noir Archives - Have You SEEN This?

226 – Tough Guys Don’t Dance

Oh God! Oh man! Jen and Tim and Mets devotee David J. Roth square up with Norman Mailer’s demented neo-noir, Tough Guys Don’t Dance.

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Read David’s piece on a true American original, B-movie stalwart Wings Hauser. Did you know that he was in Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time? Well now you do!

Collider profiled the one and only ersatz Charles Bronson (or the most prominent and successful, we assume), Hungarian actor Robert Bronzi.

Hear Wings Hauser sing the concluding track for Vice Squad, “Neon Slime.” His vocals have the same gusto as his average film performance, as you might imagine.

How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer (the documentary Jen wanted to call “How to Be a Cool Fuckin’ Guy”) provides a breezy overview of the colorful life of the author.

On YouTube: Mailer comes out swinging at Gore Vidal on the Dick Cavett Show, and gets bitch-slapped back by Vidal, Cavett and author Janet Flanner.

Want more conversation about inexplicable auteur statements? Try our episode on a certain Amazing Movie!

199 – Singapore Sling

You’ll need a stiff drink after this one

Jen and Tim discover the work of Nikos Nikolaidis through his magnum opus, the twisted noir grotesque Singapore Sling. Bring a bucket!

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The director’s official site provides a great deal of valuable context for his work, which has been little seen in the United States. Among others, you can purchase an HD digital download of Singapore Sling.

Related: Jen asserted that the film was “coming soon” to blu-ray, but it turns out it already made it to a special edition German blu-ray back in 2013. That edition appears to be out of print, but the film can be found if you know where to look.

For more visionary sicko shit, listen to our episode about David Cronenberg’s Crash!

176 – Witch Hunt

Tim and Jen dutifully cover the sequel to Cast a Deadly Spell, the Paul Schrader(!)-directed Witch Hunt.

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Jen erred and called Schrader’s 2022 film Master Gardener “Master.” Was she thinking of the Paul Thomas Anderson film The Master? Who knows!

Be sure to watch Tim’s webseries Assignment Unexplained! And visit his website! And follow timtoonstudio on Instagram!

Discussing Julian Sands’ death, Tim alluded to the disappearance of experienced hiker Bill Ewasko, which you can learn more about in episode 47 of Adam Walks Around.

View the miracle of electrical kitchen appliances as filtered through the horny fixation of a teenage girl in a short riffed for Mystery Science Theater 3000, Young Man’s Fancy. Damn, that girl is SO squishy. Was it even legal to be that squishy in the 1950s?!

Speaking of sexuality and decades long past, here is the paper Jen was talking about that debunks the myth of “hysteria treatments” for women in decades past. Author Hailie Lieberman warns that the spurious paper is “a cautionary tale for how easily falsehoods can become embedded in the humanities.”

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175 – Cast a Deadly Spell

A disheveled Julianne Moore and Fred Ward from the climax of CAST A DEADLY SPELL (1991) — “I miss the graboids”

Jen and Tim try to say something nice about a pay cable attempt at Lovecraftian horror/comedy, Cast a Deadly Spell. Also, Jen tries and fails to remember the time she massively insulted Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid out of nowhere.

Jen is so dumb she forgot to mention who directed Witch Hunt, the sequel to Cast a Deadly Spell: Paul fucking Schrader. Will we watch it? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Tim confused Peter Scolari of Bosom Buddies with Mark Linn-Baker in Perfect Strangers, or maybe he was thinking of Bronson Pinchot. Does it matter?

Jerry Smith over at Certified Forgotten makes a fan’s case for the movie, so we’ll include it as a concession to an imaginary genre podcast Fairness Doctrine.

Finally, for more throwback horror, try our episode on the first Kolchak telefilm, The Night Stalker!

145 – The Two Jakes

Jen and Tim marvel at the cursed, ill-conceived, bloated sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes.

Errata: Jen was wrong and Polanski fled the country in February of 1978, not 1977.

The Two Jakes derailed the Robert Towne/Jack Nicholson friendship, which had been forged in the early 60s while both worked for Roger Corman, for at least a decade. Towne admitted as much in Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. However, in a 2006 interview, Towne parries a question about the film thusly:

Well, in the interest of maintaining my friendships with Jack Nicholson and Robert Evans, I’d rather not go into it, but let’s just say The Two Jakes wasn’t a pleasant experience for any of us. But, we’re all still friends, and that’s what matters most.
Robert Towne

So, you know, awwwwww.

The History Channel website has the cold hard facts about Jack Nicholson’s 1994 road rage incident, in which he attacked another motorist’s car with a golf club.

A man kneels to push over the smallest domino in a line of dominos of varying size, the largest being taller than the kneeling man. The smallest domino is labeled "singer/songwriter gets wrong address" and the largest is labeled "Chinatown." — 🤪

128 – Night Moves

Jen and Tim reflect on one of the great neo-noir films of Hollywood’s second golden age, Night Moves.

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Senses of Cinema has a thoughtful essay on the film by Bruce Jackson.

We didn’t get a chance to talk about the film’s writer, Alan Sharp, who said his own screen work embodied “moral ambiguity, mixed motives and irony.” Matthew Asprey Gear describes the protracted gestation of Night Moves and illuminates some biographical details about Sharp in an article for Bright Lights Film Journal.

Read Alan Sharp’s obituary at the Guardian.

For more Melanie Griffith, check out our episode on Roar, the absolutely wrong-headed movie project inflicted on her by mom Tippi Hedren and stepdad Noel Marshall.

110 – Cool World

Cool World is not cool. Emma Bowers (@hyenasandgin) returns to commiserate with Tim and Jen about a very bad animated feature. Turns out this movie did significant psychological damage to young Tim.

Watch Emma’s Full Metal Alchemist video!

Compare and contrast: this interview with Ralph Bakshi, and this one with writer Michael Grais. Bakshi claims malfeasance from producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. (to the point of violence). Grais calls Bakshi a liar, essentially. What’s the real story? Who knows?

The Tex Avery doc Tim alluded to is called Tex Avery, the King of Cartoons.

Bakshi puts in this pissing stuff, and toilet stuff. I didn’t like that sex attitude in it very much. It’s like real repressed horniness; he’s kind of letting it out compulsively.
R. Crumb on Ralph Bakshi and the Fritz the Cat feature film

If we haven’t dissuaded you, you can watch Ralph Bakshi’s most recent animated work, The Last Days of Coney Island, on YouTube.

For more animated shite, listen to our episode on Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure!