a lost Hollywood of grimy satisfaction

D.O.A. (1949) - For noir fans, D.O.A. is a knockout, a peach, and for horror fans (often the same people!) it is the inspiration for Dead Heat (1988). D.O.A. is an absolute classic, especially in the “atomic noir” sub genre. It gets you right in the belly. As far as I know, all home video releases have been technically terrible since it’s in the public domain, so try to source the best looking copy - there are good HD files floating around the internet (cough rarelust cough) and there’s an excellent web version available to stream through a library-based service called kanopy which looks like it has been carefully remastered in blu ray quality. 

Anyway, if you can dig D.O.A. (and I know that you can!), it is well worth seeking out two further gems by the same writer/producer/erstwhile director team of Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse: THE THIEF (1952), with Ray Milland excellent as an AEC nuclear scientist turned reluctant Soviet spy (which is on a par with D.O.A. for knuckle sweating tension and elegant narrative drive and is even more anguished, if that is possible), and the more formulaic but still massively entertaining WICKED WOMAN (1953). These three supremely confident low budget films constitute an extraordinary glimpse into a lost Hollywood of grimy satisfaction.

Winter Kills ending

First posting: William Richert's 1979 film from a Richard Condon novel, Winter Kills. The first observation I would make is that between the VHS copy that I have known and loved and the Anchor Bay dvd, the ending is different! Just looking a the runtimes between the 2 editions - about 87 minutes for the PAL VHS tape and about 97 minutes for the NTSC dvd - there have got to be a million little differences. And I say little differences, because every scene that is there in the longer dvd is also present in the shorter VHS, so it has got to be largely a tweakathon. What is majorly signifcant is the ending. In the dvd, the film ends on a closeup of a 1970s answering machine. It is a total anticlimax with what has come before. On the VHS tape, the character of Nick Keegan walks out into the snow - it is winter in New York, and he is in a park - is it Central Park? I don't know I've never been to New York - the main thing is that a woman on a bicycle with a child on the back rides past. We have seen her before in the movie, and every time we have seen her, someone is about to die. So to see her at the end and then to fade to black with music and credits implies that Nick is about to die. It's pretty cool, and considering that the film's a transparent Kennedy saga, there's some historical poignancy there. I believe that the actress on the bicycle was the director's wife, who he was at the time of the film's original release in the process of divorcing. So for him to come back approximately 25 years after the footage was shot and cut her out of the ending of the Anchor Bay dvd seems incredibly self-indulgent, like Godfather 3 self-indulgent, if you know what I mean. And I will come back to this topic.