The Black Dahlia - 2006

[admin tim]

You've seen the ads, and you're no doubt familiar with the details of this famous 1947 case. But what about the film? Well, from a blog that I frequent.....

To describe The Black Dahlia as one of the worst movies ever made is an insult to many of the worst movies ever made. And it has what may be the single most ridiculous climax I've ever seen. It's almost worth seeing so you can stare open-mouthed at the screen in abject disbelief...

Gee, what a surprise - another disappointment in the genre. I'll be curious to see what aficionados like Chris George think, but from here it looks like the critics are giving it 'short' shrift.

[Chris G.]

You've seen the ads, and you're no doubt familiar with the details of this famous 1947 case. But what about the film? Well, from a blog that I frequent.....

To describe The Black Dahlia as one of the worst movies ever made is an insult to many of the worst movies ever made. And it has what may be the single most ridiculous climax I've ever seen. It's almost worth seeing so you can stare open-mouthed at the screen in abject disbelief...

Gee, what a surprise - another disappointment in the genre. I'll be curious to see what aficionados like Chris George think, but from here it looks like the critics are giving it 'short' shrift.

Hi Tim

I think I will steer clear of it since I agree with you the reviews make it sound as if it stinks. Stan Reid over on the Casebook Boards had recommended instead as a as a Dahlia-related flick the 1981 movie "True Confessions" with Robert De Niro as a conflicted Catholic priest, Monsignor Des Spellacy, working for the diocese with a shady contractor and Robert Duvall as the priest's brother, Tommy Spellacy.

I was glad I saw that movie. I thought the scene in True Confessions" with the finding of the victim's body was nicely handled although the movie was mostly about a feud between cop Tommy and contractor Jack Amsterdam, played by Charles Durning (another excellent actor), who was a suspect in the murder because he had an affair with the victim. But the denouement of the murder fingered someone else entirely and not satisfactorily I thought for anyone interested in the crime.

I have also read disappointingly poor reviews for "Hollywoodland" about the supposed murder of the TV actor who played Superman and "The Kingfisher" with Sean Penn as a Huey Long-like character, based on Robert Penn Warren's novel made earlier in what appears to have been the better film, "All the King's Men" with Broderick Crawford in the main role -- an actor with the right amount of heft for a rabble-rousing populist and better suited than the slight and less than commanding Sean Penn.

Chris

[Dave O]

If I'm remembering right, I heard Steve Hodel say on the radio earlier this week that he had sold the motion picture rights to his book although I don't know if a film is actually going to be made.

Dave

[Howard Brown]

C.G.

Thats what I thought as well about how they handled the scene with Duvall in the abandoned shack. It left enough to the imagination for the viewer to get the point. It was a very good movie and one that gets better each time you see it in my opinion.

[Stan Reid]

70 years ago a week from Sunday-R.I.P.