The Screen Scene: I Still Wake Up Dreaming!

The centerpiece of the festivities is undoubtedly the Whistler series. These quickie (around an hour in length) barely-features have as unifying element a shadowy (literally--that is all that is seen of him) omniscient spectral presence who introduces each film, laying out its bluntly fatalistic themes before whistling his signature tune. Like his more famous progenitor The Shadow, the Whistler got his start in radio drama before branching out to other media. But the Whistler doesn't explicitly intervene in human affairs--he merely frames the narrative and comments thereon, like Rod Serling in Twilight Zone, only with the barest of diegetic toeholds.

The other common element to these films is actor Richard Dix, who starred (each time as a different character, lest you think his survival is assured) in the first seven Whistler films (four of them directed by William Castle) before dying. Six of these will show at the Roxie in lovely new 35mm prints, and the seventh (well, first) will be included in the PFA's chronological retro starting later this month.

I caught The Mark of the Whistler and Voice of the Whistler. Of these, the former is a major work, brimming with noirish fatalism. The setting is an anonymous small city, the sort of fictive locale where the street peddler is familiar with all the fancy high class joints and the gal reporter is always at the right place and time to get the scoop. Dix is a drifter who finds his name in a newspaper linked to an unclaimed sum of money at a bank. But a name is not an identity, and you'll just have to see for yourself what he gets himself embroiled in.

Themes of identity are of course a genre staple, and will emerge in various permutations throughout this fortnight.

This Saturday features the film in this series you're likeliest to have seen already: Phil Karlson's exquisite 99 River Street. I first saw this at a now-shuttered rep house on a double-bill with Karlson's Kansas City Confidential with the reels out of order--and it was still great. John Payne stars as Ernie Driscoll, a classic noir schlump (cf. Elisha Cook Jr. in The Killing), a loser trapped in a caustic marriage, desperate to please a parasitic wife who unbeknownst to him is already stepping out. Driscoll coulda been a contender, but a cut to the face ended his pugilistic career. Now a hack, he becomes the unwitting object of a murder frame-up, and is nearly strangled by his own strong moral fiber. The writing and photography are superb, particularly late in the film, with the recently-departed Evelyn Keyes in one of the classic femme-fatale scenes of all time. This is paired with another 35mm, Shield for Murder, which I've not seen, but will not miss. The best news is that there are matinees, so you can check out both these films prior to the FOFF show that night at Oddball Archives, a mere 3 blocks away.

The next Saturday offers a fantastic one-two punch of late-cycle widescreen noir. In 1958's Cop Hater (love the title!) we're offered a colorful, diverse cast including latino gang... er, that is, social club members, a respected black cop (well, he bites it in the first reel, token that he is), and a sultry deaf-mute. Several performances are in the deliciously off-kilter Tim Carey vein. The blocking uses depth creatively and is nicely photographed. As for the ending, I can only postulate a telegram from the producer late in the shooting schedule: WRAP UP PICTURE NOW STOP NO MONEY FOR FIFTH REEL STOP.

From its title sequence, Johnny Cool announces itself as something different and special. Inside a large "C" appears one "O", then a smaller concentric "O", and finally a diminutive "L" to complete our descent into the vortex. In the opening scenes, set in Italy, a boy sees his mother killed in a rape attempt by an American soldier. Whatever remains of this boy's soul is soon extinguished by the gang of hoods that adopts him. Henry Silva plays the adult version, a suave, hard, husk of a man, recruited to travel to America on a brisk and brutal killing spree. Here he encounters a rogues' gallery of familiar character actors (including several rat packers) and falls in with Elizabeth Montgomery, a bored, pampered, and vulnerable dame who can't see that Johnny is as empty as she is. Francis Ford Coppola must be one of the few to have seen this picture on its release; several elements near the beginning, including a wedding scene and a slow dissolve, look like clear Godfather influences.

The next day features Jacques Tourneur's The Fearmakers, a 1958 entry packed with topicality: brainwashing, advertising culture. As cynical as this film is, it can hardly compare to the reality of how things would turn out, and if its righteous politics are suspect, that's part of the film's charm. Mel Torme as a duplicitous office nerd is not to be missed. This is paired with Stolen Identity, which must have blown much of its budget on its location shooting in Vienna. Like many of the series's films not mentioned here, this one will be presented in 16mm, but I had to remind myself of that while watching it--it could pass for a decent 35.