened when a special place is torn down. The art deco Pan-Pacific Auditorium was one such example. It featured prominently in the King Bros. movie Suspense (1946) and can be glimpsed briefly in the opening of Steve De Jarnatt’s Miracle Mile (1989), which was filmed just before it burned...
- 9/8/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Written by Max Allan Collins | Art by Marcelo Salaza, Marcio Freire | Published by Titan Comics
Before jumping into the review proper, a quick observation about recap pages or ‘what’s come before’ text in the front of books. As readers, we both like and need them. I reviewed the first issue of Mike Hammer a couple of months ago, but managed to miss issue 2 along the way, real life intruding as it does on your time. So, I sit down to start reading Issue 3, expecting a few brief lines of recap on Page 1. Nothing. Nada. As I read quite a few comics every month, I’m not really able to pick up everything from two issues ago, then fill in the gaps as to what happened last issue, and jump in to this issue. As a consequence, I can review the issue in front of me, but may be missing some ongoing plots.
Before jumping into the review proper, a quick observation about recap pages or ‘what’s come before’ text in the front of books. As readers, we both like and need them. I reviewed the first issue of Mike Hammer a couple of months ago, but managed to miss issue 2 along the way, real life intruding as it does on your time. So, I sit down to start reading Issue 3, expecting a few brief lines of recap on Page 1. Nothing. Nada. As I read quite a few comics every month, I’m not really able to pick up everything from two issues ago, then fill in the gaps as to what happened last issue, and jump in to this issue. As a consequence, I can review the issue in front of me, but may be missing some ongoing plots.
- 9/6/2018
- by Dean Fuller
- Nerdly
“Possess your problems to conquer them.” That’s the credo psychotherapist Ruben Brandt preaches to his criminally-inclined clients in this stylish, fast-paced, English-language animated thriller for adults. But when Brandt’s patients help him to apply his own advice, he becomes “Ruben Brandt, Collector,” ringleader of a gang responsible for the theft of 13 of the world’s most famous paintings. In this entertaining romp, his fiction feature debut, multi-hyphenate Milorad Krstić literally puts the ”art” in “arthouse,” using 2D and 3D animation techniques to depict the tropes of film noir and action-adventure, all the while paying clever homage to the worlds of film and fine art. Further festival play is a given, with niche distribution a solid bet for most territories.
Brandt (Iván Kamarás) is the offspring of an East German émigré whose knowledge of subliminal programming with 16mm film was exploited by the CIA — and used to experiment on his own son.
Brandt (Iván Kamarás) is the offspring of an East German émigré whose knowledge of subliminal programming with 16mm film was exploited by the CIA — and used to experiment on his own son.
- 8/9/2018
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
By Alex DeleonRéka Tenki, a hot new presence on the Hungarian film scene in an authentic Hungarian film noir with a kosher twist.
At the 2017 Berlinale, Tenki was named one of Variety’s “10 Europeans to Watch” and was seen in Ildiko Enyedi’s acclaimed On Body and Soul (Golden Bear winner and Hungary’s entry as Best Foreign Language Film for the Oscars). See interview with Réka Tenki here.
Réka Tenki
Budapest Noir is a murder mystery set in the German influenced Budapest of 1936 with Antisemitism on the rise. Superbly directed, acted, and beautifully lensed by master cinematographer Elemér Ragály. This is by far the best Hungarian film of the year in what has been a very good year for Magyar cinema generally. In terms of genre the very first film of its kind from this country and an eye opener of the first order.
Zsigmond Gordon (Krisztián Kolovratnik) is...
At the 2017 Berlinale, Tenki was named one of Variety’s “10 Europeans to Watch” and was seen in Ildiko Enyedi’s acclaimed On Body and Soul (Golden Bear winner and Hungary’s entry as Best Foreign Language Film for the Oscars). See interview with Réka Tenki here.
Réka Tenki
Budapest Noir is a murder mystery set in the German influenced Budapest of 1936 with Antisemitism on the rise. Superbly directed, acted, and beautifully lensed by master cinematographer Elemér Ragály. This is by far the best Hungarian film of the year in what has been a very good year for Magyar cinema generally. In terms of genre the very first film of its kind from this country and an eye opener of the first order.
Zsigmond Gordon (Krisztián Kolovratnik) is...
- 3/2/2018
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Hard-boiled Hammer
By Raymond Benson
As 2018 is the official centenary of Mickey Spillane, we at Cinema Retro thought it would be a good idea to examine this excellent digest of the author’s works on the silver screen and on television.
Author and filmmaker Max Allan Collins (probably best-known for writing the graphic novel Road to Perdition, the basis of the 2002 film, but also author of 100+ other books) is the literary executor for the estate of Mickey Spillane. Not only has he co-written this excellent “bedside companion” on Spillane’s big-and-small screen adaptations, Collins has co-authored/finished manuscripts originally begun by Spillane before his death in 2006 at the age of 88. Co-author James L. Traylor has also had a long career of writing critical analyses on crime authors and novels. One can be confident, then, that in Mickey Spillane on Screen, the authors know what they’re talking about.
Mickey Spillane...
By Raymond Benson
As 2018 is the official centenary of Mickey Spillane, we at Cinema Retro thought it would be a good idea to examine this excellent digest of the author’s works on the silver screen and on television.
Author and filmmaker Max Allan Collins (probably best-known for writing the graphic novel Road to Perdition, the basis of the 2002 film, but also author of 100+ other books) is the literary executor for the estate of Mickey Spillane. Not only has he co-written this excellent “bedside companion” on Spillane’s big-and-small screen adaptations, Collins has co-authored/finished manuscripts originally begun by Spillane before his death in 2006 at the age of 88. Co-author James L. Traylor has also had a long career of writing critical analyses on crime authors and novels. One can be confident, then, that in Mickey Spillane on Screen, the authors know what they’re talking about.
Mickey Spillane...
- 2/27/2018
- by [email protected] (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Jim Knipfel May 17, 2019
Kiss Me Deadly remains the greatest hardboiled apocalyptic sci-fi noir ever.
Former comic book writer Mickey Spillane published his first Mike Hammer mystery, I, The Jury, in 1947. In a way, it wasn’t that far removed from the superhero stories he’d been writing, even if it was a bit earthier without all the funny costumes. Spillane’s own alter-ego, the burly, hard-drinking, tough-talking Hammer was harder-boiled than that mealy-mouthed wimp, Sam Spade. And unlike that other wet blanket named Philip Marlowe, Hammer had few if any qualms about taking sleazy divorce cases or pulling his gun.
Over the next three decades, the Brooklyn-born Spillane pumped out a dozen more Hammer mysteries, including My Gun is Quick, Vengeance is Mine, and The Girl Hunters. Along with Spillane’s no-nonsense writing style and stories packed with extreme (for the 1950s) sex and violence, the lurid and suggestive cover...
Kiss Me Deadly remains the greatest hardboiled apocalyptic sci-fi noir ever.
Former comic book writer Mickey Spillane published his first Mike Hammer mystery, I, The Jury, in 1947. In a way, it wasn’t that far removed from the superhero stories he’d been writing, even if it was a bit earthier without all the funny costumes. Spillane’s own alter-ego, the burly, hard-drinking, tough-talking Hammer was harder-boiled than that mealy-mouthed wimp, Sam Spade. And unlike that other wet blanket named Philip Marlowe, Hammer had few if any qualms about taking sleazy divorce cases or pulling his gun.
Over the next three decades, the Brooklyn-born Spillane pumped out a dozen more Hammer mysteries, including My Gun is Quick, Vengeance is Mine, and The Girl Hunters. Along with Spillane’s no-nonsense writing style and stories packed with extreme (for the 1950s) sex and violence, the lurid and suggestive cover...
- 5/17/2016
- Den of Geek
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