A Sentence of Death!

 

Today I thought I'd share a tight little noirror tale I came across this morning, while reading a copy of the August 1939 issue of Strange Stories pulp mag. I use the word noirror to describe stories that have both noir and horror elements to them. 

A Sentence Of Death is a short little shocker with a nasty comeuppance for a hired knife-man. 

Macumba Noir

 

Acrylic on black paper

Minnesota Noirror

Minnesota: Land Of 10,000 Lakes, if you believe the official license plate tagline. Actually there are more than 10,000; I don't have an actual hard total, that isn't really the point I'm going for. When you sate your need for fantastic fiction on the kinds of material Otto Penzler compiles into his wondrously weighty tomes, you find a lot of crime fiction taking place on the misty streets of San Francisco or the cloistered concrete jungle of New York, a lot of horror and supernatural shenaniganery going on in the old attics and alleys of New England or the swamps of the Deep South, but you very rarely get any kind of action here in the Midwest. 

Particularly Minnesota.

Not a popular setting for pulp adventure or b-movie madness. If it weren't for Fredric Brown or Ray Bradbury, we wouldn't have any representation whatsoever. Of course there's always Chicago, popping up as the backdrop for a crime story or a horror tale, and I'm sure some human encyclopedia on film noir and pulp magazine minutiae could take me to task and point out some obscure so-and-so who appeared for a forgotten string of stories somewhere that was North Star State-based. Usually you get some vague, fictional small college town with a mad professor on staff at the local university  that you can kind of relate to yours in its generalities. I understand the point of great escapist material is to transport us to foreign settings that pricey plane tickets likely will not, but every once in a while it's nice to see your environment depicted as the "scene of the crime" as it were.

I honestly can't say whether the 1951 Red Scare drama The Whip Hand takes place in Minnesota or not. A cursory search online gives both Wisconsin and Minnesota as the setting, though I guess initially it was supposed to take place in New England, and feature Nazis instead of communists. The only geographical reference we have in the film itself to the location of the fictional small town of Winnoga, is about an hour in, when our intrepid New York reporter protagonist gets word out to his publisher that the place is actually running as a front for Nazi scientist Wilhelm Bucholtz and his bacteriological experiments, and the publisher in question walks over to a large wall-sized map of the United States, pokes a finger into a non-specific spot in the Upper Midwest and says "Winnoga...Winnoga...ah here it is. That puts Bucholtz and Corbin within a couple of hours drive of our Duluth office." 

Carla Balenda as Janet Keller, hostage of Bucholtz
in The Whip Hand.

The story is a fine little suspense yarn that could have easily been an episode of the Boris Karloff-hosted NBC series Thriller. Matt Corbin, a magazine reporter, is on a fishing trip in the scenic but empty town of Winnoga. A storm breaks out, reporter slips and gashes his head on a rock in the stream while wading to safety, and tries to get medical attention. The first sign of civilization he comes across is a gated driveway to a hidden estate, and is turned away by the surly gatekeeper. He then heads to the town proper to see the local doctor and finds Raymond Burr (talking in a register two steps above Perry Mason and with a talcum-grayed wig on) holding court as a hotel operator and ringleader to a bunch of unfriendly, tight-lipped locals who don't care much for nosey interlopers. Of course the young man finds out what is really going on–that the empty town is a facade run by commies servicing a Nazi scientist working on deadly bacterial agents that will wipe out the population of the United States–and tries to get word to the outside world with the help of the attractive and naive sister of the town sawbones. 

The film was based on a treatment by Roy Hamilton, who, while not having a lengthy career in Hollywood, did write a few episodes of The Adventures Of Superman and an episode of Dick Tracy, as well as contributing to the screenplay for the 1953 schlock classic Cat-Women of the Moon.  

Carla Balenda c.1955

Our protagonist was radio drama superstar and impressionist Elliott Reid (who was apparently asked to do his Kennedy for J.F.K, an impression that garnered the President's stamp of approval), who appeared in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a slew of television shows, and co-starred with Fred MacMurray in some mid-60s Disney films (Son of Flubber and The Absent-Minded Professor). Of course we're all familiar with Godzilla-hunting, Hamilton Burger-thwarting Raymond Burr. Incidentally, if you've not seen his bonkers Bride Of The Gorilla of the same year, I highly recommend you do, because it's amazing. At least if you have tastes similar to my own. And the connection between Bride Of The Gorilla and The Whip Hand go beyond a mere set of production dates! The Whip Hand featured uncredited screenwriting work by Curt Siodmak, the writer of films like The Wolf Man (1941), The Invisible Man Returns (1940), Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) and...you guessed it!...Bride Of The Gorilla, which he also directed!  Our leading lady, Carla Balenda (born with the burlesque dancer-ready name Sally Bliss), doesn't have a lot of credits to her name, aside from being probably best known for her short stints as Mickey Rooney's girlfriend in the short-lived The Mickey Rooney Show (1954-55), and as little Timmy's teacher Miss Hazlit on Lassie (1958-1963).

William Cameron Menzies

The film has two director credits: William Cameron Menzies, the man who created the term "production designer" and director who directed Invaders From Mars and won the Academy Award for his production design on Gone With The Wind; and Stuart Gilmore, a noted editor who worked on films like Hatari!, The Alamo and The Andromeda Strain. Presumably Gilmore did the re-shoots that replaced the Nazis with surly Communist yokels. 

The film is available on Warner Bros. Archive Collection series, meaning you can order it and they'll burn an on-demand, professionally produced DVD-R copy of the film for you. The Archive Collection is actually pretty ingenious; it allows film buffs to get their hands on older, more obscure films that wouldn't necessarily be lucratively marketable in mass production. The films I've ordered from the collection (The Great Gildersleeve movie set, the Hollywood Legends of Horror collection) have all arrived in slick professional cases with full-color labels and production and remastering that rival any of the more mainstream releases. 

Otto Waldis as Bucholtz behind bulletproof glass, scoffing at the Feds
before being struck down by his own human guinea pigs.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: U is for UNDERWORLD GROTESQUE

U is for UNDERWORLD GROTESQUE

He didn’t use no stoolies, this guy. Word on the street is he’s paid double—sometimes triple what the other trail guys get. He’s got a natural gift for picking up a scent, see. His nickname’s The Schnoz. He turned a defect into a goldmine, he did. His real name? No matter. No one’s used it for so long, kind of like a ghost that might haunt his mailbox on occasion, that’s all. Ain’t no one who used it to his face lived long enough to pass it on anyhow.

Most guys got a head they work for. Not The Schnoz; he’s strictly freelance. And he always gets his guy. So, buddy, if you says this guy is on your dust, I’d find a nice plane to jump outta, somewhere between here and Hong Kong, and maybe, you don’t die in the fall, you could be safe for a few years.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: N is for NIGHT WATCHER

N is for NIGHT WATCHER

He’d been there every night for several weeks now. Some nights she didn’t even go to the window, but she knew if she did, the shape would be there under the streetlight. After she’d been grabbed outside her apartment a few nights back, by that—that thing, she’d made a point to always have Jason, the building’s night door man, wait for her outside the front door, where she could be within his eyesight after stepping off the bus at the corner. If anyone, or thing as it may be, tried to gamble a grab, Jason could be there to intervene.

Every night. Under the streetlight. Staring up at her window from the corner across the street. She’d called the cops, given a report. Of course they thought she was bonkers. At least she thought they thought that. The sergeant who filled out the report came to the conclusion it was some nut in a monster mask, trying to get a fright out of her for a gag, working up the goony voice.

Millie wasn’t so sure.

That face…the face that had been burned into memory and the darkness that waited for when she closed her eyelids…there was something familiar about it. The eyes. She couldn’t place it, but she felt that it might not have been a mask, and maybe, perhaps, even not an attempted attack but a cry for help.

If Jeremy were here, he’d know what to do.

Where was he?

She edged to the window slowly, trying to stay out of the glow from the streetlights and shop signs below. She didn’t want the monster to know if she was home, and if he saw her, who knows? Would it—or he?—come up and try to get in?

And the memory of that hand on her shoulder—those clawed fingers! She had a hunch that maybe Jason wouldn’t be much of an obstacle to contend with. Not for someone like that.

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: L is for LURID NIGHTCLUB

L is for LURID NIGHTCLUB

The strip was active all right, it was a veritable midway alley of hard liquor and games of chance. Every garish neon sign, animated and not, beaming its licentious potential to every broken heart, frayed morality or simply life-weary individual who dared to take a gander.

The Widow’s Den, The Voodoo Room, The Ticklish Tiki, The Puce Platypus; each housed their own brand of debauchery and a devoted clientele of hoodlums, chumps and holster hounds waiting for the next job offer or cheap thrill

Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: K is for KISS OF DEATH

K is for KISS OF DEATH

“You sure you got your facts straight?” Peabody asked. “I mean, how could one woman kill twelve men in seven years and not see the inside of a slammer?” He shook his head dumbfounded. “It just doesn’t reckon. I mean, she’d be a regular Bluebe—say, what would you even call her?”

“I’d call her deranged and dangerous,” Detective Smothers cut in. She was becoming irritated with the newspaperman’s insipid blathering. “And don’t go thinking because she isn’t some mug with a face like Boris Karloff with a dirty picture tattooed on his arm, that she can’t be the killer, neither.”

She’d followed the leads, and they all led to the same cul-de-sac: Marjorie Fritzell. One-time nurse, one-time burlesque dancer, twelve-time killer. All wealthy men; tough guys, too. All of them oblivious to the fact that a member of the so-called fairer sex might be the death of them. It was laughably ironic, she mused. Here she was­–a dame private eye in a business that she was repeatedly told, oh-so-condescendingly, was a man’s business. You needed strength, you needed speed, you needed a five o’clock shadow and a baggy trench coat. You had to be ready to rumble and make good with the tough talk, and of course a woman who stood five-five on her tippy-toes couldn’t ever hoe a proverbial row in that field. She’d heard it all a million times. Not always in words, but the smug smirks on the faces of the cops and perps and clients she dealt with, when they realized that who they were dealing with was a P.I., and a she at that. And here she was hunting down a black widow that had been able to rack up kills, had been allowed to succeed in continuing her craft, because she wasn’t a man. Because the very same reasons she couldn’t be a detective according to the world of men, were the reasons Marjorie Fritzell, the dazzling blonde socialite with a tabloid figure and a face for magazines, couldn’t be a serial killer.

“I’ve done my legwork, Peabody. You don’t like my conclusions, get out of my office and let me do my job. There’s a new ice cream parlor opening up on Division. It’s late in the day, but if you hurry you might be able to get a scoop.”

Peabody sneered at the joke, grabbed his hat and pad and headed towards the door. “If you’re so sure this Fritzell gal is responsible for all of this, why ain’t the police on her like white on rice?”

“I’m sure some of them would like to be. Truth is she’s a looker. And she’s got a pocketbook of aliases and phony papers about as thick as a phone book. She’s been good at covering her tracks: changing her hairstyle, laying low, moving around a lot. But that amount of moving leaves dirt on your shoes, and at least one or two footprints lying around somewhere to have traced back to you. I followed her trail from California to New York, to Arizona, to Minnesota and now Wisconsin. Sometimes I could confirm it with pictures in the local papers—engagement announcements, etcetera. Someone with money and brass gets a girl like Marj, he’s going to flash her around like winning lottery ticket. Other times, in the smaller towns, places where she skipped when someone got too close to pinning her for who she really was, I had to flash a photo, but the identification was always dead certain.

“So whattaya figure? Is this new dope she’s with, that banker who was in the paper you asked for, is he going to be unlucky thirteen?”

“I don’t know,” Peabody said. “But I have to believe it. I’m sure she’s waiting for old moneybags somewhere right now, watching for his car out the window and applying some poisoned lipstick or something.”

Selections from Lady In The Death House (1944)

A fun little noir-lite b-thriller, from Producers Releasing Corporation, starring Lionel Atwill as a psychologist-cum-criminologist who races against time to prove that his recent acquaintance, Mary Logan (Jean Parker), is innocent of the murder she's headed to the electric chair for. To add insult to injury, Mary's fiancee happens to be the state executioner who will have to throw the switch!

Here are a some favorite visuals from the picture, which is available to watch and download (due to its being in the public domain) at archive.org.