Login / Register
Criminal Element
  • Read
    • Excerpts
    • Reviews
  • Author Spotlight
    • Essays
    • Interviews
  • On-Screen
    • Television
    • Film
    • Trailers
  • Weekly Features
    • This Week’s New Reads
    • GIFnotes
    • Pick Your Poison
    • Cooking the Books
    • True Crime Thursday
    • Perp Derp
  • Cozy Corner
  • Newsletter
  • Login / Register

Retro Noir

Noir’s Hard Luck Ladies: Joan Crawford

By Jake Hinkson

June 6, 2014

In some ways, Joan Crawford might seem an odd choice for a hard luck lady of noir. Unlike many of the actors I’ve profiled in this series—people like Peggie Castle or Barbara Payton—who somehow missed popular success altogether and died penniless and forgotten, Crawford was a major success. In fact, as the silent era gave…

Mad Men Season 6 Poster

Mad Men’s Season 6: What Happened and Why You Should be Watching

By Jake Hinkson

July 8, 2013

It’s become standard practice for us to talk about the novelistic nature of series television, but this shorthand is somewhat misleading. Certainly, now that shows like The Sopranos or The Wire can be viewed in their entirety we can appreciate the long character arcs, the deliberate progress of narratives over the course of a season,…

The Big Sleep (1946)

Noir in Film: 5 Great Films Adapted from Noir Classics

By Kristin Centorcelli

November 11, 2012

Raymond Chandler is considered one of the fathers of noir for good reason. His wonderful creation, Philip Marlowe, is one of the most popular detectives in crime fiction, and all of his books were adapted for films. In my opinion, the best of these is The Big Sleep (1946) adapted from the Chandler novel of…

Bad Blonde (1953)

Noir’s Hard Luck Ladies: Barbara Payton

By Jake Hinkson

November 9, 2012

Bad Blonde (1953) is the kind of movie that exists on two levels. On one level it is an entertaining film noir about an up-and-coming boxer who is lured into a scheme to commit murder by the duplicitous wife of a boxing promoter. I’ve seen this plot referred to as Body And Soul meets The…

Sunset by Christos Gage and Jorge Lucas

Fresh Meat: Sunset by Christos Gage and Jorge Lucas

By Lakis Fourouklas

July 29, 2012

Sunset by Christos Gage and Jorge Lucas is a noir graphic novel featuring Nick Bellamy, a 78-year-old army vet who’s out for revenge (available July 31, 2012). Sunset  comes with a warning: “If you are reading this on any kind of e-device, Sunset protagonist, Nick Bellamy would most likely punch you in the throat, just…

Barbara Stanwyck

Worst Wives: Noir’s Bad Marriages, Take Two

By Jake Hinkson

January 4, 2012

First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then, at least in the lurid world of film noir, comes the inevitable murder attempt (check out Husbands from Hell for a few examples). Classic noir usually held the institution of marriage at arm’s length. Cops and detectives—almost all of whom were men—rarely went home to see the wife…

Daniel Woodrell

Daniel Woodrell: Black Hearts in the Back Woods Meet Cynicism in Small Towns

By Crime HQ

October 23, 2011

Daniel Woodrell is arguably as famous for his invention of the term “country noir” to describe his own writing as for his novel (turned movie) Winter’s Bone. Of course, he is not satisfied with the term, saying, “To me, noir means a story that ends tragically, and not all my stories do. But being thought…

Desert Fury movie poster starring Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak and Burt Lancaster

Desert Fury: Noir Camp Taken To Extremes

By Jake Hinkson

October 11, 2011

I met a guy at a party one night who told me he didn’t like classic films. Without telling him anything about myself, I asked him why he didn’t care for the old stuff. “It’s campy,” he said. “It’s just so fake and over the top. The actors always act like they’re trying to broadcast…

James M. Cain’s classic The Postman Always Rings Twice

Lost James M. Cain Manuscript Found!

By Laura K. Curtis

September 25, 2011

Nine years ago, Charles Ardai, founder of Hard Case Crime, first heard about The Cocktail Waitress, the last novel written by noir great James M. Cain before he died in 1977. The book had never been published and no one seemed to know where the manuscript had ended up. Ardai knew the book would be…

Alfred Hitchcat from LOLCats

Catting Around In Crime Fiction

By Jake Hinkson

September 12, 2011

There are two kinds of mystery fans: those who like mysteries with cats, and those who do not. Being a hardboiled hard ass, I naturally fall into the second camp. I’d rather be mauled by a tiger that read about the feline adventures of Sam Spayed and his girlfriend Kitty O’Shaughnessy. And I don’t say…

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »
  • About
  • Advertise With Us
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Notice
  • Contact Us
Site Powered by Supadu