With its moral ambiguity and melodramatic twists the film would fit right in alongside the Monogram pictures produced by Mirisch, but Monogram never had this kind of ensemble – every actor is at the top of their game, and Raimi orchestrates the suspense with relish, finding the sweet spot between his early genre pictures and his work as a for-hire craftsman on movies like A Simple Plan and For the Love of the Game. The script by One False Move authors Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson is an irresistible blend of supernatural thriller and Southern anthropology, following a psychic (Blanchett) who gets involved in a Georgia murder investigation. If I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes! represents noir at its most bargain basement, Sam Raimi’s 2000 release The Gift is pulp fiction at the other end of the spectrum, loaded with then recent Academy Award winners and nominees (Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank, Greg Kinnear) and bankable movie stars (Keanu Reeves, fresh off The Matrix and terrifying here as a bigoted wife-beater).
1408 full movie streaming archive#
As with other recent Warner Archive noir releases like Step by Step (also highly recommended), the disc features not only a flawless transfer but bonus short subjects from the Warner library – it’s a terrific package. The tale of a down on his luck dancer framed for murder and the efforts of his not entirely honorable wife to exonerate him was tailor made for screenwriter Steve Fisher, author of one of the best acidic novels ever written about Hollywood ( I Wake Up Screaming) he skillfully establishes the characters with clarity and concision, only to surprise the audience in the final act with some well prepared for but unpredictable twists of moral vacancy. That film is newly available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive, and it’s a thoroughly entertaining example of resourceful no-budget filmmaking the tight budget is evident in the limited coverage and cramped interiors, but director William Nigh turns his disadvantages into strengths by using the tight spaces to create a pervasive sense of claustrophobia and entrapment. Mirisch’s first solo Monogram production was an adaptation of Woolrich’s Fall Guy in 1947 he followed it up with the 1948 screen version of the author’s short story I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes! a year later.
He kept the studio in the black with his Bomba the Jungle Boy series, but before establishing that franchise he produced a pair of noir movies based on material by Cornell Woolrich, the suspense writer who would hit paydirt with Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Walter Mirisch is best remembered today as the producer of studio prestige releases like In the Heat of the Night, The Apartment, and the original West Side Story, but before he became one of Hollywood’s most reliable sources of “A” pictures he toiled away in the “B” trenches of Poverty Row company Monogram. 1408, I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes, Mikael Hafstrom, Sam Raimi, Stephen King, The Gift, Walter Mirisch
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