Blu-ray debut for Robert Siodmak's deliciously entertaining film noir-lite, PHANTOM LADY

TrustMovies had imagined that he'd seen the famous 1944 film, PHANTOM LADY at some point along his movie-going life. But, no: this new Blu-ray of the film, released via Arrow Video/Arrow Academy last month, proved quite the eye-opening experience.  Prolific and under-rated director Robert Siodmak (below, of The 

Killers,  Criss Cross and The Spiral Staircase -- among a number of other first-class films) does a bang-up job of bringing to life the screenplay by Bernard C. Schoenfeld (his first), based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich.

The story's a whopper, all right, but it is told with such energy, spirit and twists/turns that it easily hold you throughout the crisp, 87-minute running time.

The film also stars one of my favorite leading ladies of the 40s, Ella Raines, shown above (which was why I was certain I must have seen it), in what is arguably her best role. Ms Raines plays the dogged and loyal secretary to a boss charged with the murder of his nasty wife, and she brings the same combo of sass and class that she showed off in other films of the day (see Impact, for one) and is consistently believable and charming.

Phantom Lady is full of typical noir tropes of the time (the fine cinematography is by Elwood Bredell), but I call it noir-lite due to how often amusing and energetic the movie is, along with the fact that it -- finally, at least -- offers a much more positive take on life and love than do so many other noirs.

Top-billed in the film is suave leading men of the period, Franchot Tone (above, right), in a role quite unlike almost all his others I recall. Mr. Tone doesn't even make an appearance unless around halfway through the mystery, but once he does, he definitely commands things.

The would-be hero is essayed by a looker named Alan Curtis (above and below, right), but his role is so circumscribed that only Ms Raines comes through as anything approaching the heroic.

The plot offers so much frisky fun and consistent incident -- a woman's hat (above, worn by Fay Helm in the title role; below, on Aurora Miranda in the part of a spicy/funny showgirl) proves perhaps the most important prop in the proceedings -- that the end result is what you'd call a lulu of a tale.

Supporting cast is aces, with special mention of Thomas Gomez, below, left, who plays the quiet, subdued and very caring and intelligent detective on the case. Once Gomez's character begins investigating in earnest, the movie grows even better: His marvelous "take" on the character of the murderer offers the kind of psychoanalysis that seems to me to be far ahead of most anything that Hollywood was dishing out at the time.

Also in the cast, and in a particularly strong performance is that unmissable character actor whose work graced so many movies, Elisha Cook, Jr., below). He's very good here -- sleazy and craven as hell -- and his single extended scene is a memorable one.

A model movie that's an unusual blending of light and dark, good and evil, and humor, romance and mayhem, Phantom Lady should be on everyone's list of films to catch up on. Or maybe see again, if it's been a few decades since you first did.

From Arrow Video/Arrow Academy and distributed via MVD Visual, the film hit Blu-ray in a nifty new transfer last month, and is available now for purchase and (I would hope) rental and/or streaming. 

SO DARK THE NIGHT/MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS: Arrow's Blu-ray debut of two gems from Joseph H. Lewis

OK: one of these films -- MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS -- has maybe got not so many carats, but it still offers a lot of good, old-fashioned mystery fun.

The other, however -- SO DARK THE NIGHT -- is a compelling little diamond in nowhere near the rough. It is such a stylistic gem, in fact, that TrustMovies suspects only the unduly delayed rise of filmmaker Joseph H. Lewis (shown below) into the pantheon of important movie-makers is responsible for its too-little-known reputation.

Lewis could work in just about any genre but may best be known, particularly after the current Blu-ray release of these two films, for his near-film-noir endeavors. Most movie buffs know Gun Crazy, certainly one of the filmmaker's best and most original works, along with The Big Combo. But his noir-ish western Terror in a Texas Town also deserves a place at the table.

As a kid I was particularly taken with Lewis' The Undercover Man, and A Lady Without a Passport, and much later his war film, Retreat, Hell! Once Lewis moved over to television, never to return to films, I rather forgot about him and his work. Thankfully, Arrow Academy/Arrow Home Video is bringing Lewis and that fine work back into our sites and sight.

My Name is Julia Ross stars an upcoming Nina Foch (above), quite good as the smart and energetic young lady trying to find a decent job in postwar London. To give away almost anything about the plot of the film risks major spoilers, so I'll just say that the movie is awash in mystery of the what-the-hell-is-going-on? variety and features some witty and delightful performances from a terrific supporting cast that includes the likes of Dame May Whitty (below), while offering up a mother-son relationship that is surely one for the books.

The black-and-white cinematography is crisp and bright in this beautiful new transfer, and as usual with Arrow product, the "extras" are definitely worth viewing, in particular the background to and analysis of the film by The Nitrate Diva (Nora Fiore). Ms Fiore stretches her theories a bit, but what she has to say is often fun and worth hearing.

My Name is Julia Ross runs but 65 minutes and was clearly meant to be "filler" on the second half of a double bill. But it proved popular enough to be itself be a hit for its studio (Columbia Pictures) and thus gave Lewis the opportunity to work on other, more important films. From Arrow Films, distributed here on the USA via MVD Visual, the movie arrived on Blu-ray earlier this month and is available now for purchase and (I hope) rental.

One of these "more important" movies for Lewis -- and one of the director's best -- was So Dark the Night, which, among other things, gave the well-known character actor, Hungarian-born Steven Geray (shown at right and below), a role the likes of which he would never again see, and which he filled so well that, had our always-nonsensical Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences been paying any attention to "little" movies, this fine actor would have garnered a nomination, if not the Oscar itself.

Filmmaker Lewis creates here an almost shockingly charming beginning, as our hero, a famous and very bright Parisian detective goes on vacation to a small provincial town where he hopes to relax and forget his cares. Are we surprised when trouble brews?

Not at all, but what holds us for so long is how delightful Lewis makes this town and its citizens -- almost so French-ified that they come close to cliche -- yet with something just a little bit "off." Lewis also manages a feat that few film directors ever dared: He shows us what's wrong with that typical Hollywood relationship between an older man and girl 30 years his junior.

All the sweetness and charm soon evaporate, once murder after murder arrives. You will imagine you've nailed the killer, but don't be too sure. By the end of this highly unusual, profoundly sad film, you and our hero will have gone places neither of you ever imagined.

Running only 71 minutes, So Dark the Night hit the street earlier this month via Arrow Academy, distributed here in the USA by MVD Visual. It's available now for purchase and (I hope) rental. Again, the Bonus Features are first-rate -- even better than those on the My Name is Julia Ross disc. And why not -- for this is by far the superior movie.

TrustMovies bonus: Watch HOTEL NOIR -- Sebastian Gutierrez's latest (and still in limbo) charmer -- for free!

Made in 2012 but, after a brief pay-per-view window, still stuck in distribution limbo, HOTEL NOIR is the latest film to have been written and directed by one of TrustMovies' favorite filmmakers: Sebastian Gutierrez. No other movie-maker that I can think of has this guy's oddball sense of humor coupled to an enormous love of women (in so many ways). His product is as charming, enjoyable and off-the-wall as it gets, as demonstrated by his trio of "lovely lady" movies -- Women in Trouble, Elektra Luxx and Girl Walks Into a Bar.  This trilogy (I'd call it that, anyway) offers non-stop delight, with the additional "plus" of an anything-goes attitude that views sexuality as something that ought above all to be enjoyed as pleasurable and joyous -- hell, even humorous, too.

Gutierrez, pictured at right, may not be the first to make a movie that harks back to 1950s noir, but it is certainly one of the more lovingly recreated. It doesn't so much make fun of noir as it does pay it a grand homage -- while at the same time taking the kind of multiple stories and plot strands that this filmmaker so dearly loves and bouncing them into each other with pizzazz and finesse.

My biggest surprise here in that the movie does not have quite the buoyancy and lightness of that earlier trilogy, the reason being, I suspect, that the themes and concerns of film noir -- mystery, murder, betrayal and love (generally unrequited when not out-and-out trashed) -- don't exactly lend themselves to things graceful and lighter-than-air.

Still, what Gutierrez has accomplished here is quite lovely to look at -- the black-and-white cinematography is aces -- with performances from some fine actors, many of whom have graced his earlier work, that pull you in and keep you amused and impressed throughout.

Chief among these is Gutierrez regular, Carla Gugino (above), as a cocktail lounge chanteuse with connections to quite a number of other characters in the film. One of these is the good-looking cop played by Rufus Sewell (above, right. and below, whom the filmmaker used earlier to fine effect in his "naughty mermaid" cable movie She-Creature).

Malin Akerman (below, center) plays a night club performer with ties to the mob and a yen for Mr. Sewell, while Kevin Connolly (in the rain-soaked auto three photos up) plays a nasty piece of work who evidently has attributes that make him very good in the sack.

Since its title would indicate than there's a hotel involved here, most of the film indeed takes place in one -- in which another of our favorites, Rosario Dawson, below, works as a maid who moonlights as, well... other things. 

Along the way she encounters another Gutierrez delight, Danny DeVito, below, who actually begins this movie with a shaggy dog narration that leads to.... No. I don't want to give one more thing away.

Completing the major cast members is another favorite, Robert Forster, below, playing the older, kindly and more seasoned cop who is partner to Sewell. Sex, mostly straight with a little gay tossed in, rears its lovely head, as do a robbery, several killings and a number of surprises along the way, a couple of the best of which are saved for the last.

For folk who are partial to noir, you can relax into this one, knowing that for all the fun to be had, the movie still plays it straight, never descending into camp. The actors are all on the same page regarding style, and much of the fun comes from their very genuine, straight-faced line readings provided by Gutierrez's smart and charming script.

The filmmaker tells me that Hotel Noir came about because YouTube, which commissioned Girl Walks Into a Bar, asked for a follow-up (not a sequel but a similar size/cast movie), so he responded with the idea of a black-and-white period film noir.  

Shot in just 15 days (by Gutierrez regular, Cale Finot), the result can now be viewed by TrustMovies' readers free-of-charge. Gutierrez has graciously agreed to keep the movie up on line for a month, but don't wait too long. I'd hate to have you all ready for a nice evening of noir, only to discover the movie is suddenly gone. To access the film, click here , and if that does not work for you, copy and paste the following link into your web browser: https://youtu.be/PIWxLniIi9c .  Oh -- and Mr. Gutierrez suggests that you view the movie in as high a definition as possible because, yes, it does look good! . 

Arturo Ripstein's back with BLEAK STREET, an empathetic descent into the hell that is Mexico. Or Mexico for certain people, at least.

It's not that the grand old man of Mexican filmmaking, Arturo Ripstein, doesn't make many movies (the IMDB credits him with directing 58 of 'em during his 50-year career), but rather that we here in the USA get to view damn few of them. His best known is probably Deep Crimson (another telling of that Honeymoon Killers tale). His latest (and perhaps one of his best -- but how would I know, having seen so few), BLEAK STREET (La calle de la amargura), opens this week, and it might also open the door a tad wider in garnering the filmmaker a larger audience here in the USA.

Señor Ripstein, shown at left, along with his near-constant screenwriting collaborator (as well as his wife), Paz Alicia Garciadiego, have here concocted a tale said to be torn from the headlines of Mexican newspapers. It involves quite a set of characters, beginning with identical twins (midgets who double as luchador wrestling mascots), their parents, and a couple of local whores who have aged to the point that their pimp no longer wants to work with them. One whore's significant other is a cross-dressing fellow who prefers boys, while the other's, well, "business partner" is a very old woman/mother figure no longer able to care for herself, who is put out on the street daily as a beggar, and who brings home more money than does her would-be "daughter" from that meagre prostitution trade.

OK: This sounds pretty sleazy, and of course, it is. But thanks to Ripstein and Garciadiego's skills at presenting these folk honestly and empathetically, the pair manages to embrace reality while avoiding sentimentality. This is no mean feat. The approach here amounts to a kind of clear-eyed tenderness.

Stylistically, Ripstein opts for a combination of noir and neo-realism that works wonderfully in keeping our gaze focused on the proceedings, finding a kind of artful beauty in the ugliness and despair without losing its grip on how difficult are the lives depicted here. (The black-and-white cinematography comes via Alejandro Cantú, whose camera usually moves between semi-close-up and middle distance, gracefully following the participants from one awful situation to the next.)

The realistic dialog occasionally offers a choice morsel: One whore to the other, "This trade is like mange; it never ever leaves you."  And the performances, to a man and woman, are terrific, combining that neo-realism with enough theatricality to make us cognizant that we're not watching a documentary. Particularly moving and always riveting are the two whores, played by Patricia Reyes Spíndola (above, left) and Nora Velásquez (above, right, and below, left)

Weakness piles upon weakness, betrayal tops betrayal, until arrives a surprise that changes everything. The great old song we hear over the end credits is, under these circumstances, about as ironic as it comes: a vinegar-drenched love letter to a Mexico that could exit only in the minds of the deluded rich or the entirely unaware tourist.

Distributed by Leisure Time Features and running 99 minutes, the movie has its U.S. theatrical premiere this Wednesday, January 20, in New York City at Film Forum. Other playdates? I have no idea, and Leisure Time's website provides not a clue. (The company may be a waiting to see how well their film does during its two-week NYC debut.)

Ana Lily Amirpour's Amer-Iranian vampire film noir: A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT

If you want "specialized," you can't get much more so than the new American-Iranian film-noir vampire-flick with a western motif, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT. It's got "arthouse" written all over it -- except that its subject matter would normally turn off the crowd that attends arthouse cinema. It's also got "feminist" written all over it, which should bring in the younger crowd, both women and some men. The film is also rather beautifully crafted -- shot in gorgeous black-and-white with some striking compositions and music that resounds.

The film's writer/director is a young woman named Ana Lily Amirpour (shown at left), and although I feel this particular film of hers has been rather wildly over-rated, still, the lady has talent and we're sure to be hearing from her again. What she does not have, at this point in her career, is the ability to provide enough content to fill out her film's 99-minute running time. She's got the look down pat, along with the various victims and their stories. But a sense of repetition sets in far too early, and there is not enough real content to fill the remaining minutes. There's about an hour of actual movie here. The rest is vamping. Lovely-to-look-at vamping, but vamping nonetheless.

To give credit where it is most due, I must praise the cinematographer, Lyle Vincent, for his really spectacular work here. The creamy grays, the elegant compositions, and all else that goes into crack black-and-white.

If I go into much details about the "plot" of this movie, I am likely to give away just about everything there is to spoil. So let's just say that this is a noirish, feminist, vampire tale in which our vampire -- a good woman, of sorts anyway -- does away with much of the scum of society (all men, don'cha know?) to make the world a better place. That's she's wearing a chador just adds to the originality and fun. Supposedly set in Iran but filmed in California (some of the locations look like CA suburbia), for the most part Amirpour and Vincent capture what passes for the Middle East.

And once folk start dying, each for his own good reason -- nasty behavior toward women, drug addiction, being homeless (Huh? Well, a girl's gotta eat) -- while the movie picks up some speed, it also begins to grow a tad repetitious. In its most charming scene, a certain character of shorter stature is warned not to become like all these other (dead) men.

From the beginning, as we're gifted with that great cinematography, more of those Persian Cats, a mass grave, oil and even the Persian James Dean (above), it is almost too much of a good thing. With the addition of suspense, gore and a villain (below) about whom we're more than happy to see dispensed, it appears we're really going somewhere. But soon enough we note that Ms Amirpour is too locked into the look and atmosphere of her movie to turn out a genuine vampire film.

The best of this particular genre -- from Hammer's Horror of Dracula to Bigelow's Near Dark -- moves! This one, as it confronts everything from avenging angels and their diet to family trauma and romance, grows sleepier and more "artistic." Still, it's an interesting and relatively original start, so we'll look forward to Ms Amirpour's next venture.

Meanwhile, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night -- from Kino Lorber -- plays at the St. Louis International Film Festival (today, Nov 18) and opens theatrically this Friday, November 21, in New York City at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles at Landmark's NuArt. Over the weeks to come it will open in another 13 cities. View all the currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, by clicking here and scrolling down.

Note: Writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour will appear in person 

at NYC's IFC Center on Friday, November 21, at the 7:25 show, &

at the NuArt in L.A. on Saturday, November 22, for a Q&A 

after the 7:30pm show and to introduce the 9:50pm show. 

She will also appear at the NuArt on Sunday, November 23 for a 

Q&A after the 5:00pm show, and for an introduction to 

and a Q&A after the 7:30pm show. 

Hi-def restoration: Hollywood tackles the French Revolution in Anthony Mann's THE BLACK BOOK

I was but eight years old when I got my first taste of and lesson in The French Revolution -- via Hollywood, of course -- from a dizzy little ditty called Reign of Terror, which has since been re-titled, somewhere along the way, THE BLACK BOOK, a moniker it seems to have retained, for better or worse. I remember liking this film a lot as an elementary school kid. Watching it again, some 65 years later, elementary school (at best early junior high) seems about the right age for full appreciation. This is the kind of move in which, at the start, most of the characters are placed front and center with a description that lets you know right off the bat if they're good guys or bad guys.

As directed by Anthony Mann, left, who has a goodly number of important films to his credit, this one aims to give us that famous revolution as a kind of film noir/boys adventure, with a little guillotine and torture tossed in the keep the kids from getting bored. As the leading good guy, we have Robert Cummings in his stalwart mode pitted against Richard Basehart as Robespierre, the Joe Stalin of a century or so earlier. The movie begins with the execu-tion of Danton, some speechifying and further exposition. Finally we get to the heart of the matter: that little black book of the title, into which Robespierre has listed all of the people he plans to place under the guillotine's blade.

Assassination, betrayal, identity theft (the old-fashioned kind), lost love (that would be Arlene Dahl, above, right, with Mr. Cummings) hairbreadth escapes, and more, this 90-minute movie boasts all of those and more, as it moves fast and covers a lot of territory. As is often the case, the bad guys get the juiciest performances, with Mr. Basehart a preening and awfully "gay" Robespierre (Hollywood loved to makes villains of us, back in the day), and a fine character actor named Arnold Moss, below, right, playing the master conniver Fouché.

The dialog (the screenplay's by Philip Yordan) is bearable, and the Mann's pacing fleet, so the 90 minutes pass quickly enough. And it is fun to see how old Hollywood handled blood and guts (there are none). You can just imagine what a remake of this one might look like today -- awash in the red stuff, beheadings right and left!

Now, about this new High Definition restoration promised by the distribu-tor, Film Chest: I am no expert on restorations, but it appears that the restorers either had damn little to work with, or didn't do much with what they had. This is one of the weakest of all the supposed restorations I've yet seen. I can barely imagine what low-definition might look like.

But if you haven't seen this one in decades, or want to see it for the first time, this version is probably the best shot you've currently got. Made in 1949, with an aspect ratio of 4x3 and featuring the original sound, The Black Book is available now for purchase and maybe rental.