Todd Mason’s Tuesday’s Overlooked Films

Posted on May 6, 2014 by realthog Standard

The latest edition of Todd Mason’s invaluable weekly roundup has just gone online here. Among the excitements on offer are The Forty-Niners, Eight Witnesses, Nightmare Alley, Black Sails . . .

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Anna-Liisa (1922)

Arsenal Stadium Mystery, The (1939)

One thought on “Todd Mason’s Tuesday’s Overlooked Films”

Sam Juliano says:

May 7, 2014 at 1:10 am

Great to see your fabulous reviews of ANNA-LIISA and THE FOUR JUST MEN in Todd’s otherwise valuable round-up, John!!!

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If you'd like to browse the book at Amazon.com, please click this link. For other regions and e-tailers, please click Where to Buy the Book at the top of this page.

Modus Operandi

In mid-October 2013 the publisher Limelight released my book A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir: The Essential Reference Guide. The book has entries on well over 3,000 films noirs and related movies from all over the world, including over 2,000 from the US alone.

The purpose of Noirish is to act as an extension to the Encyclopedia -- an annex, if you like -- where I can add entries for movies that for one reason or another didn't make it into the printed book.

In some instances, this is just because the movie concerned was released too late for inclusion.

Most often, though, the reason was logistic. Although the Encyclopedia takes the broadest possible view of film noir, there were some movies that were either too obscure or too tangential to the theme to merit the use of precious page space: 800+ large-format pages -- nearly 700,000 words -- may seem a lot but, when you're trying to cover in excess of 3,000 movies, you soon learn to appreciate the constraints.

That's why this enterprise has the title it has: Noirish. Many of the movies here are very borderline noir, and some aren't noir at all but have associational interest.

Just because a movie's obscure doesn't mean it's lousy . . . although there'll be some lousy movies covered here. There'll also be plenty of movies that are, shall we say, undistinguished -- which is not to say they're without at least some points of interest, and certainly isn't to say they're not lots of fun to watch.

After posting a bunch of entries to get myself started, I'll be adding new movies to Noirish as and when I watch them.

Frisk the Suspect

Vitals

The abbreviation vt stands for variant title.

Movie titles given in UPPER CASE refer to entries in A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir.

SPOILERS are everywhere.

Prior Offenses

Section des Disparus (1956) October 16, 2019
book: The Chalk Man (2018) by C.J. Tudor October 13, 2019
wildly o/t book: Finn Family Moomintroll (1948; trans 1958 Elizabeth Portch) by Tove Jansson October 13, 2019
Devil’s Bait (1959) October 12, 2019
book: Two Murders in My Double Life (1996) by Josef Škvorecký October 10, 2019
book: The Dogs of Babel (2003) by Carolyn Parkhurst October 10, 2019
book: The Hunter (1996; trans 2006 Juliet Winters Carpenter) by Asa Nonami October 9, 2019
Last Call (2012) October 9, 2019
Panther’s Moon (1950) October 5, 2019
book: The Villa Triste (2010; US vt Villa Triste 2013) by Lucretia Grindle October 4, 2019
Assignment—Paris (1952) October 2, 2019
book: Beautiful Bad (2019) by Annie Ward September 30, 2019
Another Face (1935) September 28, 2019
book: Salvation of a Saint (2008) by Keigo Higashino, trans 2012 by Alexander O. Smith September 26, 2019
book: Ripper (2014) by Isabel Allende, trans 2014 by Ollie Brock & Frank Wynne September 26, 2019
A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014) September 25, 2019
The Walking Target (1960) September 21, 2019
book: Homicide Trinity (1962) by Rex Stout September 20, 2019
book: This Sweet Sickness (1960) by Patricia Highsmith September 20, 2019
Murder on the Campus (1933) September 18, 2019
book: The Need (2019) by Helen Phillips September 16, 2019
book: The Courilof Affair (1933; trans 2008 Sandra Smith) by Irène Némirovsky September 15, 2019
The Crime of Helen Stanley (1934) September 14, 2019
book: Lisey’s Story (2006) by Stephen King September 12, 2019
Incident at a Corner (1960 TVM) September 11, 2019
reblog: Don Siegel’s The Killers September 10, 2019
Laura (1962 TVM) September 7, 2019
book: The Paris Secret (2018) by Lily Graham September 6, 2019
book: Distress Signals (2017) by Catherine Ryan Howard September 5, 2019
The Trespasser (1947) September 4, 2019
book: New Year’s Eve (1997) by Lisa Grunwald September 3, 2019
The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947) August 31, 2019
o/t: Readers Imbibing Peril XIV Begins… August 30, 2019
book: Beyond All Reasonable Doubt (2012; trans 2019 Rachel Willson-Broyles) by Malin Persson Giolito August 29, 2019
book: Death Going Down (1955; trans 2016 Lucy Greaves) by María Angélica Bosco August 28, 2019
The Missing Lady (1946) August 28, 2019
book: The Amber Fury (2014; vt The Furies) by Natalie Haynes August 25, 2019
Behind the Mask (1946) August 24, 2019
book: When Elves Attack (2011) by Tim Dorsey August 22, 2019
book: The Lazarus Curse (2014) by Tessa Harris August 22, 2019
The Shadow Returns (1946) August 21, 2019
book: Bad Debts (2005) by Peter Temple August 20, 2019
Enemy Agent (1940) August 17, 2019
book: Snow White Must Die (2010; trans 2013 Steven T. Murray) by Nele Neuhaus August 16, 2019
Overnight Sensation (1984) August 14, 2019
book: The Burgess Boys (2013) by Elizabeth Strout August 12, 2019
Exposed (1947) August 10, 2019
book: Conviction (2019) by Denise Mina August 8, 2019
book: Ghostwalk (2007) by Rebecca Stott August 7, 2019
book: The Last Weynfeldt (2008; trans 2016 Steph Morris) by Martin Suter August 6, 2019

Perp’s Profile

John Grant, a Scot by birth but a long-term inmate of New Jersey, is the author of some sixty books. His nonfiction has included The Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters, Masters of Animation, three pocket books on cinema (Animated Movies, Sci-Fi Movies, and Noir Movies), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (with John Clute), and a series of books on the misuse and misunderstanding of science, begun with Discarded Science and continued most recently with Denying Science; for his writings on popular science he has been described by Gregory Frost as “the living heir to Martin Gardner.”

His fiction has included novels like The World, The Far-Enough Window, The Dragons of Manhattan, The City in These Pages, and The Lonely Hunter, as well as numerous short stories, some of which have been collected as Take No Prisoners.

For his nonfiction work he has received the Hugo Award (twice), the World Fantasy Award, and various other international awards and nominations. His editorial work, in particular his time running the celebrated fantasy art book imprint Paper Tiger, has brought him a Chesley Award and a World Fantasy Award nomination.

You can visit his website here.