5.12.2007

Phantom Lady




Ella Raines and Elisha Cook, Jr. in Phantom Lady (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1944).

I wish I had this on DVD so I could do a screen capture of the scene just before the one pictured above, wherein Ella Raines uses her whole body to encourage Elisha Cook's manic drum solo to its, er, climax. As she tells him, she's "a real hep kitten." This little noir-lite nugget, based on a Cornell Woolrich story (written under the pseudonym William Irish), makes up in inspired moments for what it lacks in consistent intensity. Franchot Tone and Alan Curtis are both kind of duds as the villain and hero respectively, but in a weird way their dudness works.

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