Ha ha, best of the season, it’s Burl! Yes, it’s true that
everyone has their own anti-Noël picture: the movie they think best represents
the very antithesis of the Christmas season while still being in some way a Christmas
movie! Bad Santa is the
counterseasonal picture of choice for most people, I believe, but ha ha, I’ve
never even seen that one!
My choice for least-Christmasy Christmas movie has got to be
the great Blast of Silence! Ha ha,
it’s a terrific, grotty little dinge-fest about a hit man arriving in New York
at holiday time to do a rub-out! The picture follows Baby Boy Frankie Bono
(played by the picture’s director, Allen Baron) as he undertakes his
preparations, hectored every step of the way by barky second-person narration
from Lionel “Cul-de-sac” Stander! Ha
ha, it’s moida!
Baby Boy Frankie Bono wanders the streets of the Big Apple,
following his target and arranging for his weapon from the unsavory behemoth
Ralphie! There are complications galore: Ralphie proves untrustworthy and must
himself be rubbed out – no easy task, as he’s stronger that a house! And Baby
Boy Frankie Bono runs into an old orphanage pal and gets drawn into a Christmas
party situation, where he pushes a peanut across the floor with his nose and
makes time with an old flame before completely ruining everything with his
uncouth ways!
Stander’s narration is constantly referencing the
temperature and relative humidity of Baby Boy Frankie Bono’s hands! This varies
according to the situations he’s in or about to be in, and by the end of
course, because this is a noir, and a
particularly grim one at that, his hands are about as cold as they can get!
As with the tonally similar Killer’s Kiss, the picture serves as a great picturebook of mid-century
New York at its least picturesque! It’s worth watching for that reason alone,
but the hopeless fatalism and hi-test cynicism really put the icing on this
pair of Dutchman’s breeches! The character of Ralphie, played by Larry “Shock Corridor” Tucker, is another
highlight – he’s so greasy you can imagine the yellowclear stains he’d leave on
a paper towel if you mopped his slablike forehead! Ha ha!
It’s a terrific little picture, and like all low-budget
black-and-white crime movies, it looks great! If you want to watch a Christmas
picture just because it’s that time of year, but you’ve already seen A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation and Yosh and Stan Schmenge Present Christmas In
Leutonia, this is the picture for you! I give Blast of Silence three and a half balding bongo players who are
dressed in black all the ti-i-ime!
I just remembered this movie out of the blue. It must have been a movie that has been rediscovered in the 90s when I had I had all the time in the world to trie out any movie that came my way. And this was a really fine noir film. Too bad there isn't anything like the Criterion Collection in Germany, because I would really like to see this one again in a good quality.
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