Summer re-views, briefly

WOMEN HE'S UNDRESSED. Gilliam Armstrong's 2014 documentary on Hollywood costume designer Orry-Kelly, which we have mentioned here a few times before (Costumes label). The documentary, based on Orry's lush memoir which I enjoyed a lot, has taken its time appearing here, in fact in has not yet, but I got the Australian (Region 4) dvd, which plays perfectly on multichannel players. 

Its a fanciful conceit, with an actor playing Orry, who seems to be rowing a boat a lot of the time, but then we get all the clips: Orry's costumes for CASABLANCA, GYPSY and his three Oscar-winners: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, LES GIRLS (where Kay, Mitzi and Taina look divine in his creations), and of course Marilyn's still daring costumes for SOME LIKE IT HOT. Orry continued up to 1964, so we get Jane Fonda and Angela Lansbury talking about his costumes for their 1963 IN THE COOL OF THE DAY - one I have never seen and can't get now, so thanks for the clips. 

Bette Davis also reigns supreme here, with those costumes Orry did for JEZEBEL, MR SKEFFINGTON, NOW VOYAGER, THE LETTER etc. 

Other talking heads include the notorious Scotty Bowers, and it rehashes all the Cary Grant and Randy Scott gossip and pictures. In fact, Orry gets sidelined for a while while the documentary focuses on Cary, who "roomed" with Orry when they were both young and starting out. But then legendary tightwad Cary always needed someone to pay the rent, hence all those years sharing houses with Randolph .... between their many marriages.

JANE EYRE - the Franco Zeffirelli 1996 version. There have been a lot of Janes around, the 1944 one with Orson and Joan Fontaine is still the one to beat for me, with delicious roles for Agnes Moorehead and Henry Daniell - but this Zeffirelli one is a nicely paced (if rather hurried at the end) version, with Charlotte Gainsbourg a suitably very plain Jane indeed (unlike Janes Joan Fontaine or Susannah York)  but William Hurt (so ideal in films like BODY HEAT or KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN) all wrong here and hardly making any impression, 

It is all grimly Victorian and Franco as usual ramps up the supporting players: a very severe Geraldine Chaplin and Amanda Root (PERSUASION) at the Lowood Orphanage; Fiona Shaw as Aunt Reed, Billie Whitelaw as Grace Poole, Joan Plowright as Mrs Fairfax, Samuel West, and two sadder appearances: Richard Warwick (whom I knew slightly) silent here in his last role as the manservant, the year before he died (he also pops up in Zeffirelli's ROMEO AND JULIET and HAMLET); and poor Maria Schneider as the madwoman in the attic ..... a worthwhile but low-key JANE then.  

JOE MACBETH, 1955. This re-view goes way back to the Fifties, as I first saw this when I was a kid in Ireland, but it made a vivid impression - though I would not have the got Shakespeare part then. It is a modern gangster version of MACBETH, by Ken Hughes, almost impossible to see now, (so thanks Jerry.) Paul Douglas is impressive as usual, and one of our Projector favourites, Ruth Roman, is as ever terrific as Lady M. Its a British production, so supporting cast includes Bonar Colleano, Gregoire Aslan and Sid James. I was pleased to see it again, and to get it on a flash drive. Its more entertaining than that dreadful recent Michael Fassbender version which nearly drove me screaming from the practically empty multiplex ...

THE HONEYMOON KILLERS. For real horror you can hardly beat Leonard Kastle's 1969 chiller, which I first saw as a supporting feature back then. My pal Stan and I were both gobsmacked by it, I can't even remember what the main feature was. 
I had not seen it since then but it lingered in the memory. so its good to see it again now on dvd.  Seems this could have been Scorsese's first feature,but he was replaced. It is a bleak tale of a murderous rampage by two seedy killers: the obese nurse and her scuzzy boyfriend (Tony Lo Bianco) as they plot to fleece lonely widows whom he romances and lets them think he is going to marry them, while she, posing as his sister, tags along in the background. Once seen, it is not easily forgotten. The film is made by the marvellous Shirley Stoler (1929-1999) as the malevolent Martha - she also pops up in KLUTE and is terrifying again as that Nazi concentration camp commandant in SEVEN BEAUTIES in 1975 .... (whom prisoner Giancarlo Giannini has to romance in order to survive - we raved about it, at Italian label). Her 40+ credits also include THE DEER HUNTER.  
It is not violent by today's torture porn standards, but once seen it is not easily forgotten as we enter than downbeat world of cheap motels and diners. It is Kastle's only credit. 

Bette goes beyond the forest ...

Is BEYOND THE FOREST a camp stinker, a Trash Classic or an undervalued late Forties melodrama proving Bette Davis with one of her great roles, in her last film at Warner Bros? Its hard to decide....

Rosa Moline is bored with life in a small town. She loves Chicago industrialist Neil Latimer who has a hunting lodge nearby. Rosa squeezes her husband's patients to pay their bills so she can visit Chicago; her husband's patience is also tried: he tells her to go and never come back. Once there, Neil tells her he doesn't want her. Back home and pregnant, Neil shows up and now wants her. The caretaker at Neil's lodge threatens to reveal her pregnancy... 

Legend has it that Bette at 40 was all washed up in the late '40s, her Warner Bros contract was running out, her films were under-performing ... King Vidor's meller certainly finished her off in style.

Bette plays Rosa Moline, a small town strumpet ("a 12 o'clock girl in a 9 o'clock town") who wants more than her hick doctor hubby can provide. Sporting a Dracula-like black wig and pounds of lipstick, quivering with impatience at being stuck in a coal-mining town as the wife of a dull doctor, she's Madame Bovary in a major key, spitting out her lines with gusto (yes,"What a dump" as spoofed by Elizabeth Taylor, below) as everyone else cowers around her. Our other favourite Ruth Roman barely gets a look in ...

Bette's explosive performance is among the best of her career (and that's saying something!). Her character has to be among the most evil in 1940s movies. What is remarkable is that Bette compels us to care about and, even root for this greedy and self centered woman. 

As the opening title, in keeping with Forties morality, puts it:

This is the story of evil. Evil is headstrong - is puffed up. For our souls sake, it is salutory for us to view it in all it's ugly nakedness once in a while. Thus may we know how those who deliver themselves over to it end up like the scorpion, in a mad frenzy stinging themselves to eternal death. 

Bette seems to have a whale of a time sashaying around, snarling at everyone, including her saintly doctor husband Joseph Cotten. What though does the visiting millionaire see in her? Surely there are more attractive and younger cuties around? As my very-knowing friend melvelvit puts it: "How could a past-her-prime, dimestore siren like that keep Joseph Cotten and David Brian in such thrall? Why, sex of course. Rosa no doubt did things in bed they couldn't get enough of ... , its the most extreme portrayal of a malignant bitch of the forties."

Bette was in luck though, as ALL ABOUT EVE fell into her lap next year, giving her perhaps her most iconic role, and she continued throughout the Fifties in lesser roles (THE STAR, THE VIRGIN QUEEN, THE CATERED AFFAIR) ending the '50s doing two cameos in 1959: coming on as Catherine The Great for the last five minutes of the otherwise dull JOHN PAUL JONES, and a few scenes with Alec Guinness in THE SCAPEGOAT; (Joan was also cameo-ing that year, "as Amanda Farrow" in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, a Fox Trash Classic) - they both rose again in 1962 .... BEYOND THE FOREST though remains a Trash Classic.

Loretta's Beauty Shop .......... (for M.B.)

Loretta's Beauty Shop is open again today - it is of course located at Cabot Cove somewhere in New England - Maine, perhaps? - where that amazing sleuth and thriller writer Jessica Fletcher resides - when she is not globe-trotting around the world solving murders where-ever she goes .... Jessica of course is the tireless Angela Lansbury (still working in her late 80s - she was back on the London stage earlier this year) - while her MURDER SHE WROTE TV series are replayed endlessly - there is at least one a day on here. 

I never bothered with the series back when first shown - being younger and out a lot and it was not my sort of TV, but hey 30 or so years later, its amusing to check them out now and then, if only for the great guest stars - we have seen Jean Simmons, Janet Leigh, Carroll Baker, Rod Taylor, David Hemmings and lots more including Angela's old pals from her MGM days. Some episodes are set in a make-believe Ireland (where Angela lived for some years) and its fun seeing their recreations of Paris, Hong Kong, Cairo and others.

A particular favourite of mine, Ruth Roman, wound down her career here, doing three episodes set in Cabot Cove where she plays Loretta who runs the local beauty parlour (where everything is pink), its where Angela and her gossipy neighbours hang out: Julia Adams still looking terrific, a rather portly Kathryn Grayson, and Gloria De Haven, This particular episode I saw the other day "The Sins of Castle Cove" (Season 5, episode 17, 1989) concerns a PEYTON PLACE type novel written by a local girl, using all the local scandals, which becomes a best seller and, yes, inevitably leads to murder. But fear not, Jessica will soon unravel it, meanwhile relax with the girls at the parlour presided over by the good-natured, jovial Loretta, a vision in pink - go Ruth, a good final role for her.

Highsmith on a roll ....

Patricia Highsmith, one of my favourite writers ever since reading THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY as a teenager, and loving the Rene Clement film PLEIN SOLEIL in 1960 - now burnished like new on Blu-ray - seems to be on a roll at the moment, with three new films from her novels.

Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett is filming CAROL with Rooney Mara for FAR FROM HEAVEN director Todd Haynes (who also did that re-boot of MILDRED PIERCE recently), for release next year. This is a lesbian drama (following on from BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR?) based on an early Highsmith novel "The Price of Salt" and is set in the early '50s with Banchett as the affluent married woman who gets involved with a shop girl. It will at least look marvellous ... Below: Blanchett filming CAROL.

Just about to open here is the highly regarded THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY, from Hossein Amini, with Viggo Mortenson, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac and Daisy Bevan (Joely Richardson's daughter), this is from a novel I liked a lot. and THE BLUNDERER is another very Highsmith tale in production with Toby Jones. 

Highsmith (1921-1995) of course has been in vogue since Hitchcock and Raymond Chandler adopted her first novel STRANGERS ON A TRAIN in 1951, then Rene Clement and Anthony Mingella gave us their versions of THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY. There were also French films on THIS SWEET SICKNESS (by Claude Miller with Depardieu), and Liliana Cavani's RIPLEY'S GAME, not to mention Wim Wenders' 1977 classic THE AMERICAN FRIEND ... Below: a studio pose for Robert Walker, Ruth Roman and Farley Granger for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.

Above: Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz in Wenders' chilly THE AMERICAN FRIEND, and Delon and Maurice Ronet realising he is in danger in PLEIN SOLEIL. - more on those at labels.

If film-makers are looking for more Highsmith, I recommend her 1977 novel EDITH'S DIARY. Her final novel SMALL g: A SUMMER IDYLL could be an interesting film too with its open gay themes. Then there's all her short stories, and of course her own mysterious life, as per those biographies on her, as she went from America to England to France and deepest Europe, with her passion for cats and snails ...she was strikingly attractive in her youth (there are some nudes) and gave lots of interesting interviews, as well as that incredible backlist of novels and stories.

Dames & blithe spirits

A few assorted photos ..... 

Raves of course for Dame Angela back on stage agt 88, reprising her Madame Arcati in Coward's BLITHE SPIRIT, here is the Broadway production with Rupert Everett:

and we just have to include that priceless moment from David Lean's 1945 film when Rex Harrison first sees Elvira's ghost ....

More of Ruth Roman in Angela's MURDER SHE WROTE, finishing off her career here in a good way, as Loretta who runs Loretta's Beauty Shop - think pink! Ruthie enjoys herself here in '87 and '89 doing 3 episodes of Angela's series, set in Cabot Cove. The beauty shop regulars are fun too: Julie Adams looking better than ever, Kathryn Grayson and Gloria de Haven. 

Two more favourites: Geraldine Page and Dame Gladys Cooper who suprisingly have a duet in the 1967 Disney film THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE (its worth sitting through Fred McMurray, Tommy Steele and Greer Garson) for this number ! 

Soon: a real troupe of dames in some campy '60s fun with Curtis Harrington's grand guignol titles: Debbie Reynolds, Shelley Winters, Geraldine again with Ruth Gordon - as we find out WHATS THE MATTER WITH HELEN? WHO SLEW AUNT ROO? and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?, plus Romy Schneider's grand guignol THE INFERNAL TRIO in 1973!

Roman revels

Two more Ruth Roman movies from that busy year for her, 1951 - when she also played the female lead in Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, probably her best remembered film. Ruth, as I have mentioned here before - see label - was a tough gal, who did lots of melodramas and routine actioners (ok, B-movies) in the '50s and into the '60s, having began in the '40s - she is in Bette's BEYOND THE FOREST, and thanks to my IMDb pal Jerry for a mid-'40s serial she is in: JUNGLE QUEEN - I am saving that one for "some snowy night in front of the fire" and I am the lookout for her 1955 take on Shakespeare: JOE MACBETH (with her as the mobster's Lady Macbeth), which I remember seeing as a kid.  Ruth should have been as big a name as those other tough gals like Susan Hayward, or Barbara Stanwyck - Ruth could have played a lot of Stanwyck '50s roles like CLASH BY NIGHT or BLOWING WILD (she is the good girl in that, while Barbara is the bad wife, they have a nice scene together), or even some of Joan Crawford's roles, or Lizabeth Scott's or Jan Sterling's, and of course we love her in 1966's LOVE HAS MANY FACES where she gives Lana  Turner a run for her money in that delirious soap/trash classic. Ruth (1922-1999) ended up in shows like MURDER SHE WROTE and KNOTS LANDING. 

TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY teams bad boy Steve Cochran with cheap dime-a-dance girl Ruth - looking very glam in a brassy blond wig (like Jane Russell's 'hostess' in wartime Hawaii in Trash Classic THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER, Russell label). 

Here is the blurb:

What kind of future awaits a couple with a past? Ruth Roman and Steve Cochran in a film-noir gem.

A man who spent his formative years in prison for murder is released, and struggles to adjust to the outside world and escape his lurid past. He gets involved with a cheap dancehall girl, and when her protector is accidentally killed, they go on the lam together, getting jobs as farm labourers. 
But some fellow workers get wise to them. Steve Cochran conveys the loneliness of his character, freed for killing his brutal father when he was only 13, and now he's still a tentative, gawky pubescent operating inside a man's hulky frame. Lonesome, he visits a 10-cents-a-dance palace and falls for brassy, grasping Ruth Roman. But the sudden shooting of her police-bigwig boyfriend causes the ill-matched couple to hit the road, ending in a California migrant-worker camp. Directed by one Felix Feist.

This conjures up a world of diners, drab rooming houses, people on the move hitching lifts and riding on trains and cheap motels like the Shady Nook where our couple on the run hole up, before they join that settlement of farm workers and make friends and seem to have a whole new life, leaving their sordid pasts behind them. Ruth even lets her hair go natural to black. But Steve's photo turns up in a magazine and the neighbours have to decide whether to turn him in for the reward .... fate however intervenes, but the ending is uplifing as our newly free couple can start all over again. Though surely a good time girl like Ruth would hardly settle for living in a shack and working in the fields ?

Both Cochran and Roman are ideal, he is in his prime here, as magnetic as Brando's WILD ONE in his tee-shirt and jeans, at least Warners didn't insist he shave his chest, like William Holden had to for PICNIC! - he was also good with Anne Baxter (another dame who could be tough when called for) in CARNIVAL STORY in '54, and of course his best known film, as the lead in Antonioni's IL GRIDO in 1957 (review at Cochran/Antonioni labels), and we reviewed his last film MOZAMBIQUE a while back. (He died aged 48 in 1965 while sailing a yacht in the Pacific, a notorious Hollywood bad boy in the Erroll Flynn tradition...).

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE is a more routine meller, directed by the great King Vidor (the '56 WAR AND PEACE, RUBY GENTRY, DUEL IN THE SUN, SOLOMON AND SHEBA etc), with British actor Richard Todd, and sterling support from Mercedes McCambridge firing on all cylinders as usual (as in JOHNNY GUITAR!) and that seedy lothario Zachary Scott (in a similar role here to his in MILDRED PIERCE). This time Ruth is the touring actress recuperating in the desert small town and getting to know Todd who is on reprieve from murdering his wife and facing a re-trial. Mercedes is the possessive woman who was on the jury, so it has all the elements for a romantic murder mystery suspense. 
Is the heroine in danger? - though hard to imagine Ruth not being able to fend for herself. It all plays out nicely, but if only it was as over the top as that other meller set in the desert in lurid colours: 1947's DESERT FURY which had Lizabeth Scott and Mary Astor as well as the young Burt Lancaster and that odd couple of John Hodiak and Wendall Corey, as per my review (Astor label).  

I have now seen a 1987 episode of MURDER SHE WROTE (from Series 4) where Ruth guests as Loretta, the owner of the Beauty Salon (think pink!) in Cabot Cove, where the local ladies - including ageless Julie Adams, Kathryn Grant and Gloria De Haven - get their hair done and gossip.
 Ruth is a joy and obviously in her element presiding over the Salon and dispensing gossip to Jessica .... she did 3 episodes of Lansbury's successful series, I shall now have to see her other two guest spots as well, as Ruth wound up her career here in a good way, in a deliciously entertaining tale. 

B-movie heaven (2)

Another selection of pulpy crime thrillers, routine actioners, and some odd Euro-thrillers, not quite Trash but satisfyingly enjoyable, with those French thriller genre tough guys Henri Vidal and Robert Hossein, as well as Sterling Hayden and Steve Cochran and that tough dame Ruth Roman. Enjoy ...

Ruth Roman

THREE SECRETS, 1950. A nifty melodrama, one of Robert Wise’s early films. A five-year-old boy is the sole survivor of a devastating plane crash in the mountains of California. When the newspapers reveal the boy was adopted and that the crash occurred on his birthday, three women begin to ponder if it's the son each gave up for adoption. 
As the three await news of his rescue at a mountain cabin, they recall incidents from five years earlier and why they were forced to give up their son. The women are top-billed Eleanor Parker, rather pallid here; Patricia Neal as incisive as ever, and Ruth Roman who makes the most impression. It is nicely worked out and keeps one involved. The men pale by comparison: Frank Lovejoy, Arthur Franz, Leif Erickson, Ted de Corsia.

FIVE STEPS TO DANGER, 1957. While driving from California to New Mexico, Ann Nicholson picks up John Emmett at a truck stop. She is looking for someone else to share the driving with her so that she can get to her ultimate destination, Santa Fe, quicker. He agrees to accompany her, he being on a month long vacation and heading to a fishing lodge by bus in that general direction anyway. He soon begins to wonder if it was a good decision. They are first stopped by a nurse claiming that Ann is under medical psychological care, and then by the police who are looking for her for questioning on a serious incident back in Los Angeles. Because of these encounters, she tells him her story: that she is indeed recovering from a stress related condition, but that that stress was brought about by her need to get some politically sensitive military information to Santa Fe. 
Wavering between believing and not believing her story, John decides to trust her and go along with her as far as the story plays itself out, all the while the two being chased by various people. 
This plays marvellously with non-stop action ... it may even have inspired the look of PSYCHO ? - I was reminded of the scenes with Janet Leigh in the car and evading the policeman, while watching similar scenes here as we travel the highways and those cheap motels. Ruth Roman and Sterling Hayden are just right, and the plot teases until the end, as directed by Henry S. Kesler. 

TANGANYIKA, 1954. Movies with exotic names were a staple of 50s cinema, as programmers and actioners were set in places like TANGANYIKA, MARACAIBO, MOZAMBIQUE, EAST (or WEST) OF SUDAN - mostly filmed on the backlot, with second unit photography from Africa fitted in, as in Fox's WHITE WITCH DOCTOR (Susan Hayward label). Janet Leigh in her memoirs said they really went to Africa for SAFARI, a 1956 actioner with Victor Mature I remember seeing as a kid. It was hardly worth the journey. Here we have Ruth Roman again, with Van Heflin and Howard Duff, and lots of local colour with all those dancing and fighting natives in this obscure jungle adventure, directed by veteran Andre De Toth, he of the one eye. Roman comes across as a butcher Susan Hayward, Fox's regular action lady.

In 1903 Kenya, tough colonist John Gale is leading a safari to bring in escaped murderer Abel McCracken, who is stirring up the Nukumbi tribe and endangering Gale's holdings. En route, he picks up four survivors of Nukumbi raids: hunter Dan Harder, former teacher Peggy, and two kids. But Dan has hidden motives for coming along; and the Nukumbi are lying in wait.

One I must try to get hold of is JOE MACBETH, a '50s mobster version of Shakespeare with Paul Douglas and Ruth as a rather good Lady Macbeth, which I remember from seeing as a kid ... Ruth was later a staple on tv shows and is always - like Anne Baxter, Jane Russell, Dorothy Malone, Virginia Mayo, Martha Hyer, Vera Miles and other '50s gals - good value. Perhaps she is best remembered now in Hitch's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, 1951. We like her in the 1966 LOVE HAS MANY FACES which she practically steals from Lana Turner and those Acapulco beachboy gigolos. (Roman label).

MOZAMBIQUE, 1965. This routine, cheesy in a fun way, meller turned out to be the last film of tough guy Steve Cochran, who died that year. He looks fine here and does a lot of stunts in this Harry Alan Towers German production. An out-of-work and penniless American pilot is offered work in Mozambique and promptly becomes an unwitting pawn in a world of drug smuggling, kidnap and murder. Hildegarde Knef is rather good as Ilona Valdez, international woman of mystery (below) and chanteuse in a nightlcub, where she sings German songs to the African natives. Paul Hubschmid and vivacious Vivi Bach are also involved in the derring-do, its rather like a straight version of those Jean Dujardin OSS 117 send-ups. The definition of an amusing timewaster. Cochran was good too with Anne Baxter in CARNIVAL STORY in '54 and was immortalised by Antonioni as the lead in his IL GRIDO in 1957. (review at Antonioni label).

UNE MANCHE ET LA BELLE (WHAT PRICE MURDER?), 1957. A delicious treat from French thriller veteran Henri Verneuil (see French label for reviews of MELODIE EN SOUS SOL, etc). Humble (or is he?) bank clerk Henri Vidal charms wealthy widow Isa Miranda but keeps her at arms length until she practically begs him to marry her .... her secretary is young Mylene Demongeot, whom Vidal is attracted to, but Mylene has her own plans. So who ends up killing who? and will Isa suspect what is going on ? This is brilliantly worked out, with a great twist one does not see coming, from a James Hadley Chase potboiler, and it all looks great in gleaming black and white. Isa has a great role, Mylene is as delicious as ever, and Vidal - this charming man - looks great. 
We like Vidal - from ATTILA in '54, and Clement's LES MAUDITS, as well as those films with Brigitte Bardot and Romy Schneider (Vidal label). What a contrast with Robert Hossein, that other tough French guy. Vidal died aged 40 in 1959 just as Delon and Belmondo were hitting their stride - (so also did Gerard Philipe, also dying in 1959). Hossein on the other hand, is stll here in his 80s and still working unitl recently after a long career. Delon and Belmondo and Trintignant may have been the main French idols, but Maurice Ronet, Jean Sorel and Robert Hossein had long careers too, in mainly action movies - like Franco Nero, Raf Vallone, Renato Salvatori, Vittoria Gassman in Italy. Isa Miranda,below.

TOI ... LE VENIN, (NIGHT IS NOT FOR SLEEP), 1958. This is a deliciously crazy movie, with a great premise. Robert Hossein is out walking late at night when a car pulls up and a blonde calls him over. She wants him to get in, he does and soon they are locked in an embrace, after she removes her top .... but she throws him out and tries to run him over. He manages to get the car number and traces it to a villa where two wealthy sisters live. One is crippled in a wheelchair, and is nursed by her sister. These are played by real-life sisters Marina Vlady (Hossein's wife at the time) and Odile Versois. Our laidback hero is soon caught in the middle between the two sisters, as he romances Odile and promises to stay and run their record store. 

The other sister in the wheelchair is also becoming dangerously obsessed with Robert, but he begins to suspect she is not disabled at all, but cannot prove it. How is all this going to end? Very satisfyingly is all I can say. We liked some other Hossein thrillers (as per my previous B-movie post on French thrillers), like LE MONT CHARGE, and THE WICKED GO TO HELL, which featured Vidal and Vlady. This one is just as good if not better. IMDb describes it as a "Panting psychological thriller", ably directed by Hossein.

DEATH OF A KILLER, (LA MORT  D'UN TUEUR) 1964. Not much fun here but this is the real deal - a tough, spare, tense thriller with Hossein (forever in his pork pie hat) released from prison and teaming up with his old gang, to find out who shopped him to the police just as they were carrying out a robbery. He suspects one gang member, Luciano who was in love with Hossein's attractive sister Marie-France Pisier, whom Hossein himself is also obsessed about. Mother back at home is weary Lila Kedrova, as Hossein and his pals begin to track down Luciano all over the city (it looks like Marseilles). 
Local gangland gets involved and there is a detour to a nightclub with some exotic black dancers (as in LA NOTTE and other chic nightclub scenes of the time) where Hossein gets off with a blonde (also Pisier). Then the shoot-out and all is revealed at the end. Its a film of great images and creates a great mood of fatalism, again also directed by Hossein. 

Soon: Hossein with Sophia Loren in MADAME, that rarity from 1961 ... and another look at Dassin's classic RIFIFI with Hossein and a great cast; and another steaming helping of Trash classics.