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- John le Carre, my 2020 and The Looking Glass War
- Parker on the screen #5: Payback Straight Up (2006)
- The long, dark legacy of William Hjorstberg’s supernatural neo noirs
- Projection Booth episode #495 :To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
- Wanda (1970): Barbara Loden’s film as a noir
- The strange history of Mickey Spillane and New Zealand’s “Jukebox Killer”
- Book review: Blacktop Wasteland
- Parker on the screen #4: Slayground (1983)
- Parker on the screen #3: The Outfit (1973)
- “Every headlight’s a police car, every shadow is a cop”: Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)
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Category Archives: Crime film
Parker on the screen #5: Payback Straight Up (2006)

The idea to review every screen iteration of Donald Westlake’s crime character, Parker, originated much earlier in the year, when Melbourne was in deep in winter and the middle of hard Covid lockdown. Melbourne is out of that lockdown now and summer is here, and I am much busier, hence the delay since my last entry.
Anyway, back to it with the next Parker film, Brian Helgeland’s neo noir, Payback Straight Up (2006). This is retelling of the very first Parker novel, The Hunter, published in 1962 and, of course, first filmed by John Boorman as the immortal Point Blank (1967), starring Lee Marvin (and which I wrote about on this site here on the 50th anniversary of the film).
Helgeland, who started out in the movie business as a scriptwriter, is not someone whose work I am particularly across. He did the script for the adaptation of Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential (1997), which I really liked. The same year he also performed wordsmith duty on the script for the simply abysmal post-apocalyptic Kevin Costner vehicle, The Postman. The 1999 film adaptation of The Hunter, titled Payback, was his first outing as a director (he also wrote the script) and by all accounts it was an exceptionally troubled shoot.… Read more
Posted in 60s American crime films, 90s American crime films, Crime fiction, Crime film, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, Heist films, Neo Noir
Tagged Bill Duke, Brian Helgeland, David Paymar, Deborah Kara Unger, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, Gregg Henry, Jack Conley, John Boorman, Maria Bello, Mel Gibson, Parker, Payback (1999), Payback Straight Up (2006), Point Blank (1967)
The long, dark legacy of William Hjorstberg’s supernatural neo noirs

One of the great things in the not so great year that was 2020 has been writing regularly for the excellent American site, CrimeReads. My latest for them is live and looks at the the supernatural neo noirs of the late writer, William Hjorstberg.
Hjorstberg’s 1978 book Falling Angel was the basis for Alan Parker’s 1987 supernatural thriller, Angel Heart. Posthumously published for the first time in paperback by Britain’s No Exit Press, the sequel, Angel’s Inferno continues the story of the down at heel private detective, Harry Angel, who takes a routine missing person case and becomes ensnared in an occult nightmare.
Only Angel is now Favorite, the amoral crooner who sold his soul to the devil for fame, then stole Angel’s identity in an attempt to evade payment. And he’s in Paris, determined to hunt down and exact revenge on Lucifer’s earthly manifestation, Louis Cypher.
I was particularly fascinated by the differences between Falling Angel and Parker’s film version, one of several things I write about in my piece which you can read in full here on the crime reads site.
Enjoy.
Projection Booth episode #495 :To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

I am thrilled to be co-hosting another episode of Mike White’s film podcast, The Projection Booth, this one on William Friedkin’s 1985 neo noir, To Live and Die in L.A. The film pits Treasury agent William Petersen as Richard Chance against Willem Dafoe as artist and forger Rick Masters, and is based on the novel of the same name by former US federal agent turned crime writer, Gerald Petievich. Along with my fellow co-host, Jedidiah Ayres, we were joined by the film’s editor, M. Scott Smith, and one of the its stars, Willem Dafoe.
We dive deep into this film, discussing the breathtaking work of To Love and Die in L.A.’s cinematography Robbie Muller and how the Friedkin demands complete suspension of disbelief from his audience in some many respects of the story and gets it.
We we also talk about the Wang Chung soundtrack, Los Angeles on the screen, how the film embodies the deregulated economic and political policies of the Reagan era, and how it relates to Friedkin’s broader ouvre and other America crime cinema, particularly the other film based on a Petievich book, Boiling Point (1993) and the Michael Cimino effort also released in 1985, Year of the Dragon.
The entire episode is online for your listening pleasure here.… Read more
Posted in 80s American crime films, 90s American crime films, Crime fiction, Crime film, Heist films, Neo Noir
Tagged Boiling Point (1993), Gerald Petievich, M. Scott Smith, Michael Cimino, Neo Noir, Robbie Muller, The Projection Booth podcast, To Live and Die in LA (1985), Wang Chung, Willem Dafoe, William Friedkin, Year of the Dragon (1985)
The strange history of Mickey Spillane and New Zealand’s “Jukebox Killer”

The third in a loose series of pieces I’ve done this year for the Lithub site, CrimeReads, on the global impact on postwar American crime fiction is live. This one explores at the connections between the postwar campaign against pulp fiction, the international controversy around US author Mickey Spillane, the uniquely Antipodean youth subculture known as bodgies & widgies, & one of New Zealand’s most sensational murder cases in the 1950s, the ‘Jukebox Killer’.You can read the piece in full at the CrimeReads site via this link.… Read more