Hog Wild
Born to Kill (1947)
directed by Robert Wise
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on TCM at Syl's
Walter Slezak, who as far as I know I had not seen in anything before Born to Kill, shot himself in 1983. I learned this the day after we watched the movie, at a bookstore while looking through Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon II. In that same book, Anger includes the original crime scene photographs of the Black Dahlia, who, it just so happened, I was reading about in a true-crime narrative at Syl's. It's sordid and it's fascinating, and Born to Kill roots its nose in the same sty. No one would make a movie this rotten in 2010 with a 37-year old lead as the sexpot predator because few directors could have enough fun with it and still let it be what it is: an entertainment. Slezak steals the show, I think (or ambles away with it), as a less vengeful predecessor to the soft shoe gumshoe that helped Elliott Gould mumble my heart away.
directed by Robert Wise
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on TCM at Syl's
Walter Slezak, who as far as I know I had not seen in anything before Born to Kill, shot himself in 1983. I learned this the day after we watched the movie, at a bookstore while looking through Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon II. In that same book, Anger includes the original crime scene photographs of the Black Dahlia, who, it just so happened, I was reading about in a true-crime narrative at Syl's. It's sordid and it's fascinating, and Born to Kill roots its nose in the same sty. No one would make a movie this rotten in 2010 with a 37-year old lead as the sexpot predator because few directors could have enough fun with it and still let it be what it is: an entertainment. Slezak steals the show, I think (or ambles away with it), as a less vengeful predecessor to the soft shoe gumshoe that helped Elliott Gould mumble my heart away.
posted by NPK at 8:06 AM
<< Home