6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Two detectives are investigating a robbery in which $300,000 was taken. Their investigation leads them to the main player and they find the cash, but one of them has meanwhile fallen hard for a woman with expensive tastes, and though he desperately wants to keep her, he knows that a cop's salary isn't going to be enough for her.
Starring: Ida Lupino, Steve Cochran (I), Howard Duff, Dean Jagger (I), Dorothy MaloneFilm-Noir | 100% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Somebody somewhere is going to get the bright idea to make a biographical film about Ida Lupino. Though she’s little remembered today (sadly), Lupino, while never really an A-list actress in the truest sense of the term, managed to keep working steadily for decades in a number of relatively high profile roles. But what really sets her apart from her Golden Era comrades is that Lupino was one of the first women (in the American film industry, at least) to branch out into several executive roles, including directing, producing and writing. Lupino’s directorial efforts are a really fascinating and surprisingly twisted oeuvre in and of themselves, miles apart from the often kind of bland, B-movie roles she was given as an actress. Her writing is similarly skewed toward the darker tones of human nature, and that’s certainly the case with 1954’s Private Hell 36, a film Lupino co-wrote with her ex-husband Collier Young (who also produced) and starred in with her then current husband Howard Duff. In its own small scale way, Private Hell 36 presages all sorts of later noir-esque films, notably L.A. Confidential, with cops on the take and sultry femmes fatales luring otherwise semi-decent men to their doom. Tautly directed by Don Siegel, who would go on to reinvent the hard bitten cop genre with at least a couple of Clint Eastwood films (notably Dirty Harry), Private Hell 36 manages to rise above its lo-fi ethos to deliver some startlingly effective drama, as well as some fairly nuanced depictions of various people facing moral dilemmas from which there is no easy escape.
Private Hell 36 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The elements here do occasionally show signs of age, with sporadic specks and flecks dotting the landscape. Contrast is occasionally problematic as well, with some scenes (notably the racetrack segments) looking slightly washed out in comparison to the rest of the film. The image is largely crisp and well detailed, though, offering very good fine object detail in close-ups, though generally speaking it's not an ultra-sharp looking film. There are a couple of weird artifacts present, however. At around 21:33, as Duff walks in front of a nightclub curtain, a weird haloing effect is present for just a moment that almost looks like waves of electricity emanating out of his head. I'm assuming this may be some strange form of aliasing or the result of edge enhancement. Later there is a very brief moment of white dot-like scratches that occurs in a scene with Malone. Otherwise, though, this is a decent, if not exemplary, looking high definition presentation.
Private Hell 36's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix gets the job done surprisingly aggressively at times, with excellent fidelity and some appealing dynamic range. Some of the foley effects are a little on the hyperbolic side (the screeching tires and ultimate crashing noise in the car chase sequence are notable examples). Dialogue is very cleanly and clearly presented, and while the track is obviously narrow and rather shallow, there's not much here to complain about. The track has withstood the vagaries of time rather well, all things considered.
Private Hell 36 contains no supplements of any kind.
If Private Hell 36 would have cut to the chase (no pun intended) a bit sooner, it would have been a much tauter, more exhilarating, experience. The characters are all quite well written and are ably portrayed by a game cast, but the film simply takes too much time getting to Bruner's thievery and Farnham's crisis of conscience. Once we do arrive at that point, things bog down again in needless domestic drama with Farnham's anxious wife and the seemingly doddering attempts of the police chief (Dean Jagger) to get to the bottom of the missing loot. But buried within this undeniably flawed gem are some great moments which help to alleviate the tedium. Lupino is a really interesting presence here, less the seductive femme fatale than a wary refugee from failed affairs, and Cochran is really excellent in a physically adept and emotionally nuanced portrayal. Cochran got pigeonholed into a bunch of villainous roles early in his career and was never really able to shake the perception of him as a "bad guy", something not helped by his extracurricular reputation as a major Hollywood Lothario, but here he's able to color the villainy with a certain vulnerability and even likability. Private Hell 36 isn't a great film, but it's a surprisingly entertaining one a lot of the time.
1954
1956
1954
1957
Warner Archive Collection
1951
1947
1942
1957
1955
Special Edition
1946
1951
1950
Limited Edition to 3000
1954
Limited Edition of 2000
1963
1947
1956
1952
1952
Hot Spot
1941
1946