Mystery

“Rowdy … I always … loved you.”

The blonde said, “Reckon she’s gone now.”

White Hat said, “But you’re here.”

Long, searching look. Longer kiss.

Fade to black.

Leona Suss said, “And the Oscar goes to …”

I said, “It does have a certain charm.”

“It’s swill, I told you that the first time. Now get the hell out.”

I clicked the mouse.

Another title page.

Passion on the Pecos.

Same dark-haired girl, different weapon.

Long-barreled revolver. Her turn to quick-draw.

Bam.

A man dropped from a tree.

Bam.

A man dropped from the roof of a saloon.

Bam.

A man darted from behind a wheelbarrow, managed to fire. Ricochet whistle.

The girl shot him off his feet.

Click.

Saloon interior. A white-bearded geezer put down his whiskey glass. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that, Miss Polly?”

Across the saloon table, the brunette spun the barrel of her gun, blew at the tip of the weapon. Licked her lips. “Aw, Chappie, it was nothing.”

“Sure looked like somethin’ to me. Who learned ya?”

Soft, feminine giggle. “A girl does what a girl needs to do.”

Shift to swinging saloon doors. White-Stetsoned man with oversized badge on his tailored vest.

The girl sneered, “You!”

“Now, just put that down and go peacefully—”

Bam.

Fade to black.

Leona Suss said, “I’ll give you an autograph and we’ll call it a day.”

Click.

“Enough!” she shouted.

I froze the frame.

The cat trotted in.

“Manfred,” she said, “this fool is boring me, go scratch his eyes out.”

Manfred sat there.

I said, “Guess he took the no-cruelty pledge at the pound.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“How about ‘Shut up, punk’? One of your best lines, in my opinion. In fact, here it is.”

Click.

“You’re boring me!”

“This one’s different,” I said.

And it was.

o moving images. Text.

I recited.

www.iluvnoirflix.com

Death Is My Shadow (1963)

Starring Olna Fremont as Mona Gerome

Stuart Bretton as Hal Casey

Plus an assortment of eminently forgettable

mugs, molls, mopes and miscreants

This is one of those obscure treasures, hard to find but well worth the effort even if it means having to use a VCR (try the reissue lists of sites like blackdeath.net, mollheaven.com, entrywound.net).

In addition to being a budget-noir masterpiece released at least a decade too late, Death Is My Shadow is the swan song for Olna Fremont, ebony-tressed bad-girl queen of the oaters. And a glimpse at how Little Miss Evil’s career could’ve developed had she been born twenty years later. It’s also the only non- western Olna ever filmed and we think that’s a shame.

I mean think about it, can’t you just see Olna’s pheromone-dripping sensuality, Cruella de Vil persona and uncanny ability to—let’s be delicate—make ahem love to objects of destruction, placed in the capable hands of a Tarantino or a Scorsese?

We’re talking hot.

As in legs. As in lead.

The plot of this one doesn’t bear retelling in depth but suffice it to say that Olna’s at the top of her psychopathic game, shifting allegiances like the sexy chameleon she is and engaging in enough firearms foreplay to get an entire NRA chapter off. The climax—and we use the term near-literally—is an explosion of hot … bullets— that leaves the audience spent.

Unfortunately, Olna ends up permanently spent, herself. As usual. Because in the self-righteous morality game that Hollywood has always pretended to play, bad girls aren’t allowed to win.

But Olna doesn’t bite it before she blasts the inevitably wooden and incomprehensively cast Stu Bretton off his broganed feet. Not to mention a whole bunch of other slimy, bug-eyed denizens of the underworld straight out of the Grade D playbook.

Olna’s moist, gotta-do-you lips, nose-cone breasts and outrageously masturbatory gun antics (we especially appreciate the scene where she kisses her derringer) are worth the price of admission. Heck, just seeing Bretton’s dead face when it’s actually supposed to be lifeless justifies the eighty-six bloody, oft-moronic minutes you’ll spend with this unintended but no less entertaining masterpiece of grit, sleaze, and cardboard characterization.

Utterly lacking in redeeming artistic value.

Five Roscoes.

I said, “Everyone’s a critic.”

Leona Suss pointed her cell phone at me and mouthed Bang.

She glided closer, seemed to be studying the top of my head. Settled smoothly and silently on the sofa, inches from me. Flaring her nostrils, she tamped her hair and secreted Chanel. Close to seventy years old, beautiful, ageless.

“You’re a cutie,” she purred, mussing my hair. As she released her hand, she snuck in a quick, painful tug. “I still don’t get it, are you police or really some kind of doctor?”

“Bona fide psychologist,” I said. I recited my license number.

“Cop psychologist?”

“I work with them from time to time but I’m not on their payroll.”