The Human Vapor

Well, this is a surprise. I did not expect to so thoroughly enjoy The Human Vapor. A curious mixture of film noir, The Invisible Man, The Phantom of the Opera, and even a soupcon of His Girl Friday, this genre-bending horror film from Ishiro Honda is his most effective and entertaining film since he got…

The Asphalt Jungle

#14 in my ranking of John Huston's filmography. So began one of the worst partnerships in John Huston's career: his contract with MGM. Dore Schary believed in Huston, but Louis B. Mayer kind of hated him. It crated with Huston's next film, The Red Badge of Courage, but Huston was allowed a free hand on…

Key Largo

#4 in my ranking of John Huston's filmography. The first seventy minutes of Key Largo is the best movie John Huston made. The last thirty minutes are really good, but still a small step down from the cinematic purity of the descent into paranoia combined with the oppressive power of Nature. Freely adapted from the…

The Maltese Falcon

#5 in my ranking of John Huston's filmography. John Huston starts his directing career proper by creating a movie star in Humphrey Bogart. Bogart had been a supporting actor for WB for a few years (notably in things like Wyler's Dead End), but his turn as Sam Spade in the adaptation of the novel by…

The Letter

#8 in my ranking of William Wyler's filmography. William Wyler goes full noir in this remake of the film of the same name made by Jean de Limur and based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham, and the results are really fun, noirish action. It's a look into depravity in an exotic locale with…