**The Art of Classic Crime and Mystery Movies**, Edited by Ed Hulse (published by Schiffer Publishing)
Classic films, great posters, great memories
Written by Christopher Osterberg
This is not a charming world of joyous families, loving couples, beautiful landscapes, and stunning sunsets. Instead, it presents a darker reality, an underworld filled with gangsters, heists, firearms, corpses, and women of questionable repute. Here, “fences” are not the white picket fences surrounding tidy suburban homes; they are the individuals who buy stolen goods.
At The Budapest Times, we have a passion for cinema history – from the silent film era to talkies, pre-code Hollywood with an edge, comedies (but less of the annoying screwball comedies), westerns with cowboys and Native Americans, wartime films both on the battlefield and behind enemy lines, sentimental love stories (why not?), gripping thrillers, lower-budget Poverty Row B-movies, and beyond. We indulge in a wealth of viewing, though we’re less enthusiastic about horror, science fiction, or fantasy.
But there’s nothing quite like a riveting crime or mystery film, especially genuine film noir, featuring rival gangsters firing at each other from moving cars, unscrupulous backroom doctors patching up the wounded criminals, and perfect schemes where everything should go smoothly and provide a lifetime of security (yet things inevitably go awry – even if the crooks manage to escape with the loot, they often end up double-crossing one another).
Alternatively, consider a captivating police procedural where tenacious detectives pursue wrongdoers clue by clue. (One telltale sign: dim-witted criminals frequently wear dark shirts and fedoras and often hang out in pool halls, speaking out of the corners of their mouths.)
Then there’s the artwork that accompanies these escapades, which can be an entirely different world. It tends to be bold, eye-catching, sexy, violent, colorful, and filled with titles and phrases that demand attention – think of “Dangerous Blondes,” “Blondes at Work,” or “Manhunt of the Century.” Notice the women on the posters for “Murder, My Sweet” and “My Gun is Quick.”
There’s also “Vicki,” starring Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters, depicted with a tagline that claims, “She had everything a man could ever want and lived the way no woman ever should!” And titles like “The Case of the Lucky Legs” and “The Circus Queen Murder” prove that a healthy dose of sex is a good selling point.
This collection of 800 striking cinema posters is truly remarkable; not only does it include films we’ve watched and enjoyed multiple times, but it also introduces us to countless others that we can now seek out on YouTube, the Internet Archive, or various file-sharing sites. The Pirate Bay is still around.
The book is divided into 12 sections, one of which is dedicated solely to “Sherlock Holmes on the Silver Screen.” Here lies arguably the greatest fictional detective of all time, created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes and his partner, Dr. Watson, are personal favorites of ours, especially the 14 films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, all of which are represented with their posters here.
Also featured is an image of Clive Brook with a magnifying glass from the first Holmes film, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes,” released in 1929. Holmes has been portrayed by William Gillette, John Barrymore, Reginald Owen, Arthur Wontner, Peter Cushing, and Robert Stephens, among others. There are also offshoots, such as “Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” starring Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman and the meeting of Holmes and Sigmund Freud in “The Seven Per-Cent Solution,” both of which can be found in this collection. Peter Cook even parodies “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
We are particularly delighted to find a poster for “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,” directed by the great Billy Wilder. This film features a brilliantly choreographed scene where Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Watson (Colin Blakely) visit a theater after being summoned by the leading lady, who wishes for Holmes to father her child before she retires. Holmes cleverly leads her to believe that he and Watson are a couple, while Watson is enjoying himself behind the scenes with the ballerinas until word of his “nature” reaches them, leading to a humorous shift in company. It’s brilliantly executed and one of the funniest scenes we’ve ever encountered.
Interestingly, there are a few films featuring Arsène Lupin, a fictional gentleman thief and master of disguise created in 1905 by French author Maurice Leblanc, who serves as Holmes’ criminal counterpart and often finds himself at odds with “Herlock Sholmès.” John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, and Melvyn Douglas starred in these films, alongside similar productions featuring “Raffles,” with portrayals by House Peters, Ronald Colman, or David Niven as the dashing thief.
Many notable film series are represented here, such as the esteemed “Thin Man” series featuring sleuthing spouses William Powell and Myrna Loy, along with “The Saint” and “The Falcon,” starring the acting brothers George Sanders and Tom Conway. Fictional detectives like Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, Boston Blackie, Philo Vance, Ellery Queen, Nick Carter, Nero Wolfe, Dick Tracy, Inspector Maigret, Bulldog Drummond, The Whistler, The Shadow, The Lone Wolf, and 007 also make appearances.
Prominent genre writers like Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Rex Stout, Leslie Charteris, and Dashiell Hammett contribute to the frenzied plots – think “Murder in Greenwich Village,” “Murder By the Clock,” “Murder Over New York,” “The Kennel Murder Case,” “The Penguin Pool Murder,” “Murder, My Sweet” (featuring a captivating lady), “Murder Cruise,” and more.
The collection includes even more captivating titles, complete with illustrations – “Rendezvous at Midnight,” “Who Killed Gail Preston?,” “Racket Busters,” “Kiss the Blood Off My Hands,” “A Kiss Before Dying,” “Killer’s Kiss,” “The Lady in the Morgue,” “Blackmail,” and “My Gun Is Quick” (with another lady in her underwear).
Don’t forget the women detectives Nancy Drew and Brenda Starr, representing the female perspective in detective work. Hungary’s own Béla Lugosi appears in “The Human Monster,” alongside his horror counterpart, Boris Karloff. Con artists, forgers, and informants abound. Take caution, or you might find yourself in concrete shoes at the river! Crime is rampant – “Kansas City Confidential,” “The Phenix City Story,” “The Underworld Story,” “New Orleans After Dark,” “King of Chinatown,” and “Hong Kong Nights.”
Another film we enjoy is “King of the Underworld,” a lesser-known Humphrey Bogart film from 1939 but one of his most entertaining, especially the dramatic ending where this “Napoleon of Crime” and his crew are momentarily blinded by eye drops, resulting in chaotic bullet-spraying as the police close in on their hideout.
“The Big Heat” leaves a lasting impression, particularly with Lee Marvin hurling scalding coffee in Gloria Grahame’s face. Likewise, Mae Clark memorably got a grapefruit to the face from James Cagney in “The Public Enemy.” “The Killer That Stalked New York” revolves around the pursuit of someone unknowingly carrying a deadly contagious disease, while “D.O.A.” features a poisoned Edmond O’Brien racing against time to uncover his murderer before succumbing.
One bittersweet thought remains: so many exquisite posters from the silent film era exist, yet how many of those films are now lost, with only the artwork left? It invites reflection: how many audience members were lured into watching subpar, low-budget films at local theaters like Odeon, Rialto, Roxy, or Regal by particularly enticing posters? These 800 vivid examples remind us that, while these films aimed to expose the crimes of the underworld, audiences enjoyed the vicarious thrills of unscrupulous characters and their unscrupulous companions, provided the police and private detectives didn’t catch them first.