DVD Tuesday: Cult movie Detour and the Highway to Hell
DVD Tuesday: A Detour into existential misery Edgar G. Ulmer's noir road movie is a trip down the highway to hell.
The danger in shining a spotlight on a movie like
Detour (1945) is that people will expect too much of the wrong things from it. Which isn't to say I think
Edgar G. Ulmer's nightmarish story of a cross-country drive into the heart of darkness is anything short of great: It's haunted me for years and I can watch it over and over.
But I've heard people complain that they couldn't get past the studio-bound sets and rear projection: They never really bought into it because it didn't look real. I'd argue, however, that its air of unreality of disconnection from normal life is part of its greatness: Ulmer took the liabilities of no money and a six-day shooting schedule, and figured out a way to make them assets.
Detour has the feverish logic of a nightmare, and features both a strikingly unlikable "hero" and a femme fatale who's nothing short of demonic.
Classically trained pianist Al Roberts (Tom Neal), a classic glass-half-empty guy, plays jazz at a Greenwich Village dive called Break o' Dawn; he hates everyone and everything except his girlfriend, Sue, and he's furious at her when she decides to go to Hollywood and try to make it big as a singer. He stays behind, sulking and seething, but eventually realizes that letting Sue go was a terrible mistake. Too broke to travel any other way, he starts hitching and eventually scores a ride with businessman Charlie Haskell, who's going all the way from Arizona to Los Angeles.
Haskell, a hopped-up blowhard in a flashy convertible, oozes creepiness you just
know whatever business he's in is shady, and the story he tells Roberts about tussling with a hitchhiker he picked up earlier in the trip the woman who scratched the hell out of his hand just begs the question 'so, what did
he do first?'
But Roberts figures Haskell is the one piece of luck he's had the entire trip the guy even buys him dinner so he sticks around and even offers to share driving duties. While Roberts is behind the wheel, he decides to pull over and put the top up; he opens the door on Haskell's side and Haskell falls to the ground, dead. Afraid that he'll be accused of murdering Haskell, Roberts takes Haskell's wallet, hides the body and gets back on the road.
The next day,
he imprudently picks up a hitchhiker named Vera (
Ann Savage) who is, of course, the woman who previously rode with Haskell and knows damned well that Roberts isn't him. It's clear that nothing good is going to come of this, but the bleak quagmire that awaits Roberts must be seen to be believed.
Even Ulmer, a master of making something out very little, couldn't make something out of
nothing So credit must also go to writer Martin M. Goldsmith, who adapted his own novel into a screenplay. And all the clever filmmaking in the world can't overcome bad casting.
Tom Neal wasn't a great actor, and he certainly wasn't a great person: He was a hell raiser and a brawler the tabloid press loved him -- who eventually went to prison for killing his wife. All of which happened years after
Detour but suggests that he didn't have to dig deep to find the made-at-the-world Roberts, who winds up lamenting that "fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all" despite the active part he plays in his own downfall. In fact, since the story is told entirely from his point of view -- complete with extensive voice over it's entirely possible that he's lying about the whole series of unfortunate events. No
wonder everything feels vaguely unreal.
As to Ann Savage, she makes
Ace in the Hole's hardboiled
Jan Sterling seem like a purring little kitten: Just when you think Vera has exhausted her reserves of viciousness, she pulls another cruel ploy out of her apparently bottomless bag of tricks.
And finally, a word of warning: Don't be fooled into thinking the 1992
Detour remake must be at least a little bit cool, given that is stars Tom Neal Jr. and Lea Lavish, a name
almost as good as Ann Savage. It's not.
Send your movie questions to
FlickChick.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks on the
Movie Talk
vodcast.
Things to Consider:
Detour was an ultra-cheap movie produced by a company that was in it for the bucks: Can you think of other movies that transcend such inauspicious circumstances to achieve some measure of greatness?
Do you like stories with unreliable narrators, or does that strike you as a cheap stunt?
Do you think critics and movie buffs overrate certain movies just to be contrary?
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
2008:
Diary of the Dead
Videodrome
The Kingdom
M
Touch of Evil
Bonnie and Clyde
Atonement
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
Rififi
Michael Clayton
Network
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
Shoot 'Em Up
Freeway
A Mighty Wind
2007:
It's a Wonderful Life
Waitress
Laura
Cop
All About Eve
Severance
Sweet Smell of Success
Daughters of Darkness
The Crazies
Blade Runner
Zodiac
Manhunter
A Simple Plan
Taxi Driver
Renaissance
Blowup
Hot Fuzz
300
Ace in the Hole
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! - Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
