amazon says:
The past 20 years or so appear to have seen more books on
film noir than any other movie genre. When people speak or
write about film noir, they invariably invoke Laura, Double
Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings
Twice, The Third Man, and a handful of other iconic examples
of the popular genre. These are A movies, however, made with
substantial budgets by the major studios and featuring the
headline actors and actresses of the time. The B films, with
a few notable exceptions, have largely been ignored. Arthur
Lyons, who really knows his stuff, figured that the world
didn't need to read again about Dashiell Hammett and James M.
Cain, or Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott. Instead, he
devotes his intelligent pen to helping us rediscover the B
films, the second features that helped keep movie theaters
full in the 1940s and 1950s. Made for budgets that frequently
fell short of $100,000, with cheap sets and costumes, these
plot-driven movies had little in the way of special effects
and nothing in the way of super-star actors and actresses.
Republic was famous for its low-budget films and serials, as
was Monogram, but even the major studios had B units. Hugely
fascinating information impossible to find without devoting
an inordinate amount of your life to research, which is
clearly what Lyons must have done, fills every page of this
tome. In addition to an overview and chronological history of
B films noir, Death on the Cheap has a comprehensive
filmography with title, date, studio, running time, alternate
titles, credits, plot outline, and critique for each film.
There is also a chronology of every B noir film (Lyons
credits 1939's Blind Alley as the first and reckons 1959 as
the end of the genre). Although an unapologetic fan of B noir
films, Lyons has no problem warning potential viewers from
the really bad ones, and he doesn't exactly make his opinions
known in a subtle fashion. Take this example, used to
describe Hit and Run, a 1957 movie involving twins, produced,
directed, written by and starring Hugo Haas: "Yet another
smell-o by Haas.... Haas, of course, had to play the parts of
both twins, doubling the pain for the audience."
Lyons, a well-known writer of the superb series of
private-eye novels about Jacob Asch, demonstrates that his
writing skills remain equally high whether he's writing
fiction or nonfiction. Death on the Cheap is one of those
rare pleasures, like a box of expensive chocolates that you
can dip into any time and discover a genuine treat. --Otto
Penzler
the other martha
sakana@stlnet.com <mailto:
sakana@stlnet.com>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca [mailto:
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca]On
>
> I picked up a
> poster at the local book trade show for a book
called Death on the Cheap
> by Arthur Lyons. Subtitled The Lost B Movies of Film
Noir, with a
> foreword by Gerald Petrievich. I'm presuming this is
the Arthur Lyons
> who wrote the Jacob Asch mysteries and who we
discussed quite a bit at
> one point last year. It's out this month, but I
haven't seen it
> anywhere. Anyone seen or read it and care to weigh
in with an opinion?
>
> Martha>
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