Thursday, December 24, 2015

Jason goes to Noir City Xmas

Tickets and passes for Noir City 2016 are on sale now! I got mine at the Xmas event, and saw a couple of kick-ass noir flicks.

THE RECKLESS MOMENT (1949): Joan Bennett is Lucia Harper, living in Balboa, near Los Angeles. Her daughter Bea, off in art school, is seeing a no-good man named Ted Darby. Lucia goes to confront him, and true to form he asks for money to leave Bea. That night Bea sneaks out to the boathouse to see Ted. They start to fight, and in a little accident he falls over the ledge and lands on an anchor, killing him. The next day, when Lucia finds his body and knows her daughter will be in trouble, she goes all super-mom and does whatever she can to protect her child. And then James Mason shows up as Martin Donnelly, a man with some prime blackmail material. So Lucia has to jump through hoop after hoop trying to raise blackmail money. A cool story, with a super cool cast.

KISS OF DEATH (1947): Victor Mature is Nick Bianco, a small-time hood who was busted trying to pull of a jewel heist. But the D.A. can see something's different about him. He's a family man (and not the mafia, I mean he has a wife and kids) so he has something worth staying out of jail for. But no dice, he's not a rat, and goes to jail, with assurances from his lawyer that his family will be taken care of. But that's not the case, as his wife commits suicide, and only then does he decide to turn informant. Which causes no small amount of complications, mostly in the form of Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) a smiling, cackling hit man who is chasing down anyone who informs on the gang. Another cool story with a great cast.

Man, I can't wait for Noir City when I get a full week of this!

Total Running Time: 180 minutes
My Total Minutes: 412,745

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