Without Pity (1948)

A young woman traveling to visit her brother In postwar Italy, befriends a black American serviceman who was wounded trying to stop a thief. After being questioned by the military, she is arrested for prostitution, being a woman on her own. Gangsters and other complications interfere with their budding relationship.

Film-noir has a complicated definition. My copy was recorded from TCM’s Noir Alley, so it’s noir, if an unconventional one. While our male lead is black (American John Kitzmiller), that doesn’t directly play into the story. This is about a US serviceman and an Italian civilian, not black and white.

Kitzmiller, for his part, was a trained Engineer and Army Captain during WWII, where he was awarded the Victory Medal. He fell in love with Italy, which he helped liberate, and stayed on after the war. He didn’t have much family back in the states and didn’t relish returning to American racism. He appeared in a fair number of Italian films but also appeared in a couple English language films, most notably Dr. No (1962). Depression and its faithful companion alcohol led to an early death.

Pretty Carla Del Poggio was wonderful as the angelic Angela. She was married to director Alberto Lattuada. Cute as a button Giulietta Masina has a secondary role. Husband Federico Fellini was a principal screenwriter. Pierre Claude who plays head gangster Pier Luigi has no other screen credits and no biographical information is known about him. He may have just been a walk-on.

Without Pity resembles Italian neorealism perhaps a bit more than American film-noir. The scratchy filmstock and naturalistic acting strongly gives that vibe. Banned in British and American occupied Germany because of the sometimes harsh depiction of the Allied occupation, it’s another grim and pessimistic tale for Noirvember. AMRU 4.

“Always together”

Black Gravel (1961)

Truck driver Robert steals road gravel from a US Air Force base in Germany and sells it on the black market. He has a chance run-in with an old flame, but unfortunately she is now married to an Air Force Major. Their lives become intertwined.

I found the story a little hard to follow at first. It was recently restored and the subtitles were sharp, but I felt I was missing a lot of nuance. Soon enough, though, I was fully immersed in the drama. The story winds in a somewhat nonlinear fashion, involving a few other characters, but eventually everything comes together, and not in a Hollywood ending sort of way.

Black Gravel was the first German noir to appear on TCM’s Noir Alley and I was fortunate enough to have recorded its first airing last January. The German title is Schwarzer Kies and I was a little iffy on it before watching. But Eddie Muller called it a masterpiece. Now that I’ve seen it, I tend to agree. AMRU 4.

Halloween (1978)

Little Michael Myers is sent away for murdering his big sister. After fifteen years of not communicating with staff, he escapes. Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) is convinced he is returning to his home town to continue his murder spree.

I’ve seen Halloween but never uncut, and likely never all the way through. Recorded off of IFC, I did have to contend with commercials, which sometimes seemed to come every five minutes, but at least it was unedited.

Pleasence is great as the obsessive Loomis, convinced of Myers’ malevolence despite any explanation. His body of work is quite impressive. High budget and low, genre and main stream, he did it all. Although she had done some TV work (including 23 episodes of Operation Petticoat), this was Jamie Lee Curtis’ first feature film. She was the only teenager of the group of high-schoolers.

Like Friday the 13th young people are picked off one at a time. But very much unlike it, Halloween is a slow burn. We learn what Michael is capable of through the Loomis character, and our imagination does the rest. We actually get to know Curtis' Laurie character and feel her peril. The danger is real and the kills have real weight.

Halloween is more than a good slasher. It's a good film. It defined a sub-genre and has been copied for decades. AMRU 4.

The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)

A ronin Samurai uses ruthless tactics to marry for money. When this doesn’t work out, he plots to kill his wife and upgrade to a richer bride. His dead first wife, however, has other plans.

The original title is “Tôkaidô Yotsuya kaidan” which I confused for Kwaidan (1964). Kaidan translates roughly to Ghost Story. Based on a kabuki play, the production retains a very stage-like feel. Some scenes were clearly filmed on location, while others did little to hide their stage origin.

There is no hint that our main character isn’t a terrible person. He hardly ever utters a line of dialog that doesn’t reveal his nature. His name is Iemon Tamiya, and because an uppercase I looks like a lowercase L, it seemed like people were calling him Lemon. He was kinda sour.

My main issue with The Ghost of Yotsuya is that the basic premise of the film is treated as a third act reveal. The story is well known in Japan, so there was no way to hide this spoiler, but for me it was a bit of a slog to watch to get to the predetermined conclusion. Visually interesting but otherwise unremarkable. AMRU 3.

Chamber of Horrors (1966)

Proprietors of a wax museum are hired to help capture a man who strangled a woman to death and then married her. Ministers are snitches.

More of a detective story than horror, the powerless police turn to amateurs to do what amounts to very basic police work. One of the police officers is played by Wayne Rogers of M*A*S*H fame. I thought this was a Vincent Price film, having a very Theater of Blood, House of Wax kind of title. But I think I was confusing it with The Haunted Palace.

Chamber of Horrors is a good looking, well executed, but fairly forgettable film. The investigation needed to be more inventive or the horror elements more horrible. An end scene hinted at a sequel or TV pilot but nothing came of it. What amounts to a fairly pedestrian horror film may have been a bit too suggestive for 60’s television. Hey, at least he waited until after the ceremony before asserting his conjugal rights. AMRU 3.