Tipping My Fedora

Today we launch headlong into the erotic thriller genre with a very deep dive into the 1992 box office smash, Basic Instinct. Starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, this gaudy and controversial Neo Noir has many strong links to Hitchcock's Vertigo. To discuss this film and more, Sergio is joined by very special guest, Rebecca McCallum. N.B. The podcast, recorded in February 2025, includes huge spoilers - and gives away the ending to Basic Instinct and Vertigo too! Rebecca is a writer, speaker and creator/host of Talking Hitchcock, a podcast that explores the work and the world of her favourite director. The podcast covers deep dives on Hitchcock’s films as well as topic driven discussions on everything in the Hitchcockian universe. She curates, hosts and speaks at Hitchcock screenings and festivals up and down the UK and has written about the director’s films both online and in print for many publications including Fangoria, Grim Journal, Hemlock Books and MovieJawn. She has presented at Hitch Con, the largest international Hitchcock conference of its kind and co-hosted a Hitchcock programme on BBC Radio. Talking Hitchcock Podcast: Listen to Talking Hitchcock Podcast here: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/rebecca-mccallum/ Instagram/Bluesky: @talkinghitchpod Linktree https://linktr.ee/PendlePumpkin to Read/Listen to Rebecca's Work: Rebecca McCallum | Twitter @hitch_pod Find and Follow Rebecca Instagram: @pendlepumpkin

James Harrison of Film Noir UK joins Sergio to preview the 2025 Film Noir Fest, which is taking place from 31 October to 2 November at the Plaza Cinema in Weston-Super-Mare. This year's theme is heist movies and highlights include screenings of: Kubrick's KILLER'S KISS (1955) and THE KILLING (1956), Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), Siodmak's CRISS CROSS (1949), Dassin's RIFIFI (1955) and Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS (1992).   There is also a retrospective dedicated to crime films starring Ida Lupino, including HIGH SIERRA (1941), ROAD HOUSE (1948), ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951), BEWARE, MY LOVELY (1952) and WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956). In addition there will be a silent Heritage Noir double bill with a live score by Neil Brand and screenings of British thrillers courtesy of Talking Pictures TV / Renown. For full details about the festival and tickets, visit the homepage of Film Noir UK: https://ti.to/film-noir-uk/filmnoirfest2025  

Sergio is joined by blogger Aidan Brack, of Mysteries Ahoy, for an in-depth look at Akira Kurosawa's classic 1963 suspense thriller, High and Low. This seems like the perfect time to look back at the film with the release of Spike Lee's remake, Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington. Adapted from King's Ransom - the tenth volume in Ed McBain's series of police procedurals featuring the cops of the 87th Precinct - Sergio and Aidan look at the original book, its 1962 American TV adaptation and Kurosawa's extraordinary film version.  Aidan Brack is a public librarian with a love of mystery fiction. He started his blog, Mysteries Ahoy! in late 2017 as a way to connect with other fans of mysteries and to catalogue his experiences with the genre. Since then, he has shared his thoughts on over 600 books, 100 film and television productions, as well as the occasional radio drama. His father is crime novelist, Graham Brack. Aidan enjoys reading and writing about many different types of mystery fiction, including works in translation. He has a particular interest in inverted mysteries - stories in which the culprit's identity is known to the reader from near the start. You can find his writing at www.mysteriesahoy.com For more info on author Graham Brack, visit: https://grahambrackauthor.com/ To watch the 1962 TV version of King's Ransom, visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5sTB0_UyEc    

Following on from the first part last week, Sergio and Sheldon Hall reunite for a second bout of Film Noir scepticism. How well does Sergio stand up to Sheldon's stinging and relentless criticism? The genres being considered include Westerns, Horror, Science Fiction and the work of Alfred Hitchcock.  To listen to the first part of the podcast, visit: Apple buff.ly/wDl4xnB Spotify buff.ly/34bRrLu YouTube buff.ly/QyLHaCo The titles being considered, in chronological order, include: THE SEVENTH VICTIM (Robson, 1944) WHISPERING SMITH (Fenton, 1948) ROPE (Hitchcock, 1948) WINCHESTER 73 (Mann, 1950) INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (Siegel, 1956) VERTIGO (Hitchcock, 1958) Sheldon Hall is an Emeritus Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. A former film journalist and lecturer, he is the author of Zulu: With Some Guts Behind It (2005/2014) and Armchair Cinema: A History of Feature Films on British Television, 1929-1981 (2024), co-author of Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (2010), and co-editor of Widescreen Worldwide (2010) and Film Critics and British Film Culture: New Shots in the Dark (2025). In addition, he has contributed chapters and articles on British and American film history to numerous books and journals and interviews to many Blu-ray special editions of films including, most recently, Sirk in Germany (1934-35), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Black Tuesday (1954), H.M.S. Defiant (1962) and Juggernaut (1974)  

At the beginning of every podcast, Sergio asks his guests to give their definition of Film Noir, a notoriously difficult assignment. This week, in the first of a two-part episode, Dr Sheldon Hall, long-time friend to Sergio and the podcast, picks holes in the host's own attempts to define the term.  They consider two genres, screwball comedy and the gangster movie, and look to see how well they overlap with Film Noir, along with the 1931 version version of The Maltese Falcon, starring Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The films under discussions, in chronological order, include the following: UNDERWORLD (Von Sternberg, 1927) THE MALTESE FALCON (Del Ruth, 1931) TWO SECONDS (Le Roy, 1932) THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (Sturges, 1944) WONDER MAN (Humberstone, 1945)  Sheldon Hall is an Emeritus Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. A former film journalist and lecturer, he is the author of Zulu: With Some Guts Behind It (2005/2014) and Armchair Cinema: A History of Feature Films on British Television, 1929-1981 (2024), co-author of Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (2010), and co-editor of Widescreen Worldwide (2010) and Film Critics and British Film Culture: New Shots in the Dark (2025). In addition, he has contributed chapters and articles on British and American film history to numerous books and journals and interviews to many Blu-ray special editions of films including, most recently, Sirk in Germany (1934-35), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Black Tuesday (1954), H.M.S. Defiant (1962) and Juggernaut (1974). Next week, in part 2 of our conversation, we look at Western, Horror, Science Fiction, and Hitchcock varieties of Film Noir. 

The 1988 live action and animation hybrid, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, can certainly lay claim to being the most unusual Film Noir yet featured on Tipping My Fedora. A 1940s murder mystery set in a parallel universe in which humans and cartoons co-exist, it was a huge gamble for the studio and its director, Robert Zemeckis, hot off the success of the first Back to the Future movie. The gamble paid off however, both critically and at the box office, but how well does its technical wizardry stand up today? Joining me to discuss this highly unusual Neo-Noir is my very good friend Simon Brown, an independent scholar who specialises in early film history, horror, adaptation studies and film technology. He is the author of Cecil Hepworth and the Rise of The British Film Industry (Uni of Exeter Press, 2016) and Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television (uni of Texas Press, 2018). He is currently working on a book about director Robert Zemeckis.

The great film composer and songwriter David Shire turns 88 today. To celebrate, I am joined by film music historian John Leman Riley to look at some of Shire's classic 1970s Neo-Noir music scores, including: THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (Sargent, 1974) THE CONVERSATION (Coppola, 1974) FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (Richards, 1975) ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (Pakula, 1976) For more information about the life and work of David Shire, please visit his homepage at: http://davidshiremusic.com/ John Leman Riley’s career has embraced photography, librarianship, archiving, teaching and lecturing, academic writing and editing, as well as journalism, reviewing, exhibition catalogues, CD and DVD notes and the like. Often focusing on film and film music, classical music, and Eastern European culture, he has been published by Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh University Presses, Routledge, Greenwood, BFI, Rough Guides and others. Highlights include Dmitri Shostakovich: a Life in Film (Tauris), Discover Film Music (Naxos) for which he curated two accompanying CDs of excerpts, Sound at the Film Society, (“The Sound of the Silents in Britain”, OUP), Keeping the Icons on the Wall: Shostakovich’s Cinema and Concert Music (“Dmitrij Šostakovič tra Musica, Letteratura e Cinema”, Leo S Olschki), Soviet Cinema: Between Art and Propaganda (Cité de la Musique, Paris, and Caja Madrid), Stalin (and Lenin) at the Movies (“Contemplating Shostakovich: Life Music and Film”, Ashgate), and Live Cinema: Silent Film, Orchestral Accompaniment and the Special Event (“Archival Film Festivals”, Edinburgh UP). He regularly writes for and is Reviews Editor of the DSCH Journal (www.dschjournal.com) and was the English Language editor for Apparatus Journal (https://www.apparatusjournal.net/index.php/apparatus). In From the Woods to the Cosmos, on the Severin BluRay release of Viy, he discusses Russian and Soviet horror and sci-fi cinema. Commissioned by the South Bank Centre, he wrote, produced and directed Shostakovich: My Life in Film, telling the story of the composer’s film career with an orchestra playing the scores to film clips. Shostakovich was played by Simon Russell-Beale in London and, at the Komische Oper, Berlin, by Ulrich Matthes (Goebbels in Der Untergang). He writes at https://johnlemanriley.substack.com/

Film and music historian John Leman Riley is back and joins me for a discussion of some of the great Neo-Noir scores composed by Ennio Morricone, Michael Small and Jerry Goldsmith. In this episode we focus on four great films and their soundtracks: THE SICILIAN CLAN (Verneuil, 1969) - music by Ennio Morricone THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (Argento, 1970) - music by Ennio Morricone KLUTE (Pakula, 1971) - music by Michael Small CHINATOWN (Polanski, 1974) - music by Jerry Goldsmith   John’s career has embraced photography, librarianship, archiving, teaching and lecturing, academic writing and editing, as well as journalism, reviewing, exhibition catalogues, CD and DVD notes and the like. Often focusing on film and film music, classical music, and Eastern European culture, he has been published by Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh University Presses, Routledge, Greenwood, BFI, Rough Guides and others. Highlights include Dmitri Shostakovich: a Life in Film (Tauris), Discover Film Music (Naxos) for which he curated two accompanying CDs of excerpts, Sound at the Film Society, (“The Sound of the Silents in Britain”, OUP), Keeping the Icons on the Wall: Shostakovich’s Cinema and Concert Music (“Dmitrij Šostakovič tra Musica, Letteratura e Cinema”, Leo S Olschki), Soviet Cinema: Between Art and Propaganda (Cité de la Musique, Paris, and Caja Madrid), Stalin (and Lenin) at the Movies (“Contemplating Shostakovich: Life Music and Film”, Ashgate), and Live Cinema: Silent Film, Orchestral Accompaniment and the Special Event (“Archival Film Festivals”, Edinburgh UP). He regularly writes for and is Reviews Editor of the DSCH Journal (www.dschjournal.com) and was the English Language editor for Apparatus Journal (https://www.apparatusjournal.net/index.php/apparatus). In From the Woods to the Cosmos, on the Severin BluRay release of Viy, he discusses Russian and Soviet horror and sci-fi cinema. Commissioned by the South Bank Centre, he wrote, produced and directed Shostakovich: My Life in Film, telling the story of the composer’s film career with an orchestra playing the scores to film clips. Shostakovich was played by Simon Russell-Beale in London and, at the Komische Oper, Berlin, by Ulrich Matthes (Goebbels in Der Untergang). He writes at https://johnlemanriley.substack.com/  

Sergio is joined today by podcast buddy Brad Friedman to discuss two of Alfred Hitchcock's first engagements with American Film Noir: the Gothic romance Rebecca (1940) and the dark small-town psycho-thriller, Shadow of a Doubt (1943).    Brad blogs about Golden Age mystery books and movies at Ah Sweet Mystery: https://ahsweetmystery.com/ Spoiler alert: the plots for both these films, including their respective endings, are explored in great detail. 

Boxing features in more Hollywood movies than any other sport - and this was certainly true in the era of classic Film Noir. Where does this fascination come from - and how have Noir boxing movies rung the changes over the decades? Sergio is joined by Steve Hunt, host of the superb Boxing Movie Podcast and author of the new book, Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s: A Complete History. Together they look at five of Steve's favourite noir boxing films.  KID GALAHAD (Curtiz, 1937) THE SET-UP (Wise, 1949) CHAMPION (Robson, 1949) KILLER'S KISS (Kubrick, 1955) THE HARDER THEY FALL (Robson, 1956) To listen to Steve podcast, please visit: https://boxingmoviepodcast.alitu.com/ You can find his homepage at this link: https://www.stevehuntboxing.com/ Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-boxing-movie-podcast/id1742325024 Steve's book, Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s: A Complete History, is now available in paperback and on Kindle from Amazon in the UK (https://shorturl.at/h02Bc) and from McFarland (https://shorturl.at/8i5ll) in the US.

Will the real "Mr Arkadin" please stand up? For the podcast's first foray into audio noir, we tip our hat to Orson Welles - whose birthday it was this past week - and look at the strange case of his noir maudit, MR ARKADIN. Also released as CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, we will consider the many iterations of the film (following in the path of Jonathan Rosenbaum's seminal essay, The Seven Arkadins, first published in Film Comment magazine in 1992). Incredibly, the various versions - including radio dramas and novelisations as well as variant edits of the film, has now risen to a total of 10 separate Arkadins! We will also present the full audio drama from which the film was primarily derived, Man of Mystery, one of 8 (or 9) episodes that Welles was known to have written for his The Lives of Harry Lime radio series (first heard round the world from 1951 to 1952).  The entire Harry Lime series of 52 half hour episodes is available for download from the Internet Archive at this link: https://archive.org/details/TheLivesOfHarryLime To read Rosenbaum's original essay, please visit his homepage at this link: jonathanrosenbaum.net/  

David Fincher's seminal neo-noir thriller SEVEN is now thirty years old. A surprise commercial success and critical hit, this dark, powerful, densely-layered and genuinely scary and challenging thriller proved to be a hugely influential Neo-noir. And then, there was that box ... To celebrate, Sergio is joined by Dr Laura Mee, Principal Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Hertfordshire. She primarily researches horror cinema and adaptation and is the author of two books: Reanimated: The Contemporary American Horror Remake (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) and a book on THE SHINING in the Devil's Advocates series (Liverpool University Press, 2017). Dr Mee has written on films including AMERICAN PSYCHO, ROOM 237, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and The Conjuring series. She is the co-founder and co-convener of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies' Horror Studies group, a UK network of horror scholars who host regular online events on a wide range of horror topics - you can find more information at baftsshorror.weebly.com. With colleagues Shellie McMurdo and Kate Egan, she is the co-editor of the Hidden Horror Histories book series from Liverpool University Press. (https://liverpooluniversitypress.blog/2023/10/27/hidden-horror-histories-call-for-proposals/) Dr Laura Mee research profile: https://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/en/persons/laura-mee

Before such monstrous miscreants as  Ernst Stavro Blofeld, The Joker, Hannibal Lecter and Bellatrix Lestrange besmirched page and screen, perhaps the greatest supervillain of them all was Dr Mabuse. Hell-bent on world domination, his devilish plans were chronicled in books and movies throughout most of the 20th century. And now he's back in a brand new box set bringing together his six dastardly movie appearance from the 1960s, courtesy of Eureka video in their Masters of Cinema series. https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/mabuse-lives-limited-edition-box-set/     To celebrate I am joined by David Kalat, the world's foremost authority on the mad doctor and his schemes, in a special edition of the podcast spanning some 100 years of movie mayhem. David Kalat is a film historian and a forensic technologist. He has contributed audio commentaries to the home video editions of numerous classic movies, written extensively for Turner Classic Movies and other publications. In 1997, he founded the independent DVD label All Day Entertainment, to rescue and promote motion pictures whose artistic value, historic importance, and all-around entertainment value merit a second-chance in the commercial marketplace. David Kalat also partners with other media companies such as Eureka, Kino-Lorber, the Criterion Collection, Classic Media, and others to bring the same attention to important films from around the world. He is the author of numerous books on film history, including The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse. https://www.alldayentertainment.com/publications

Our offices will be closed during the Easter period so we can take a small holiday and recharge the little grey cells. But we won't be gone for long and we have lots of special episodes all lined up and ready to go.  To whet your appetite, here are previews from some forthcoming episodes including ones dedicated to boxing movies, Westerns and Noir scepticism, the various versions of BLADE RUNNER (and its sequel, BLADE RUNNER 2049), the radio origins of Orson Welles' MR ARKADIN ... and much more! Tipping My Fedora will be back on April 27th with an edition featuring Dr Laura Mee, who will be taking a deep dive into David Fincher's 1995 neo-noir classic, SEVEN. But until then ... take it easy and don't lose your heads down those dark streets of Noir City.  And as Patrick McGoohan used to say, be seeing you!

Sergio is joined by novelist, blogger and podcaster Jim Noy to enthuse about the work of writer Jim Thompson, the sui generis maestro of 50s and 60's Noir. We explore some of Thompson's major themes, his often psychopathic protagonists and his horrifying and frequently surreal endings - and look in detail at such classic books as The Killers Inside Me, A Hell of a Woman, The Grifters, After Dark, My Sweet and Pop. 1280 (all of which have been filmed) Jim Thompson's crime fiction bibliography includes the following novels: Nothing More Than Murder (1949) The Killer Inside Me (1952) Cropper's Cabin (1952) Recoil (1953) The Alcoholics (1953) Savage Night (1953) Bad Boy (1953) The Criminal (1953) The Nothing Man (1954) The Golden Gizmo (1954) Roughneck (1954) A Swell-Looking Babe (1954) A Hell of a Woman (1954) After Dark, My Sweet (1955) The Kill-Off (1957) Wild Town (1957) The Getaway (1958) The Transgressors (1961) The Grifters (1963) Pop. 1280 (1964) Jim Noy is a maths supremo and a novelist - he made his debut with The Red Death Murders, which was published during the Covid lockdown and is a highly imaginative whodunit set sometime in the past during the plague imagined by Edgar Allan Poe for his classic story, 'The Masque of Red Death.' It is available in print and e-book editions via Amazon:  www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Death-Murders-Jim-Noy/dp/B09SKY58WV He also blogs about crime fiction at The Invisible Event:  https://theinvisibleevent.com/. He also hosts his own podcast, In GAD We Trust:  https://theinvisibleevent.com/category/in-gad-we-trust/

Welcome back for the second half of Sergio's conversation with Simon Brown about the Michael Winner / Charles Bronson Death Wish trilogy - today's focus is on the first two sequels, produced by Cannon in the 1980s. We look at what the sequels added to, and detracted from, this popular cycle of revenge films extending the success of the first and most distinguished entry in  the series.  The first part of this podcast can be found at this link: https://tippingmyfedora.podbean.com/e/14-death-wish-1974-with-simon-brown/ Simon Brown, currently lecturing in film at Northumbria University, is an independent scholar who specialises in early film history, horror, adaptation studies and film technology. He is the author of Cecil Hepworth and the Rise of The British Film Industry (University of Exeter Press, 2016) and Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television (University of Texas Press, 2018). Spoiler warning - we pretty much give away the endings of both the films being discussed.

Sergio is joined today by Simon Brown for the first of a two-part look at the trio of Death Wish films that were directed by Michael Winner and starred Charles Bronson.    One of the key releases of the 1970s, Michael Winner’s 1974 box office smash, Death Wish, starred Charles Bronson as a man driven to murderous reprisals after a violent assault that left his wife dead and their daughter an emotional wreck. Adapted from the 1972 novel by Brian Garfield, it crystallised an emerging trend of films featuring disillusioned individuals who turn to violence as a way to deal with the chaos in which they find themselves. Joining me to discuss this seminal and highly controversial work is Simon Brown, an independent scholar who specialises in early film history, horror, adaptation studies and film technology. He is the author of Cecil Hepworth and the Rise of The British Film Industry (University of Exeter Press, 2016) and Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television (University of Texas Press, 2018). Spoiler warning: please note, we do explore the film, and its ending, in considerable detail. 

As a tribute to the late David Lynch, Sergio is joined by special guest Dr Lindsay Hallam, Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of East London to discuss his work in the Noir context. Dr Hallam is author of the books Screening the Marquis de Sade and a Devil's Advocates volume on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and has written several articles and book chapters on the works of David Lynch. She has also contributed audio commentaries and essays for Blu-Rays released by such labels as Arrow, Severin, Second Sight, Umbrella, Eureka, 88 Films, Indicator and Vinegar Syndrome. She is also the co-host of SciFrights, a movie podcast from the Interzone where horror meets science fiction https://rss.com/podcasts/scifrights/   We explore the way that Lynch used the motifs, tropes and visual signifiers associated with Film Noir in so many of his films. Those discussed include:  BLUE VELVET (1986) WILD AT HEART (1990) TWIN PEAKS (1990-91) TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992) LOST HIGHWAY (1997) MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001)   For more information on Dr Lindsay Hallam, please visit: www.uel.ac.uk/about-uel/staff/lindsay-anne-hallam https://lindsayhallam5.wixsite.com/website Screening the Marquis de Sade: Pleasure, Pain and the Transgressive Body in Film www.amazon.co.uk/Screening-Marquis-Sade-Pleasure-Transgressive/dp/0786462965/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr= Twin Peaks: Fire Walks with Me (Devil's Advocates series): www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781911325642  

Today’s podcast is devoted to KISS ME DEADLY, the classic Film Noir directed by Robert Aldrich from Mickey Spillane's best-seller featuring his ultra-hardboiled PI, Mike Hammer. My guest is Mark Dillon, an award-winning Toronto-based journalist specializing in film, TV and pop music. He is a former editor of Playback, the business publication for the Canadian media industries, and to which he still contributes. He has been writing for Hollywood magazine American Cinematographer for more than 25 years. He is author of Fifty Sides of The Beach Boys, chronicling America’s band, and co-hosts the (non-noir) podcast Surf’s Up: A Beach Boys Podcast Safari: https://soundcloud.com/user-93394161

Can the shadows of Film Noir retain their dark power even during the holiday season? Come and join me in front of the fireplace for a special yuletide edition of Tipping My Fedora with friends of the podcast, Simon Brown and Stacey Abbott and their devoted pooch Lilli, while they take a break from sleuthing as we look at some classic crime movies set between Christmas and New Year. The films discussed include:  THE THIN MAN (WS Van Dyke, 1934) CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY (Robert Siodmak, 1944) THE RECKLESS MOMENT (Max Ophuls, 1949) BLAST OF SILENCE (Allen Baron, 1961) THE SILENT PARTNER (Daryl Duke, 1978) And of course Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1947), a classic movie with more than a hint of Film Noir magic about it.    Happy holidays - thanks to all our listeners, and contributors, for their valuable support in 2024. And please don't forget to subscribe and comment wherever you get your episodes of Tipping My Fedora. The podcast will be back on 5 January 2025 with a new episode in which Mark Dillon joins me to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Robert Aldrich's classic private eye mystery, KISS ME DEADLY. See you then!   Graphic by Frazer Ash Additional Music: Christmas Spirit (Top-Flow / Pixabay)