Hollywood Story (1951) / New Orleans Uncensored (1955) - May 12, 2020

[MifuneFan]

Mill Creek will be releasing a Double-feature of William Castle Film Noir titles, Hollywood Story (1951), and New Orleans Uncensored (1955).

Synopsis:
William Castle Double Feature

While legendary Hollywood filmmaker, William Castle, is commonly referred to as “The King of Gimmicks,” his legacy extended into other film genres, including two crime dramas from the Film Noir era, Hollywood Story and New Orleans Uncensored. This thrilling double feature denotes the high-definition debut of both landmark films filled with danger, death and intrigue.

HOLLYWOOD STORY (1951) stars Richard Conte as a stage producer with dreams of being in the movie business who decides to shoot a documentary about the mysterious death of a silent film director – only to find himself in danger of suffering a similar fate. The film is loosely based on the real-life murder of film director William Desmond Taylor in 1922.

NEW ORLEANS UNCENSORED (1955) is a gritty crime thriller about a newly-discharged sailor who gets a job as a longshoreman in The Big Easy. He swiftly discovers mob corruption throughout the docks, and when a friend is killed by the gangsters, he convinces the police to let him go undercover and take matters into his own hands.

[Aclea]

Hollywood Story is surprisingly engaging:



Every once in a while a film comes along that you have no real expectations for which turns out to be an unexpected and unheralded delight without actually being particularly good, and 1951’s Hollywood Story is one of them. With director William Castle best remembered for the schlocky showmanship and gimmicks he used to sell his low budget horror films this thriller is overlooked even by his fans, but it punches above its weight and is an absolute joy for silent movie fans. Richard Conte’s eternally upbeat producer is so enamoured by the old silent film studio (Chaplin’s old studio lot) his childhood friend, agent Jim Backus, finds for his independent pictures that he becomes convinced there’s a great movie in the unsolved murder of a famous silent film director there decades earlier – and naturally opens a can of worms because the murderer is still out there…

Anyone who has read or heard of Sidney Kirkpatrick’s 1986 book A Cast of Killers, based on director King Vidor’s research into the case, will recognise that it’s a very thinly disguised version of one of the biggest scandals of the silent era, the unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor in 1922 (Kirkpatrick’s book shows Vidor assuming both the role Conte takes in the film and as a soon-to-be major player in the business at the time of the murder). Surprisingly – and this is a film full of surprises in its tone and approach even if not in its plotting – it adheres fairly closely to the facts even if it does credit its fictional murder victim with directing Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera rather than Rupert Julien (citing one of the few silent movies most people have heard of is a good a way as any to establish the character’s fame). Of course, being William Castle, there are some publicity-friendly gimmicks weaved into the picture: where the previous year’s Sunset Boulevard had cast Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Buster Keaton and Cecil B. De Mille, this offered more cost-effective cameos from silent movie stars like Francis X. Bushman, William Farnum, Betty Blythe and Helen Gibson (controversially paid just $55 a day, while Elmo Lincoln, the screen’s first Tarzan. got just $15 because he had no lines and was classified as an extra, though to be fair most had gone from major stars to uncredited bit players by the very early Thirties).

But more than cameos from silent movie stars or the way it makes an already old and fading Hollywood a character, unusually for a film of the period there’s a genuine love and respect for the silent era: no cheap jokes, no sped up old movies and a prompt and passionate rebuke to stubbornly opposed producer Fred Clark’s crude contempt for the entire silent era at a time when most people regarded silent movies as a prehistoric joke. Equally unexpected is Henry Hull’s performance as the washed-up alcoholic silent movie scribe Conte hires to write the script: so often a blustering gruff-voiced barnstormer who played to the gallery, here he gives a beautifully underplayed and soft-spoken turn that resists all the script’s opportunities to go over the top and which always feels convincingly natural. Then there’s the relationship between Conte and Richard Egan’s cop, which on their second meeting pretty much takes the form of playfully flirting over how much they know that they think the other doesn’t, or the way that Clark is taken seriously for once rather than used as comic relief, given a bit more depth and substance than many of his roles that allows him to show more dramatic range than usual. Castle the director even throws in a couple of striking bits of camerawork that belie his reputation as better at shilling his pictures than directing them.

Is it a great film? No, it never really adds up to much, but it is a surprisingly pleasing one with an enthusiastic affection that will endear it to silent movie buffs while being a solid enough thriller to be an okay time-filler for those who aren’t.

Curious that it's being double-billed with New Orleans Uncensored so soon after that turned up on volume two of the Film Noir Archive, which only came out last July.

[noirjunkie]

Weird. New Orleans Uncensored just came out as part of the Noir Archive Vol. 2 set, and I thought that Hollywood Story would be coming from Kino's new Universal deal. Maybe it still is.

Either way, I'm happy to get it on blu-ray.

[chriszilla]

More William Castle on Blu is always a good thing!

[StarDestroyer52]

Always a fan of blind buying noir and crime films and what is surely to be an affordable price I could end up preordering this.

[Aclea]

Region free and, surprisingly, each film gets its own disc. No extras.