Hammett in Celuloid

Readers of this blog may well recall that, like many of denizen of the Sleuthsayers rotation (Eve Fisher, Rob Lopresti, Joseph S. Walker, Art Taylor, just to name a few), I am a long-time member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. And since our writing ideas can come from just about anywhere, it should come as no surprise to the savvy crew who constitute the Sleuthsayers readership that I get some of my best writing ideas from the SMFS email list.

Today's blog entry represents one of those times.

A thread about stories with great final lines begun, I think, by our own Rob Lopresti, morphed into another SMFSer (Bobbi Chukran) weighing in about finding a TV adaptation of Hammett's novel The Dain Curse available on both Amazon Prime TV and in abbreviated form on YouTube.

Yeah, this was NOT good.

As an unapologetic fanboy of the works of Samuel Dashiell Hammett, I am, of course, familiar with The Dain Curse (far and away the consensus choice among Hammett fans as his worst novel. I recently re-read it, and was reminded all over again how inferior it was to the rest of Hammett's canon. Of course, when you're comparing any novel to the likes of Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and The Glass Key, odds are it will definitely tend to suffer by comparison.), and with the 1970s James Coburn fronted TV project referred to above.

And it got me thinking.

Linking to any number of existing Hammett adaptations which have made it to the big or small screen might be a helpful guide for our readers who enjoy films based on great (or in the case of The Dain Curse, not-so-great) crime fiction.

I mean, the nameless Continental Op acquires a name, and that name is "Hamilton Nash." Not even a tough guy like James Coburn could do much saddled with a mouthful like that.

Well look no further! Full disclosure, there is a lot to this subject, so I will be breaking my post on it up into two entries. 

The Adaptations

Every one of Hammett's five novels has been made into a movie (or in the case of The Dain Curse, a three-hour miniseries, I think? I was twelve the first time I watched it, back in the '70s) at least once. And that makes sense. After all, with every one of his novels, Hammett practically invented a subgenre of the crime fiction milieu: 

Red Harvest: The "Town Tamer" novel.

The Dain Curse: The "Psychological Suspense" novel.

The Glass Key: The "Machine Politics/Public Corruption" novel.

The Maltese Falcon: The "First True P.I." novel (Carrol John Daly fans be damned!).

The Thin Man: The "Crime Novel as Comedy of Manners."

But what about Hammett's short stories?

Hammett cut his teeth writing short stories in an age (the 1920s) where periodicals were constantly on the look-out for content and actually paid well (Ah, the Good Old Days!), and he quickly distinguished himself as a master of the form. Stories such as "The Tenth Clew," "The Gutting of Couffignal," "The House in Turk Street," and its sort-of sequel, "The Girl With the Silver Eyes," "The Scorched Face," and "Dead Yellow Women" made both a name and fair amount of money for Hammett before he turned his hand to writing novels full-time.

And one of his absolute best stories, "Flypaper," was actually made into an episode of a SHOWTIME anthology series of noir stories entitled, "Fallen Angels" in 1994. Christopher Lloyd starred as Hammett's famous nameless detective "The Continental Op" (an "operative" for the "Continental Detective Agency," a thinly-veiled fictional version of the Pinkerton Agency Hammett himself had worked for). The supporting cast is great, too: Michael Rooker, Peter Berg (before he gave up acting for directing) and the always wonderful Laura San Giacomo.

The best part? You can watch all 29 minutes of it here, for free, on YouTube. And it is well worth your time!

Okay, now for the novels!

First there's Red Harvest, Hammett's first novel, serialized in Black Mask magazine as four related novelettes before its publication in 1929.

There are several terrific adaptations of this novel, none of them under its actual name, although the incomparable Megan Abbott is reportedly working on a screenplay for a new adaptation with Scott Frank (responsible for a lot of great stuff coming out of Hollywood, not least the script for the film adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight  and the terrific Monsieur Spade). You can read more about their collaboration here.

The first of these is Akira Kurosawa's 1961 masterpiece: Yojimbo. It stars Toshiro Mifune as a masterless samurai in Medieval Japan, and follows the central premise of Hammett's novel (the Continental Op subverting expectations and manipulating competing factions in the town he's just arrived in, setting them up to take each other out). You can watch it here. It is well worth your time!

Up next is Sergio Leone's 1964 spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars, shot in Spain, with a largely Italian cast, it made Clint Eastwood a star (Leone is reported to have said of Eastwood's acting, "He has two expressions: 'hat on,' and 'hat off.'" That tracks.). It's nothing short of a shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo. So not a direct adaptation of Red Harvest, but rather an outright theft of Kurosawa's adaptation. Kurosawa himself said in a letter to Leone not long after the film's release: ‘I’ve seen your movie. It’s a very good movie. Unfortunately, it’s my movie.'"

Did he really NEED to act?

Still an enjoyable movie. And you can, of course, catch it from any number of streaming services, including here.

Nearly forgotten these days is the great Walter Hill's take on the Hammett novel: 1996's Last Man Standing, starring Bruce Willis. It gives Kurosawa a writing credit, and yet is set in the same period as Hammett's book (the 1920s), with the location is moved from the frontier mining towns of Montana to the Texas Borderlands. Willis does a great job, it's full of action, and features solid performances all around, especially from Christopher Walken as the film's Big Bad. And he is (unsurprisingly) scary. You can find it lots of places, especially here.

It's Walter Hill, and it's Bruce Willis and it's Christopher Walken (And did I mention William Sanderson and Bruce Dern, too?), so it is also well worth your time!

And the final entry for this week's post is an early '80s entry very much in the vein of the aforementioned Monsieur Spade. A fictional take on the life of Hammett during the early years of his writing career, it's titled simply Hammett. Directed by Wim Wenders and the immortal Francis Ford Coppola from a script written in part by mystery writer and Hammett Scholar Joe Gores! Furthermore, it features the always watchable Frederick Forrest (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Hammett) in the title role.

The resemblance really is uncanny.

As if this wasn't enough, this film features the great Peter Boyle as the detective Hammett used as the inspiration for the Continental Op. Boyle is, as always, fantastic. As is Marilu Henner as Hammett's "inspirational" librarian neighbor. Fans of Hammett's work will find all manner of easter eggs in this one.

Definitely worth your time!

And the best part? It's available for free on YouTube. You can watch it here!

That's it for me this go-round. Next time we'll finish walking through the film adaptations of Hammett's work. See you in two weeks!