Gifford on Detour:
"Detour, despite the cruddy, economic ending, is Ulmer's
lasting achievement. Tom Neal is perfectly cast as the
dumbshit dupe who thinks he knows what he's doing. Ann Savage
gives a tour de force performance as the tubercular madwoman
manipulating Neal to Total Loss. They're right up there with
John Dall and Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy in the Looney Tunes
department. . . . The moral copout at the finish will make
you want to toss you beer can at the screen, but this seamy
insanity is worth sixty-three of the sixty-four
minutes."
Hardly sounds like a slam.
Interestingly, Gifford is pretty harsh on his future
collaborator David Lynch, calling Blue Velvet "phlegm noir."
I happen to really like Blue Velvet, and I am not much of a
fan of much of his later output, often with Gifford. I think
Lynch ruined Wild At Heart, which was a pretty great book.
And almost two years later, I still haven't decided what I
think of Lost Highway. I still really like Gifford's novels
though, amazing dialog and great pacing -- I keep thinking,
Well, maybe one more of these bite-size chapters, until I'm
done with the book.
Mark
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