ANDY FISH

ANDY FISH is a comic book artist

Saturday, July 28, 2012

While The City Sleeps ZZZZZZzzzzzzz


Okay, a couple of weeks ago I recommended a movie on TCM which was directed by Fritz Lang and starred Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, George Sanders  and Howard Duff.  With a cast and a director like that I felt it was a safe bet.  It even included Thomas Mitchell who was Uncle Billy in ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE so I really thought it would be a safe bet.

It featured the story of a serial killer on the loose in New York-- who leaves a clue written in lipstick on the wall of one of his victims saying "Ask Mother"-- how much safer a bet could I have made??

Well, faithful readers, I let you down.  I fumbled the ball.
I didn't catch the movie on TCM but I did get it from CLASSICFLIX.COM and boy was I wrong.

Fritz Lang is a masterful director, the man behind such classics as METROPOLIS, M, MINISTRY OF FEAR and a half dozen other classics that don't even begin with the letter M!

But this drear fest which first hobbled across the screen in 1956 and featured said amazing cast now very much long in the tooth and worse-- the movie about a serial killer set in New York who leaves lipstick messages scrawled on the wall was actually BORING.

And by BORING I mean ZZZZzzzzzzz.

The actors are competent, which is a striking thing to say when you realize who they are, this should have been a home run, but instead it was a cornball silly soap opera style drama with NO suspense and NO subtlety-- this honestly is below what B-Schlock Director William Castle was doing with HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL and HOMICIDAL around the same time.  At least those movies had some charm to them.

I vow to you, faithful readers, that I will never again recommend a movie I haven't seen without WARNING you that I haven't seen it.   I didn't mislead you with the original recommendation, but I also failed to mention that I was going based solely on the credits.

That won't happen again.