Honestly, guys, I was contemplating posting something about Bill (as I call him) Conrad well before Seattle-based "film critic" and all around dribbling loon N.P. Thompson
pronounced that I bear "an uncanny resemblance" to the much-beloved (not by Thompson, mind you) television actor. ("Grizzled, bald, and portly," Thompson also notes. And apparently my taste in trousers lacks as well; I am cited as sporting "nondescript slacks." I'll have to remind myself, next time I'm in Seattle, to buy a pair of acid-washed jeans to have on when I throw a strong drink in Thompson's face. And yes, in case you're wondering, pretty much all the rarely-photographed Thompson does in his passage concerning your humble servant is criticize my appearance.) And the reason I was contemplating this was on account of a picture he directed in 1965 called
Brainstorm, one of the kind-of-fabulous obscurities that can be your through the good (and yet strangely evil) offices of the Warner Archive Collection, which I wrote about
here.
The picture is cited by some cinephiles as the last "real" film noir, and its storyline, which crosses The Killers (SIodmak's 1946 film, that is, scripted by Anthony Veiller with uncredited assists from Richard Brooks and John Huston, and featuring, as a tight lipped assassin...William Conrad!) with Fuller's Shock Corridor (minus the political commentary and complete off-the-wall-ness) certainly divvies up the noir bonafides. It crosses these elements with something that was considered pretty up-to-the-minute back in '65—the development of computer technology.
Jeffrey Hunter plays a software-developing brainiac who gets mixed up with the young, suicidal wife (Ann Francis, as lovely as ever) of his ruthless tycoon boss (Dana Andrews, very slimy). Pushed to the brink by various and sundry of said boss' vengeful machinations, he conceives the perfect murder, as it were. He intends to kill Andrews' character in broad daylight, in a room full of witnesses...and get off the hook by faking insanity.
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