Noir and horror are, to me, a match made in heaven. And that’s because both genres are, inherently, a little silly.
Noir is stylised to the point of almost complete fantasy, that hardboiled dialogue and those outrageous, labyrinthine stories, and horror often delves into that space between the everyday and the supernatural – they make a lot of sense together, when you think about it. But the actually brilliant collaborations between these genres are few and far between – Night of the Hunter, Angel Heart, Shutter Island, and, uh…well, I’m already starting to run short. But if, like me, you love it when these genres come together, here are some must-see classics (both new and old) to fill out your watchlist!
Cat People
If there is a single movie I’d consider synonymous with horror noir, it’s 1942’s Cat People. This simmering psycho-sexual thriller blends that deliciously over-the-top noir dialogue with an absurd horror premise that, yes, focuses on a woman who turns into a murderous panther when she’s horny. It’s utterly silly in a way that straddles both genres perfectly, and Simone Simon captures a very specific tone in her leading performance that really works for me (though that’s not true for everyone – it’s certainly got plenty of detractors, and I totally get why) This might be director Jacques Tourneur’s finest hour (well, seventy-three minutes or so) behind the camera, and, even now, features some iconic moments that stand up against any horror classic (the pawprints into high heel marks? I mean, come on!).
The Empty Man
I truly will never stop banging on about David Prior’s The Empty Man, and I have my reasons. The Empty Man is a procedural, psychedelic horror that pretty much has a hand in every genre you can imagine, but noir is the one that Prior uses most liberally – using stark shadows to lend the movie an unsettling tone that looks like it could have been lifted straight from the pages of the comic book it’s adapted from. Noir here is a storytelling device to access the more out-there aspects of this story, the closest thing we get to grounding in this bizarre and utterly unique story – and it renders The Empty Man perhaps the best modern marriage of the two genres I’ve seen to date.
Seconds
This lesser-known 1966 horror-noir classic is a bit of an aberration in leading man Rock Hudson’s career – one of the most prominent figures of Golden Age Hollywood, his movies tend towards the more traditional, but this? Yeah, this is anything but. Following a banking executive dissatisfied with his humdrum life who’s offered a chance to start over, it’s a surreal, dreamlike, and profoundly disturbing Dionysian dance through identity, rebirth, and selfishness. In the hands of the brilliant James Wong Howe, one of the best cinematographers to do the damn thing, it’s got a strikingly modern feel, and Hudson puts in an intense and compelling performance as the new identity, in one of the most memorable and technically impressive turns of his career.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Soul Excursions)
No But Listen 