Synopsis:

A guy comes in from out of town. He doesn't have a past - at least not one he wants to talk about. He gets a job in a used-car lot. It's one of those typical small towns from the movies of the 1940s and 1950s, the kind of backwater where the other guy on the job is a nerd, and the boss is a blowhard with a bum ticker - but the boss' wife is this great broad with blond hair and big eyelashes and when she gets up in the morning she puts on her negligee just when the other women in town are taking theirs off. Oh, and the bookkeeper at work is this innocent young girl who is intimidated, for mysterious reasons, by the vicious creep who lives in a shack outside of town." - Roger Ebert (1990)

Intentions:

To imagine that this movie was an actual Film Noir made in 1953, when the book was written. Make it black and white, with less nudity, and much faster-paced.

Change List:

- The film is in Black & White. - It's faster paced. This is no meandering homage to Film Noir, it's a sweltering pulp story where events spiral out of control. Trims in almost every scene. - Most nudity is cut. Sex is more suggested than shown. Still not appropriate for kids though. - Streamline opening credits to be more like Jeopardy (1953) with Barbara Stanwyck (including using the MGM logo from that movie). Title font is Brushot. - Replaced the 1981 song "The Stroke" in the stripclub with 1962 "Twist and Shout". It was too distractingly obvious that "The Stroke" did not fit the 1950s mood. - Madox no longer grabs and kisses Gloria in the car. There are plenty of other, less gross, examples that Madox is a "bad boy". - Madox no longer denigrates Dolly after they have sex. He no longer voices doubt or shows hesitation about his actions regarding Dolly, Harper, the bank robbery, or Sutton. - Originally Madox made the alarm clock in his hotel room and planted it in the empty building. To speed up the action, he now does everything there. To prevent a continuity error and to show a passage of time, I've intercut the drunk banker stumbling around on the street. Which required me to cut Dolly and Madox having sex in the elevated car. - No topless Harper sisters on the beach. I never liked that Gloria or her sister's possible bisexuality is the big taboo: surely the insinuation of incest with her sister would have been the bigger scandal. - Cut George telling his wife that Madox and Gloria are so great together. She's already decided to kill him, she doesn't need the extra "trigger". - Cut Dolly telling her husband that she cheated on him and is killing him with sex. - When Madox discovers the sandals at Sutton's house, he no longer finds an envelop. The sandals alone are all the evidence he needs to jump to a (wrong) conclusion. Also cut Harper telling Madox she paid Sutton because the setup for that comment is cut. - In the final scene, Madox resigns himself to his fate faster. I cut the half-hearted final fight between our "hero" who thought he could control his destiny, and the emotionally abusive psycho. - Add improved subtitles (the original had many errors).

Additional Notes:

I used Vegas Pro to turn the film into Black & White, comparing my trial-and-error with several 1950s movies to achieve a satisfactory lighting balance. I prefer the original stereo audio over the surround track. I only used the 5.1 track to clean up a few transitions, then down-mixed those and level-matched them with the stereo track.

Other Sources:

Kino Lorber bluray for the video. Shout Factory bluray for the 24-bit stereo track. Antilles soundtrack CD to clean up some music transitions. Isley Brothers "Twist and Shout" (1962). Film Noir "Jeopardy" (1953) for MGM's roaring lion from 1953.

Special Thanks:

Dwight Fry for feedback, The Scribbling Man and Wakeupkeo for inspiration.