EVERY DAY IS HALLOWEEN 22: SHROUDHOUNDER

 

Shroudhounder

monster of murderous mystery

a tangle of grotesque bits and pieces

Frankensteined together by the awful Dr. Aufidius,

archvillain of Vigilante Sword Maniac Against the Winds of Destiny: Supreme Slaughter Panorama,

the umpteenth adventure of the cauldron concocted mercenary swordmaster

this was the one where the star was upstaged by the heavy

the magnificent Shroudhounder

a ghastly writhing tangle

of cobra hooded snapping dog's heads

hairy arms swinging heavy blades

and bizarre gearworks extrusions spitting fire'n'smoke'n'cursed pieces of paper

all of it swaddled in a bizarre costume of sutured together potato sacks

and when it rears up to show its belly

it ain't because it wants a rub and a liver treat

for a huge'n'terrible gash vomits forth hot steaming entrails to snare'n'digest you

for years

cult audiences wondered at how such a brain searingly complex monster could function with such poise, ferocity, muscularity, and speed 

all of it seemingly live and in camera

the mystery is solved in the special features

specifically

a behind the scenes doc that was only available on a Japan exclusive laserdisc

didn't help that the movie bombed hard with both critics and general audiences

for years nothing but rumors and insinuations

but now we can see

right there on YouTube

a small army of people operating a bewilderingly complex set of guidelines, wires, and all manner of abstruse puppetry gear-it hurts to stare at the tangle for too long, defies technical post-mortem,

and yet the crew shouts with joy as they make the vast'n'writhing tangle of limbs'n'blades rumble across the miniature landscape

chief special efx technician claims they didn't plan to make it boogie like that

it was just something that occured to them on the day

they didn't even have enough crew to do it

so they put out the word to friends and colleagues

and this got them in big trouble with the executives and the union

some say this is why the final edit's so unwieldy

the producers fought the director mightily

whispered stories of rival editing suites

clandestine teams fighting for and against the inclusion of Shroudhounder's wild charge

but many believe that the rules violations don't even touch the mystery

studios fuck over workers all the time

unions have far less power in the biz than people attribute to 'em,

no, no, no,

it was the power that came through in the puppetry

something was instantiated within the artifice

something

impossibly

became real 

which put the fear into all present

something powerful

that hungered to be free of cinema

to tear loose of its fated role as a heel who takes a fall upon the appointed moment

to roam the world beyond the screen,

to break the frame,

to collect actual heavy heads,

to drink hot blood pumping from freshly rent neckstumps,

to rumble across actual landscapes,

no bogus three act bullshit to cramp its good time ever again-

-in an interview with the lead actor

he said specifically that he felt kinda upstaged by the "Shroudhounder contraption. I mean, where was the human element, eh? I just thought the whole franchise was devolving into tricks and gimmicks at that point. Here I am, the hero, and I'm just totally eclipsed by this monster machine. May as well replace me with a marionette, too, y'know?"

-as for me,

I remember Shroudhounder's wild charge

-easily the most memorable moment in the otherwise  impenetrable umpteenth Vigilante Sword Maniac flick,

which I had obtained through tape trading in 1998 or 1999,

right in the depths of the End of History-

snapping, frothing cobra dogs

wolfman arms swinging exotically shaped blades,

cursed bits of paper causing pyrotechnic spectacles wherever they landed,

glimpses of furiously grinding gears through tears in its potato sack garb,

and square-ass Vigilante Sword Maniac's face blanched with big-time What-the-Fuck-ness 

as a storm of spectacularly inhuman wildness overwhelms too-too-precious Method Actor Humanism-

-oh, yes

I see why they junked'n'buried the Shroudhounder contraption

no need to even go behind the scenes

the footage in the actual film

is startlingly free of mysteries

if one is willing to look

and to see-

-December 2012, October 2017, October 2022

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #4:

TCM HOSTS ARRESTED FOR RUNNING A PIRACY RING OUT OF NOIR ALLEY.

Here's an interesting way to celebrate Halloween . . .

. . . if you're a Trick R Treater you fill your bag with freshly popped popcorn.

If you're giving out candy, well, don't do that. Instead, choose a type of condiment or sauce-BBQ sauce, ketchup, mustard, relish, whipped cream, maple syrup, aerosol cheese product, powdered parmesan, worcestershire sauce, mayo, nacho cheese product, biscuit gravy, butter-that comes in a squeeze bottle. When people with bags of popcorn come to your door, squeeze out whatever you got onto the popcorn inside the bags as they are presented to you. 

If you're someone with a bag full of popcorn, you've got decisions to make. Do you go door to door trying to get as many people to squeeze off as many different kinds of sauces all over your popcorn as possible? Or do you eat each squeezed upon layer as you go so as to avoid mixing the condiments all together? Rest assured that different people will make different decisions as suits their tastes and preferences. So should you. 

Overall, I think this represents a flavorful new way to celebrate Halloween!

COMICS REVIEW: GOD OF TREMORS (2021)

Created/Written by Peter Milligan

Art by Piotr Kowalski

Color by Brad Simpson

Lettered by Simon Bowland

Logo Design by Gary Bedell

Edited by Mike Marts and Christina Harrington

Published by AfterShock Comics in August 2021.

. . .

"WORSHIP ME. GIVE ME YOUR ECSTACY OF TREMBLING. YOU ARE NO LONGER YOUR FATHER'S. YOU ARE MINE."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Here we have a 48 page one-shot comic book called God of Tremors. It's in an oversized format more like a magazine than your usual single comic book issue. It tells a story complete unto itself that does not require you to have read thousands of pages of prior continuity nor will you need to be rigorously drilled in the minutiae of lore and backstory in order to understand the characters, the setting, and/or the ideas it explores. It's kinda like catching an old episode of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, or Alfred Hitchcock Presents. If you've never read a comic book before in your life, God of Tremors would still be comprehensible. It's possible that it could be someone's first experience of a comic book. 

God of Tremors is about a sixteen year old British boy at the end of the 19th century who finds himself oppressed by the forces of religion, social conformity, and masculinity. His father's a fanatical Christian priest who believes that women should be the slaves of men, and that all sexuality outside of baby manufacture is a mortal sin. Never mind that dear ol' dad likes to furtively beat his dick to softcore lesbian-themed erotica. Hey, the geezer mortifies himself for his own lusts by lashing himself across the back, so, y'know, dude is consistent. Dad also likes to exorcize lust demons from his teen son by binding his arms at night when he goes to bed and whipping the kid without mercy at the least sign of resistance. The son knows this is a fucked-up, unjust situation, but what can he do about it? The young man stumbles across a possible solution deep within a mysterious forest: a bug-eyed leering statue of some forgotten deity that looks like a Jack Kirby monster. The statue speaks to the tortured teen, offering visions of the power of sexuality and Nature, and thus plants the seeds of resistance . . .

God of Tremors encompasses big ideas and brutal drama within a tight three act structure. The art evokes conflicting spaces of oppression-offices, churches, dormitories, mansions, bedrooms-and liberation-the forest, the domain of the Kirby monster god, the imagination. I especially enjoyed the way the forest comes alive whenever the power of the mysterious statue is in full effect. Ultimately, our teen protagonist is himself the battlefield for powerful forces that desire to shape him this way and that. Will the young man find his own way? Is he just a product of grinding evolutionary-dialectical processes with little to no free will of his own? 

All this . . . in a comic book of all things!

What a world . . .

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #1:

Cocaine Megalomania Theme: BIO WARS by Koichi Sugiyama from the soundtrack for Godzilla vs. Biollante

It's rock. It's orchestral. It's disco. It's a little bit funky. There are horns. It's all things. It's definitely something a musician concocted with too much time, money, caprice, and disregard for whether it makes sense in a giant monster movie. Usually when you think of Godzilla movies you think of Akira Ifukube's ominous and majestic compositions that captured the terror and the tragedy of Mother Nature's Anti-Nuclear Avenger. Here we have what sounds like something you'd hear in the depths of a Chuck Barris superspy hallucination as he shoots bad guys while getting laid and defusing a nuclear bomb. If you ever watch Godzilla vs Biollante you can pretty much tell that the filmmakers thought this music was not a good fit by the way they ruthlessly edited it down to little fits and spurts and stains on the kaiju-rubbled landscape. Still, as an evocation of cocaine-induced delusions of godhood it's pretty much tops!

Care for a bump, my dawg?

BONUS: For more fun, watch Godzilla vs Biollante and imagine Godzilla snorting rails, flipping out, and trashing his trailer due to his being upstaged by his gargantuan-mutant-plant-with-the-soul-of-a-dead-girl nemesis. You see, they never really brought Biollante back after this one flick, and I think it's because she is way more awesome than Gojira, and the Big G fuckin' knew it, and pitched a bitch to the producer about it. Just one more reason why we can't have nice things.

SINCE YOU DIDN'T ASK #5:

. . . it's not that I never take creamer or sugar with my coffee, okay, it's just not my overall preference. But I'm not rigid in these matters. For example, when I'm in cyberspace I am obviously obliged to drink cyber-coffee. And, let it be known, cyber-creamer is surprisingly good. Therefore, I take cyber-creamer with my cyber-coffee. 

But cyber-sugar is right out, never touch the stuff. It's all wrong. 

BONUS: Cyber-gravy is also an option when dining out in cyberspace. As is cyber-French-Onion-Dip.

HUMPDAY THINGS I LIKE #1:

I LIKE IT IN MOVIES WHEN HEADS EXPLODE. THIS MAY OCCUR DUE TO EXTREME COMBAT, BECAUSE OF A CURSE BY WITCH AND/OR WARLOCK, USE OF PSYCHIC POWERS, OR BE SYMPTOMATIC OF A HIGHLY UNUSUAL BLOOD PRESSURE CONDITION. THERE CAN BE A REASON FOR A HEAD TO EXPLODE, OR THE HEAD MAY EXPLODE FOR NO REASON AT ALL OR MAYBE EVEN AN IMPLIED REASON. I'VE OFTEN NOTICED THAT MOVIES CAN COMMUNICATE BY IMPLICATION AND SUBTEXT AS WELL AS DIRECT EXPOSITION. BUT EITHER WAY-REASON OR NO REASON-WORKS FOR ME. I'M FLEXIBLE.

William wins an award for flexibility. You may congratulate him for his achievement.

MANGA REVIEW: BLACK BLIZZARD (1956, 2010)

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi 

English translation by Akemi Wegmuller

Edits/Design/Lettering by Adrian Tomine

Title logo designed by Tim Hensley

Published by Drawn and Quarterly in March 2010.

Original Japanese language publication by Hinomaru Bunko in 1956. 

. . .

"If you ask me, the only way we're getting apart is if one of us loses his hand."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Black Blizzard is a film noir on paper. Full stop. It's not an homage. It's not a pastiche. It's not neo-noir. It is full noir. It was created in 1956. It has the melodrama, the psychodrama, the romanticism, the haunted pasts, the moral gray areas, and the (except for the opening pages) black and white visual scheme. Get Seijun Suzuki on the horn and have him shoot it in Nikkatsu Scope. It's ready to go. 

Black Blizzard is, actually, a manga. A comic book. 128 pages all from the mind and hands and sweat of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, who would go on to have a long and influential career in Japanese comics. But in 1956 he was in his twenties, just in the first act of his career. All by himself he crafted a feature length crime thriller worthy of anything produced by Nikkatsu or by the various Hollywood studios that fits between two covers. That's the power of a manga writer/artist firing on all cylinders. Writer, director, actors, crew all in one furiously scribbling man. How about that? It's kinda neat.

Much like the genre crime films of yore, Black Blizzard uses crime and criminality most interestingly as a way of exploring moral confusion within people through various melodramatic situations. This isn't about strict realism so much as a hard-boiled sort of romanticism. Doom can be averted only by proving oneself before the eyes of fate. To this end, we have two men-one a young musician recently convicted of murder, the other a middle aged career crook facing a life sentence-handcuffed to each other as they are transported by train to prison. An avalanche derails the train, and our handcuffed pair escape the wreckage to go on the lam. The musician is trying to hold on to his old identity as a respectable young man with a future. The career crook is on a defiant death trip, seeking nothing more than to evade the law for as long as possible, perhaps visit his daughter one last time, and then die in a shootout with the cops. It occurs to the career crook that one of them will probably have to cut off the other guy's hand if they are both truly going to be free. The musician is appalled by this idea, and keeps fighting for a way to break the chain without either of them losing a hand. 

The conflict resolves itself in an unexpected manner which some may find a bit over the top, especially for those who are more familiar with Tatsumi's later, more sophisticated character studies like The Push Man or Abandon the Old in Tokyo. Black Blizzard has two protagonists who seem to represent different aspects of one person, whereas later Tatsumi works would follow singular characters roiling with inner strife and loneliness. Tatsumi started here under the heavy influence of the melodramatic variety of film noir and would later be writing stories comparable to Taxi Driver-but this is a very crude comparison. Tatsumi has his own voice to be sure. Also, I think Black Blizzard stands on its own as a legitimate expression of genre crime fiction. It's fun and stylish in the way those old timey black and white crime flicks could be, even if the ride is more fun than the eventual destination. The plot is a framework for the tormented characters to struggle with existential dilemmas and the burdens of the past. 

Tatsumi's art is stripped down, propulsive, with lots of slashing lines. When we dive into bitter memories from the past those are just as sharp; no dreaminess to these flashbacks, no easy escape. There's even a jolting nightmare sequence evoking the fatalism of noir crime fiction. 

Black Blizzard could, if followed exactly, be a ready to go blueprint for a new cult classic film noir. It also stands on its own as a comic book. 

MANGA REVIEW: CHAINSAW MAN CHAPTERS 1-97 (2020-2022)

by Tatsuki Fujimoto

English Translation by Amanda Haley

Touch-up art/Lettering by Sabrina Heep and James Gaubatz

Design by Julian JR Robinson

Edited by Alexis Kirsch

Published in 11 paperback volumes October 2020-June 2022 by Viz Media.

Also available digitally.

Original Japanese language serialization began in 2018. 

. . .

"Wouldn't you like to have a prairie dog living in the middle of your chest, sharing your blood supply?"

-American philosopher George Carlin from his book Brain Droppings (1997)

"That . . . was a family slap, okay?"

-dialogue from the manga Chainsaw Man

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

You follow the news, and things seem to only get worse. 

People are working longer and harder than ever for wages that only know how to stagnate even as the cost of living increases. 

Anthropogenic climate change creates drought, famine, plague, water wars, permanently displaced people, and extreme weather disasters, the harsh aftermaths of which seem to offer a preview of the posthuman Earth. 

Democracy seems to be on life support all over the planet, as dictators rise to power.

Random acts of terrorism and violence are perpetrated by extremists as they enact lethal persecution fantasias to assert their identities. 

Politicians serve the interests of capital.

Capital serves itself. 

Strange devils appear to slaughter humans to consume their blood. 

Only the work grind offers any kind of hope in a world that has no place for intimacy or kindness; or failing that, a distraction from troubling feelings of despair or discontent. 

Some, in the depths of their powerlessness, make deals with the blood drinking devils for fantastic combat capabilities in order to survive this brutal reality.

Chainsaw Man follows the bloody misadventures of a Japanese teenager named Denji who strikes a deal with a cute devil named Pochita in order to level up his grind so that he can pay off a crushing debt inherited from his dead father. Pochita is a 'Chainsaw Devil,' which means that he is both an adorable Pokemon-esque quadruped and a chainsaw. He's got handles on his butt and his head, the blade protrudes from his face, and you pull on his tail to spark the engine. Pochita is either a horrific abomination or the coolest pet of all times depending on how you reckon such things. Pochita seems friendly, though, and not especially aggressive all on his own. In fact, Pochita seems to want nothing more than to be of service to a kind master. 

You see, Denji has already sold off parts of his body to service his debt. But the people he's indebted to are scummy gangsters-yakuza-who just keep inventing bullshit reasons for Denji to pay them more and more money. Denji, who is naive in these matters, decides to take up devil hunting as a job to make an honest living so he can pay off his debt. Denji's an illiterate high school dropout, so devil hunting-an extremely dirty and dangerous job-is about the only gig he can score that pays above minimum wage. Denji uses Pochita as a living chainsaw to slice grotesque devils for cash. The kid is trying, he really is; and all the while he dreams of having enough money to ask a girl out on a date. Sixteen year old Denji's highest aspiration, in fact, is to touch female human breasts. 

But this is truly a tale of woe, as Denji is murdered by the same gangsters who were ripping him off, but, in a twist, our hero returns from the dead after Pochita sacrifices his own adorable life to combine his Chainsaw Devil heart with Denji's human heart thus giving birth to the titular Chainsaw Man . . . which should really be Chainsaw Teen, but it's fine. Boys become soldiers that die in wars in order to become men, right? Ah, hell, let's give it to the kid. He's been through it. Denji dies, and we'll go ahead and call that a growth experience since he did indeed come back from the land of the dead. Most teens would just eat all of your food, play video games while farting up your couch, and stay dead. Denji's earned it. 

Now, as Chainsaw Man, Denji's dressed in a nice shirt and a necktie-like he's a server at a nice sitdown restaurant or he's an office temp or something-but with the pull-cord tail of Pochita sticking out of his chest. That's right: when Denji's ready for action he yanks himself just so . . . and chainsaw blades pop out of his arms and head. He also sports a gaping mouth full of wicked fangs. Chainsaw Man's fuel is not gasoline, but blood. The longer Chainsaw Man goes, the more blood he uses. It's like Ultraman's color timer or the limited battery life of an EVA Unit, except Chainsaw Man can refuel by consuming blood. Chainsaw Man's main gig is killing devils whose blood also happens to be quite drinkable due to Denji being merged with a devil-sweet Pochita-which makes our boy a half-devil. I think that's how it works. So, as long as Chainsaw Man stays bloodthirsty and eats as he kills there's no limit to what this kid can achieve!

Denji eventually gets conscripted into a government-funded devil killing organization who exploit his half-devil status to deny him human rights and force him to work for food and shelter. Denji's been so down that he can't see a way out of this unfair deal even as he instinctually resents it. The head of this organization is a woman named Makima, who brazenly manipulates Denji with sexual titilation. At first, we are seemingly in the tropey realm of action manga pandering to the power fantasies of teenage boys. It's common for the adolescent heterosexual male protagonists of these comics to magically become the center of the universe, to fight all the battles, and to miraculously be irresistable to attractive, older women. Often these stories are balanced with farcical humor in which the hero guy's Big Dick Energy is undercut by various humiliating episodes-usually in a high school setting-which bring him back down to Earth. The recently reprinted Spriggan offers some amusing examples of this, in which a teen super-agent gets his ass kicked by unimpressed female classmates between bouts of world-saving combat with cyborgs and ancient aliens. One of the more extreme examples occurs in Eden: It's An Endless World in which the teenage hero survives various brutal battles involving cyborg militias and bloodthirsty gangsters only to become an undercover cop while romancing a cynical sex worker-scenes of puerile humor play counterpoint to vistas of slaughter in jaw-dropping fashion-

At first, Chainsaw Man seems to be falling into line with this brand of power fantasy, but the devil's in the details. Remember, Denji's an illiterate high school dropout who has suffered one devastation after another: death of his father; homelessness; economic exploitation by the yakuza; violent death-he's lucky to be alive. When a government agency offers to take care of him, it's the first time he has a chance at having a place to sleep, good food, a sense of belonging, and a purpose to his existence beyond survival. Yes, Denji's being manipulated and exploited yet again . . . but it is also, sadly, brutally, an improved form of bondage. Later on, one of Denji's devil killing colleagues-a teenage girl-speaks bluntly about how she would've taken up sex work if not for the government gig. Chainsaw Man's action power fantasy characters pay a steep price for the glory of killing devils.

But this makes it sound totally depressing. Which it really isn't. Chainsaw Man is quite hilarious and exciting. People make deals with devils for various superpowers which allow devil killers to unleash heavy destruction upon their enemies. The various monstrous creatures assume forms that are both terrifying and amusing, leaving one with the distinct impression that devils embody our tackiness as well as our evil. Combat rages across countless pages in the wild, unconstrained style of action manga. Comic interludes involve the government devil killers getting blackout drunk and engaging in all kinds of regret-inducing behaviors. 

But the fun and excitement are counterbalanced by paranoia and sudden death. Terrorists also cut deals with devils to commit mass slaughter. Assassins target the government agents. Epic battles level entire city blocks and massacre scores of civilians. One gruesome image involves what might be an entire telephone book's worth of names of people killed during an especially appalling event. Chainsaw Man offers both naked power and chilling consequences in equal measure.

I was absorbed by the thousand or so pages I read of Chainsaw Man. I liked the fantastic displays of devil-enhanced powers. I was intrigued by the themes of exploitation and power that complicated the 'super-team' action sequences. I was kept on edge by the sudden death which could seemingly befall any character. There's even a bizarre and fascinating element to do with historical amnesia which provocatively suggests why so many action manga have highly abstracted settings divorced from real world concerns. Chainsaw Man is an ongoing serial, so it could still let me down. But so far so good.

Y'know, for all the trouble and pain it would cause me . . . I think I wouldn't mind having a super-kawaii Chainsaw Devil inside my chest, too! It would hurt, sure. But I could also really fuck shit up. Sometimes the pain is worth it.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #3:

HAYAO MIYAZAKI'S DUNE SWEEPS OSCARS.

Query . . .

. . . you know, I'm really wondering with my shit over here: how long would people like Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss last working at Tesco or Burger King or Starbucks?

I wonder, too, how long people like Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson or Marco Rubio or Ron DeSantis or Mitch McConnell  would last at a Wendy's or a Wal-Mart or a Taco Bell?

Weak people in tough jobs. Real jobs, y'know? Not softass Ivy League collegiate shit. Not scummy lawyer shit. Nothing to do with show business. Not your usual slimy politico nonsense. Real work that gets you zero social mobility and no kinda living wages.

My guess is . . . not long at all.

BONUS: For more fun, imagine these same people working in construction, janitorial services, and/or eldercare. Yeah, I know, it's a strange idea of "fun," but try it out, you might like it!

My hour of need has never been greater for I am sorely tempted . . .

. . . to rejoin MySpace so I can set the Chainsaw Man Barf Kiss panel as my profile pic. 

Hell, I could probably be MySpace friends with Denji himself along with all my other fictional buds: Moon Knight, Robocop, Rocket Knight, Golgo 13, Skull Knight, Sailor Moon, Catwoman, Cybernetics Guardian, Blade the Vampire Hunter, Totoro, Indiana Jones, Vampire Hunter D, Ben Grimm, M.D. Geist, Vampirella, Genocyber, Oh Dae-su from Oldboy, Pinhead, 1990s Deathlok, Major Motoko Kusanagi, the meats TV from Videodrome-

But there's nothing more ruthless than the March of Time. You just can't wind it back. So sad.

BONUS: During future Halloween seasons expect more and more couples to cosplay as the iconic Barf Kiss from Chainsaw Man. This I predict!

Liberderpianism . . .

. . . is the social/political/economic philosophy of people who like the sound of the word libertarian, and are attracted to the concept of not paying any taxes, and are intrigued by the prospect of swinging, but who couldn't get through the first chapter of Atlas Shrugged because it was too fuckin' boring and a real doorstopper in terms of the page count. Liberderpians are known to attend Libertarian conferences, conclaves, and ice cream socials to shoot free market lingo and, hopefully, to get laid. Some have criticized Liberderpians as insincere and opportunistic, but supporters say, "Hey, it's a Free Marketplace of ideas and ass, baby!" Despite the controversy, most people-across the political spectrum-are unable to detect any noticeable differences between Libertarians and Liberderpians when surveyed and surveilled in both formal and informal research settings. 

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #2:

CHRISTMAS CANCELS ITSELF OVER HUMAN CLIMATE DENIALISM.

BENIGN AND/OR INANE CONSPIRACIES #1:

I am abso-goddamn-lutely convinced that someone is altering the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down verdicts on these YouTube uploads of old episodes of Siskel and Ebert using deep fake motherfuckery to bamboozle us all here on planet Earth. The point is to fuck up your trivia night when you're trying to remember what movies got which thumb rating from which critic. 

I'm also certain that some of these movies they're reviewing have never actually existed. For example: do you remember ever seeing a movie starring Gillian Anderson and Jon Stewart in some kind of a romantic drama? It's totally fuckin' fake. No one remembers it, and it stars two of the biggest TV people of all times-which is another clue. Everybody knows that back in the 1990s TV people didn't get any kinda action from the movies. George Clooney was the only one, no one else. It's a total fake. 

This is some sick shit, people. And we need to expose it for all the world to see!

William loses interest in this endeavor after seventeen minutes. The world takes no notice. All is well. 

MOVIE REVIEW: THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)

 

Directed by John Huston

Written by Ben Maddow and John Huston

From the novel by W.R. Burnett

Photographed by Harold Rosson

Edited by George Boemler

Music by Miklos Rozsa

Starring

John McIntire as Police Commissioner Hardy

Louis Calhern as Emmerich (Lawyer)

Barry Kelley as Lt. Ditrich (Crooked Cop)

Brad Dexter as Brannom (Greedy Private Eye)

Marc Lawrence as Cobby (Bookie)

Sam Jaffee as Doc (Career Thief)

Anthony Caruso as Ciavelli (Safecracker)

James Whitmore as Gus (Getaway Driver)

Sterling Hayden as Dix (Muscle)

Dorothy Tree as Mrs. Emmerich

Marilyn Monroe as Angela

Teresa Celli as Mrs. Ciavelli

Jean Hagen as Doll

Helene Stanley as Dancing Teenager

. . .

THE CITY UNDER THE CITY . . .

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

The Asphalt Jungle is one of those old timey black and white crime thrillers-film noir it's called, with lots of shadows, mostly at night, great close-ups of expressive faces, and all of it suffused with an impending sense of doom. More specifically, The Asphalt Jungle is about a team of crooks who decide to crack open a safe full of jewels. 

Why a team as opposed to just one determined thief, you may ask, after all this is a fictional story, isn't it? Why fuck with more than one protagonist? Well, in the stylized realism of this film, no one person has all the skills-to-pay-the-bills inside a single mind/body, y'know? This ain't that Tom Cruise superhuman power fantasy bullshit. Different people got different skills, different talents, different inclinations. One person is an experienced safecracker. Another guy has muscle and aggression. Yet another guy knows how to drive under pressure so as not to draw attention from cops or potential witnesses. Some people are ideas people-they can come up with schemes and/or actionable intelligence for potential jobs and so forth. And, of course, you've got to have folks with deep pockets who can bankroll criminal adventures. And people who can fence stolen stuff, convert ill-gotten goods into cash money.  So many different discrete tasks that contribute to an underworld economy. It ain't all gonna come gift wrapped inside one singular messianic motherfucker. It takes a village, y'know?

Crime-true crime-is just another job. You put in your hours, you bug your co-workers by showing them pictures of your kids, you get paid, you go home, you might get hassled by cops wanting to put you in a line-up now and again-sure, sure, no life is free of hassles. But it's just another way of existing in the world. You can make money on either side of the line. Some people go back and forth across the line. Some land solidly on one side or the other. Either side can leave you feeling trapped, and full of envy at looking at what the other side has that you don't got but want so bad. 

The Asphalt Jungle gives us a memorable set of cops and crooks, of people on both sides of the line. 

For the crooks:

You've got Doc, the middle-aged German-American career thief whose Old World formality clashes humorously with both his pervy lust for younger women and his unflappable pragmatism. 

There's Ciavelli, the professional safecracker who brews his own nitroglycerin 'soup' even as he lives the straight life of an Italian-American devout Catholic family man. 

The muscle is a slow talkin' Kentucky good ol' boy named Dix-no kiddin'-who has taken a few too many billy clubs upside his head, but he's dependable.

You've got Cobby, a twitchy bookie who looks like he's cosplaying as John Waters.

There's Gus, the bartending, snitch-hating getaway driver who catches nonstop shit for having a hunched back. 

And all this is bankrolled by the bent lawyer, Emmerich, who, much like Doc, is a man of a certain age and status who desires younger women, even as his depressed, bed-ridden wife plays solitaire upstairs. 

For the cops:

You have a mixture of uniforms and trenchcoats, popping up here and there to make trouble for our enterprising hoods.

There's one plainclothes cop in particular-a Lt. Ditrich-who leans on the bookie Cobby for bribes-so that makes him a cop that's also a crook. Hey, you gotta be flexible in this economy. 

There's also the creepy private investigator-Brannom-employed by Emmerich as a debt collector. This guy also rides the line between law and crime.

Most memorably, there's the self-righteous police commissioner-Hardy-who gives good copaganda to the compliant, conservative press corps aiming their stories squarely at the vast, squishy middle of conformists, taxpayers, and churchgoers. The commissioner is fun to watch as he skillfully transforms a press conference into a near-biblical morality play incorporating (for 1950) state-of-the-art stereo playback equipment. The commish is a genius. He might even actually believe in what he's saying. Who knows?

The plot centers on a scheme hatched by Doc who needs $50,000 in financial backing from Emmerich to execute. Emmerich goes for it, and the team is assembled-the safecracker, the getaway driver, the muscle for security-and the heist goes . . . well, y'know, complications ensue. Remember, as full of shit as the cops are, professional thieves aren't known for their altruism. The Asphalt Jungle depicts a harsh world where betrayal can emanate from any quarter. What's interesting here isn't so much the plot as the reactions of the characters, though the plotting here is both effective and convincing. 

Film noir is known for its fatalism, its barbed dialogue, and its stylish shadows, and all those things are present here, but The Asphalt Jungle also incorporates a sociological element. There's no singular protagonist nor is there a singular enemy. Even the betrayers and hypocrites are positioned within a systematic legal-economic scheme that limits freedom of choice via a tangled web of inequality and perverse incentives. The commish is a political actor who derives social power from the enterprises of the crooks. The crooks target the jewels that exist because of capitalist prosperity. The press sells papers full of criminal intrigues and lawful punishments based upon real life crimes. The crooked cop and the bent lawyer play both sides for money. Cop and crook are joined at the hip. Law and crime define each other just as surely as savory and sweet. This kind of hard-boiled metaphysics makes The Asphalt Jungle memorable beyond the twists and turns of a first viewing. It's more than just entertainment. It offers a way of seeing the world.