Detour

Detour
by Edgar G. Ulmer

Detour

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DVD details

Actor: Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan, Tom Neal
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 67 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-10-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Alpha Video

DVD Reviews of Detour

DVD Review: A movie with lots of potential that gets sidetracked.
Summary: 3 Stars

Detour is a great old noir film that heads off in the right direction before getting sidetracked. But, despite the lost meandering, there are still a few scenes in the film worth seeing, and an overall theme that I found haunting and thought-provoking.

The film is pure noir. Like my favorite film from the genre, Double Indemnity (review), it starts at the end, with a bedraggled protagonist who is about to flash back on how everything went horribly wrong. It is the conceit that allows the classic noir voice-over to guide ensuing events. As a fan of this genre, I never tire of the routine. It isn't imitation so much as homage. This is what makes the genre, and I would be ticked if certain expected elements weren't present.

The story of Detour is pretty simple. Two lovers who both work the small-circuit music biz are separated when the woman decides to try her hand out in Hollywood. Some time passes and the man, Al Roberts (Tom Neal), decides to journey west to join her. Low on funds, he resolves to hitching clear across the country. But of course, from the title of the film, we know that his trip is going to take a route more scenic than he would like.

The problems begin when Roberts gets into the convertible of a wealthy dude heading for California. While Roberts is taking a turn at the wheel as the owner of the car gets some sleep, it begins to rain. Stopping to put the top up, Roberts is unable to wake the owner. When he opens the door, the man spills out and bangs his head on a rock. This doesn't seem to help in rousing the poor fellow. Roberts can find no sign of life and realizes that this will look like a robbery, no matter what he tells authorities. So he decides he should at least use the car to get to Hollywood. But he'll need money for gas, and he will be guilty whether he robs the man or not, so he takes his wallet. But the cops would never believe that a man dressed like himself would own such a car, and they are similar builds, so he switches outfits as well.

The process of gradually rationalizing one's way from a small mistake to the worst sort of crime is entirely believable. The actions of an innocent man who knows he will be found guilty anyway are perfectly recreated. This was the spooky theme of the film, and nothing scurries me to the edge of my seat quicker than the plight of an innocent man accused. The film was starting off perfectly for me as things were going bad for Roberts. And things are about to get worse.

After a close call with motorcycle cop right there at the scene, Roberts feels like he is in the clear and will soon be with his honey in Hollywood, able to forget this unfortunate turn of luck. But when he sees a female hitchhiker he is unable to resist giving her a lift out of empathy. The problem is that she has already been given a ride by the man that owns this very car, and she knows that Roberts isn't him!

The rest of the film is basically a hostage situation, with the female hitchhiker, Vera (Ann Savage) threatening to turn Roberts in unless he gives her the dead man's money and whatever they can get for selling the car. Their back and forth banter has some excellent moments, with the pace and lethality of machine-gun fire which is typical of the genre. But I feel like the movie missed a better story by taking the second detour. The stolen identity tale would have been more entertaining, and there were hints in the second half that it was at least considered. But perhaps due to budget concerns, the second act takes place almost entirely in a hotel room, and does not live up to the expectations created earlier. The only saving grace is the great death scene at the end, which is just the sort of tragic and unforeseen conclusion I expect of good noir.

Overall the film played out like a realistic road trip. It started with thrills, anticipation, and excitement and then it became hard to stay awake as we got to the second half of the drive. At the end there was enough of a spectacle to make the journey worthwhile, but only barely. This is a brief adventure that you recommend to people you know are into this sort of thing while knowing that everyone else will be satisfied with a postcard. If you like noir, please check the film out. If you don't, I hope you enjoyed the review and I suggest you give Double Indemnity a go. Maybe you will become a fan and journey back to this one for more.

DVD Review: Is it "Alpha" or "Image" ?????
Summary: 1 Stars

I really want to get this movie, but am a bit confused as to which version I will get.
I have the IMAGE copy bookmarked, but when I got to review details it shows the cover of the Alpha copy !!

ALPHA is notorious for putting out the worst pieces of Chit on DVD.
How is the Image version ?????

DVD Review: infinite sum of disgraces finish in big success
Summary: 5 Stars

____Well, in life, values and purposes are all at last relative and debatable. In this film, the protagonist, Al Roberts, apparently at first should be classified as a jinx man. He's truly a winner, this is, a master and a top artist in the art of losing, as I think for attain so constant bad luck, one has to be predestined, born so, and more, to train and cultivate.
Effectively, Roberts is a truly pessimistic man and from the beginning he has that dash. Later we understand why. He's full of reasons for this. Not only this movie shows the big problem of the man who takes him while doing auto stop and dies during the travel by natural but suspicious motives, but there are the small details: if Roberts drives a convertible car and the hood is down, it begins to rain furiously while the owner dies and the hood, of course, is blocked; if also he's very tired, he has to drive hundreds of kilometres with bad night vision, if he was in a lonely highway in a compromising situation, a policeman has to appear just then, if there's too much heat at the hotel, the windows are closed, if Robert wants to open these windows, someone impedes him to do, all that, impossible to remedy.
Prevision, reflection and taking of decisions isn't neither the strong point of Roberts, as I think he commits a basic error by no declaring the death of Hassel, the owner of the car, and taking his money and documentation, starting so a series of confusions and disgraces fortunately he seems to be accustomed to coping with. Moreover, the car documentation results insufficient and incomplete to sell the car, as Hassel the dead owner, also seems not to have been an example of virtue during his life. To close all this, he finds a woman which truly is a specie of insufferable feminine devil.
And at the end, another succession of improbable accidental facts (but for Robert, we have to believe by then that abnormal and accidental things are normal). The case is all these happenings avoids him to be arrested and stay perhaps more sure and perhaps even happy in jail, but this is not, and he continues free to follow with his terrible fate and life, as he's still young enough to suffer many other misadventures.
But in the same way accumulation of all these errors make Roberts to remain free, in this movie, facts and adventures are done and disguised with so great talent and mastery, that this movie, full of artifice, is a masterpiece, perhaps because we all have passed sometimes a luck so black as that of Al Roberts.

DVD Review: Grade B, but one of the most memorable of film noirs
Summary: 4 Stars

"What kind of dames thumb rides? Sunday school teachers?"

I guess this would be the most appropriate tagline for this black and white grade B noir from 1945. Al Roberts (Tom Neal) is the one asking the rhetorical question, although it could have been Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald) who has some nasty scratches on his hand to prove he can speak from experience. The lady in question is Vera (Ann Savage) who can turn on you like a cornered rat and strike at you like a rattlesnake, which is what she does to Roberts after he's picked her up hitchhiking. In a scene as startling as any I've seen in quite a while, Vera wakes from a nap and suddenly, without warning, but in retrospect with plenty of foreshadowing, viciously tears into Roberts who finds himself caught in a deadly vice of his own making.

Roberts plays it passively, a born loser who knows he's losing again. A pianist who once dreamed of Carnegie Hall, he just knuckles under to Vera who comes off as a dom...--well, I won't use the word, but she appears to be the kind of dame who likes black leather while welding certain items of inducement, shall we say. But Roberts can't get a yen for her since he's still in love his sweetheart, a night club singer named Sue Harvey (Claudia Drake). Too bad, if he had, he might have gotten the upper hand in his relationship with Vera because she certainly wants him. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, it is said, and 'tis true, I can tell you, but Vera had the fury from first glance.

Some of the dialogue is pretty lame, dime novel realistic you might say, the kind of talk that is written on the fly without imagination. E.g., "As I drove off, it was still raining and the drops streaked down the windshield like tears," which might not have been half bad except that the windshield wipers were flapping and there were no tracks of anybody's tears... Or, how about this: "Life's like a ball game. You gotta take a swing at whatever comes along before you find it's the ninth inning."

Strange to say though, sprinkled among the prosaic and the banal are such gems as the one at the top of this review and this: "So when this drunk handed me a ten spot after a request, I couldn't get very excited. What was it I asked myself? A piece of paper crawling with germs. Couldn't buy anything I wanted."

Sociologically speaking, this is a bit of a retrofit from the Depression era which featured gritty tales about guys down on their luck hitchhiking and looking for that one big shot at something, anything, love, money, half a break. And Roberts, even though a pianist of some talent, is like a James M. Cain protagonist, an ordinary Joe who gets involved with a dame (or two) and somehow makes the wrong moves and ends up in the deepest of deep quagmires. And like many another antihero, we can sympathize with him although we know and can see it's mostly his own damn fault. Fate has dealt him a bad hand that he should have tossed in, but he plays it out with the kind of fatalism that would befit a minor Greek tragedy.

DVD Review: Disappointed
Summary: 2 Stars

I thought I was getting a good price for a great film. However, the digital transfer was horrible - which is probably why I got a bargain price. I would not recommend this film copy, nor will I purchase anything else from this company. What I learned from this purchase is always read the low rated reviews. Also, shop to see if there is a remastered edition - which there is.

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