I watched Detour last night.  I last saw it about ten years ago.  Well worth seeing again.  The film is about an hour long but packs a wallop.  The story is told in flashback format.  Tom Neal plays Al Roberts, a struggling piano player who is in love with barroom singer Sue Harvey.  For reasons that are unclear, probably because she wants to ditch our poor friend Al, Sue heads to LA sans Al, to start over and make it big.  Al, smitten about her, decides to hitchhike from New York to LA to re-unite with her.  Or so he hopes.  In true noir fashion the fun, or trouble, begins.  Al hitches a ride somewhere in Arizona with a fast talking con man who is on his way to LA.  Al drives for a bit as our hustler falls asleep.  A long sleep it is as he has a heart attach and dies.  Poor Al panics and thinking the cops will never believe the truth, steals the con man's identity and money and drives his car to California.  Al is beset with uncertainty and confusion. He stops for gas and sees a hitchhiker, Ann Savage, and offers her a ride. His moral uncertainty is now replaced with fear.  Savage plays the femme fatale to perfection.  Slowly, Al gets deeper and deeper into her web of deceit and blackmail.  It does not end well for Savage but our  noirish hero ends up broken spiritually and financially.  The film touches all the noir bases:  a decent man who is morally conflicted, an evil woman who pushes him in the wrong direction, and an ending that is anything but happy.  

  

 Stripper is one of those books/stories whose cover you look at and jump in with low expectations.  They used to call it trash fiction.  One of those thin paperbacks you bought in the back of variety store and felt guilty as you coughed up the ten cents from a cashier who reminded you of your grandfather.  Most of them rate a 2/5 stars if that.  Not Stripper.  Robert Silverberg has told a tale that captures the genre to perfection and then some.  Diana is a stripper/call girl who works at a club in Philadelphia for an organized crime syndicate.  She dances and then hooks up with, well, just about anyone:  customers, bosses, and bosses' bosses.  Therein lies the trouble and quite a turn paging plot.  The end is quite a shocker.  

 

David Goodis: Shoot The Piano Player

 

     David Goodis specializes in one genre: losers. And he does it very well. His novels are basically the same but each is unique if that is possible. The plots center around Port Richmond, a white working class area of Philadelphia that time has left behind. Bars, rowhouses, and a string of sad stories each the same but different in its own way. If you like your coffee black, your characters honest, and English written in simple prose, Goodis hits all the markers.

LOVE THIEF

 

BE FOREWARNED!!!!!

 

BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!