Mystery Movies! CineTV is giving us yet another fun contest to stimulate our writing about films. For more info, say the contest post at: @cinetv/cine-tv-contest-24-favorite-mystery-movie. Gotta love them! And there are so many good ones, it isn’t possible to choose just one. Therefore I am going to tackle three films: One modern that most people will be familiar with, one classic that a lot of people will have seen, and finally a new one to me that my Bonnie Bride and I watched recently.
First up, a modern film – Knives Out (2019) has one heck of a cast that included Christopher Plummer as a highly acclaimed (and wealthy) mystery writer, Jamie Lee Curtis as his daughter, Daniel Craig, lately of the James Bond movies (admission – I haven’t seen a Bond movie since Never Say Never), Don Johnson and a host of others. This is a film our daughter, Little Miss wanted to see, but I am not sure why we didn’t catch it in the theaters when it was released.
Knives Out trailer: youtube.com
Great film, with murder, probable murder, intrigue, people fighting over inheritances, plots within the family members, plots against the family members, and Craig as a private detective hired to find the truth, and has a sharp eye for detail and misses very little, if anything. As this is still a fairly new movie, trying to avoid spoilers. Let’s me just sum up with – Darn good movie, and if you love mysteries, and haven’t seen it, put it on your watch list. And it has Christopher Plummer!
The Maltese Falcon trailer: youtube.com
For a truly classic film The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade with a stellar cast that includes Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Ward Bond (he was in many John Ford films), Elisha Cook (Star Trek episode “Court Martial”, a darn good character actor), and Mary Astor. Directed by John Huston and adapted from the novel by Dashiell Hammett. This was a film I knew about as a kid, but it wasn’t until sometime in the ‘80s when I had my first VCR that I was able to see it. The novel, by the way, is excellent, and I had read it years before seeing this fine movie.
Bogart, Lorre, Astor, Greenstreet, with the Falcon - IMDB
I had no idea that not only was this Sidney Greenstreet’s first film, he was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (thanks wikipedia). His performance as Kasper Gutman is outstanding. Greenstreet and Lorre would work with Bogart again in Casablanca, while Cook would work with Bogart a second time in The Big Sleep.
Elisha Cook is, as I mentioned, an outstanding character actor, playing a tough guy “gunny” in this film, but could not scare Spade, while Mary Astor is a love interest for Spade who draws Spade into a web of murder and deceit. One of the great classics of film.
Finally, I want to mention a film that I had never run across before, and is an interesting character study: Murder by contract (1958) directed by Irving Lerner. It’s the story of a man, Claude, who wants to buy a nice house, and decided the best way to earn the money to buy it is to become a hitman. The bilk of the story revolves around his planning the main hit driving the story, and the two mobsters hired to keep an eye on him and to make sure he competes the job. Cluade is played by Vince Edwards while the two mobsters are Marc (Phillip Pine) and George (Herschel Bernardi). The only member of the cast I recognized is Pine, who played Colonel Green in the Star Trek episode “Th Savage Curtain” (one of the less than good original Trek episodes). The music score sets a very suspenseful tone, adding another dimension to this film.
Murder by Contract trailer: youtube.com
It is a fine entry in Film Noir, and worth watching. It is, as I said earlier, a character study. Claude runs Marc and George around, Marc makes his disdain for Claude quite clear, while George likes him. Of course, Marc and George are supposed to take care of Claude. Pay him off on successful completion of the hit, or, if Claude fails, well, you get the idea. My Bonnie Bride and I watched this film earlier this week when it was on Film Noir night on a broadcast TV station, texting a friend of ours during, and about, the film. Our friend pegged Colonel Green before me. Yeah, most of our friends are long time Trek buffs.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I used Wikipedia and IMDB as a research source for some of the info in this article. If any of these movies are new to you, please consider checking them out. I think you’ll enjoy them.
