Tipping My Fedora

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For this special Christmas episode, Sergio is joined by Scott K Ratner for an in-depth look at Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Thin Man. We also consider the series of six movies it spawned, all of them starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles and Skippy as their pet Terrier, Asta. Here’s a full list of the films in the series:

The Nick and Nora Charles Screwball Mystery Movies

1. The Thin Man (1934)
2. After the Thin Man (1936)
3. Another Thin Man (1939)
4. Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
5. The Thin Man Goes Home (1944)
6. Song of the Thin Man (1947)

We also look at some of our favourite movie whodunits, including AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1945), GREEN FOR DANGER (1947), WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957), DEATH ON THE NILE (1978) and Rian Johnson’s KNIVES OUT series starring Daniel Craig.

Scott K. Ratner is a Southern-California based writer/magician/actor whose endeavours are largely rooted in his interests in Golden Age detective fiction and classic era Hollywood cinema. He has written the libretto and lyrics for two whodunit musicals (All Talking! All Singing!! All Murder!!! and Murder on the High C’s) and a one-act Agatha Christie-related comedy (Kill A Better Mousetrap), as well as several nerdy articles for such magazines as Crime and Detective Stories and Mystery Scene. His magic act was once publicly praised by no less than Harry Blackstone, Jr. and the great Dai Vernon, though the truth of that story is considerably less impressive when the details are known. His brief sojourn as a teenage actor in television connected him with a few important players of the classic Hollywood era, and he regrets that he didn’t know enough about their filmographies at the time to ask the interesting questions. As a magician and theme park entertainer, he worked over two decades apiece at Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.

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Sergio is joined by Vincent M. Gaine of Lancaster University to discuss Michael Mann’s hitman neo-noir, Collateral, starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith. A thriller made on the cutting edge of digital cinema of 2004, this in-depth exploration of the film will look at the new technology used to make it, how it sits within Mann’s filmography – and why Sergio really has a problem with Tom Cruise’s wig in the film.

Dr Vincent M. Gaine teaches at Lancaster University and is the author of “Existentialism and Social Engagement in the Films of Michael Mann”. The locus of Vincent’s research is the intersection of globalisation, liminality and identity politics in media. He has published on contemporary film genres, cycles and franchises, including superhero cinema, conspiracy thrillers and James Bond, as well as contemporary auteurs including James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow and Christopher Nolan. His current research concerns nostalgic espionage, liminal superheroes and the social-anthropological representation of Boston in media. Vincent is also a podcaster, with a monthly podcast called Invasion of the Pody People, and regular guest appearances on Not Just For Kids (https://notjustforkids.libsyn.com/), The Uncut Network and There Can Be Only One. He contributes film reviews to The Geek Show (https://thegeekshow.co.uk/) and the Critical Movie Critics (https://thecriticalcritics.com/).

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Brad Friedman is back to talk about  Hitchcock’s 1940s Noir thrillers with Sergio! This time they discuss the romantic whodunit, SPELLBOUND (1945), the spy drama NOTORIOUS (1946) and the real-time suspense thriller, ROPE (1948).

Brad blogs about Golden Age mystery books and movies at Ah Sweet Mystery: https://ahsweetmystery.com/

To read “The House of Dr Edwardes” by Francis Beeding, the basis for SPELLBOUND, click here: https://freeread.de/@RGLibrary/FrancisBeeding/Novels/TheHouseOfDoctorEdwardes.html

Spoiler alert: the plots for all the films discussed, including their respective endings, are explored in great detail.

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To celebrate the first anniversary of the Tipping My Fedora podcast, Sergio is joined by Professor Stacey Abbott to explore the wonders of the John Wick film series starring Keanu Reeves.

Please note, we pretty much spoil the endings of all four films.

[This episode is being re-presented to correct an earlier technical problem] 

My very special guest is Stacey Abbott, Professor of Film at Northumbria University, where she is a member of their Horror Studies Research Group. Her research focuses on horror and cult film and television, with a particular interest in vampire and zombies.

She is the author of Celluloid Vampires (2007), Undead Apocalypse (2016) and the BFI Film Classic on Near Dark (2020). She is the co-author of TV Horror (2013) and the co-editor of Global TV Horror (2021), both with Professor Lorna Jowett.

She regularly writes essays to accompany DVD and Blu-ray releases, including Second Sight’s Ginger Snaps, Possessor and Blair Witch Project, as well as Eureka’s Tank Girl and The Secret of NIMH. 

She is currently writing a book on Horror Animation.

Publication details:

Near Dark (BFI Classics) by Stacey Abbott: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/near-dark-9781911239277/

Angel (TV Milestones) by Stacey Abbott: https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780814333198

Celluloid Vampires by Stacey Abbott: https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292716964/

Global TV Horror edited by Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett: www.uwp.co.uk/book/global-tv-horror/

TV Horror edited by Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/tv-horror-9781848856189/

Undead Apocalypse by Stacey Abbott: https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/19174?login=false

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The Fedora podcast is one year old today. And it’s also my birthday! To celebrate, my awesome buddy Professor Stacey Abbott (who also just had her birthday) makes a very welcome return visit to Fedora. This time we get together to celebrate the John Wick series starring the mighty Keanu Reeves.

Please note, we pretty much spoil every single one of the films.

[This episode is being re-presented to correct an earlier technical problem] 

My very special guest is Stacey Abbott, Professor of Film at Northumbria University, where she is a member of their Horror Studies Research Group. Her research focuses on horror and cult film and television, with a particular interest in vampire and zombies.

She is the author of Celluloid Vampires (2007), Undead Apocalypse (2016) and the BFI Film Classic on Near Dark (2020). She is the co-author of TV Horror (2013) and the co-editor of Global TV Horror (2021), both with Professor Lorna Jowett.

She regularly writes essays to accompany DVD and Blu-ray releases, including Second Sight’s Ginger Snaps, Possessor and Blair Witch Project, as well as Eureka’s Tank Girl and The Secret of NIMH. 

She is currently writing a book on Horror Animation.

Publication details:

Near Dark (BFI Classics) by Stacey Abbott: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/near-dark-9781911239277/

Angel (TV Milestones) by Stacey Abbott: https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780814333198

Celluloid Vampires by Stacey Abbott: https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292716964/

Global TV Horror edited by Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett: www.uwp.co.uk/book/global-tv-horror/

TV Horror edited by Stacey Abbott and Lorna Jowett: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/tv-horror-9781848856189/

Undead Apocalypse by Stacey Abbott: https://academic.oup.com/edinburgh-scholarship-online/book/19174?login=false

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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

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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)

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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. 

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-yqr3z-181c2a1

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.

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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/

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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. 

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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.

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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/

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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

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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!

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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/

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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.

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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. 

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-pu7fz-1799d95

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 the upcoming podcast SciFrights, a movie podcast from the Interzone where horror meets science fiction

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

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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

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-aqkqs-176125a

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)

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To celebrate what would have been the 131st birthday of Hollywood icon Edward G. Robinson, Sergio is joined by Craig Ian Mann to provide an overview of the many gangster roles he played during his career, examining how they transitioned from Depression-era tragedies of men who took the wrong path to fame and fortune to Noir-era sociopaths of the 40s and 50s who no longer have a place in society.

Films discussed include:

• Little Caesar (1931)
• Bullets or Ballots (1936)
• The Last Gangster (1937)
• I am the Law (1938)
• Night has a Thousand Eyes (1948)
• Key Largo (1948)
• Black Tuesday (1954)

Craig is a film historian, freelance writer and home video producer who works closely with Eureka Entertainment and their Masters of Cinema series.

He is the author of Phases of the Moon: A Cultural History of the Werewolf Film, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020, and has written for the BFI, Eureka, Second Sight Films, Indicator and Arrow Video amongst others.

His latest writing appears in the Second Sight releases of The Hitcher and The Blair Witch Project and Eureka’s Masters of Cinema edition of Hugo Fregonese’s Black Tuesday, previously previewed here at Fedora. Forthcoming is Mabuse Lives! – a set bringing together six of the Mabuse crime films made in Germany in the 1960s. For further details, visit: https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/mabuse-lives-limited-edition-box-set/ 

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-eyjrn-1735d4b

A look back at Kenneth Branagh’s box office hit, Dead Again (1991), a highly imaginative valentine to classic Film Noir co-starring Emma Thompson and Andy Garcia that daringly combines a murder mystery with the supernatural. 

Sergio is joined by writer and actor, Nick Cardillo. A lifelong fan of mystery and detective fiction, Nick is the author of several Sherlock Holmes pastiches for MX Publishing and Belanger Books. These were collected in The Feats of Sherlock Holmes (2018) and The Improbable Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (2021).

He is the author of “The Devil’s Book,” published in The Novellas of Solar Pons; the first collection of longer stories based on August Derleth’s pulp detective to be authorized by the Derleth Estate.

When he’s not writing, Nick is an actor in the Philadelphia region and has been involved in productions of such diverse playwrights as William Shakespeare, Terrence McNally, Paula Vogel, and, of course, Agatha Christie. Nick is currently at work on his first novel.

Find out more on his website, nickcardillocreative.com

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Sergio is joined by film and music expert John Leman Riley to provide an overview of the some of the film scores written for Film Noir in the classic 1941 to 1959 period.

The films explored include:

• THE MALTESE FALCON (John Huston, 1941) – music by Adolph Deutsch
• THE BIG SLEEP (Howard Hawks, 1946) – music by Max Steiner
• SUNSET BOULEVARD (Billy Wilder, 1950) – music by Franz Waxman
• A PLACE IN THE SUN (George Stevens, 1951) – music by Franz Waxman
• ON DANGEROUS GROUND (Nicholas Ray, 1951) – music by Bernard Herrmann
• THE BIG COMBO (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955) – music by David Raksin
• ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (Robert Wise, 1959) – music by John Lewis