Detour

The bad transfer is almost like an extra stylistic effect, making the story seem even more murky than as it was originally filmed--and it was plenty murky. Neal's Roberts probably isn't supposed to be but comes off as kind of deranged. One minute he's a sullen pushover, but then he flies off the handle at slight provocation. The strangest shift was probably at the beginning of the flashback, when he gets sore that his dame is moving to LA and promised not to speak to her ever again. Next thing, he's pounding away at the piano in his club without a band, playing really brilliantly except he keeps shifting to a new song every twenty seconds or so. That is something that didn't seem intentional, although I'd believe it was. It makes the whole thing seem just a little bit more like a memory--a much more interesting way of accomplishing that than the standard fog flying around everywhere through these early scenes.

Further evidence for the total subjectivity of the flashback: his gf, once she's out in LA, apparently just sits there waiting by the phone with a blank hopeful expression on her face. Roberts apparently only remembers his side of the conversation, as he doesn't leave time for her to respond to any of the questions he asks. There's even a cut to her open face while he just rambles right on through her lines. Maybe he was on speed? It's the only time he ever appears happy in the film, and it seems like crazy happiness, not just being really happy about anything. Also, I think he just got up in the middle of his shift playing the piano and left the club to make his manic phone call.

Best shot in the whole film is Ann Savage walking toward the car after Roberts says he'll give her a lift. It's held just a little longer than it needs to be for the effect of just pushing the plot along, and it's really kind of a beautiful shot, with Savage's road-weary face and hair and her sure stride. The length of the shot turns it into something far prettier than it was intended to be, and it's kind of funny that it was probably basically an editing blunder, because I don't know if the vocabulary for that type of shot quite existed yet at the time this was made. But it's pure film, right there.

Then, later, in the car, with Vera sitting in the passenger seat exactly as Haskell had when he died, and Roberts is talking about that very fact, and suddenly Vera's eyes are open! Totally creepy! I didn't see her eyes open or anything, and she doesn't move her head or body at all which just made it extra scary. Her eyes are just suddenly open and she's staring at him, and he doesn't notice at first so he just stares out ahead of the car and rambles on in the voiceover. Then, Bam! Closeup of Vera screeching, "What have you done with the body!" Really brilliant!

Ann Savage really does steal the movie. She seems to be the only one in the show who can actually act, and the way she screeches half her lines outshrews even Liz Taylor, but with barely even a breath she's sometimes all of a sudden very sexy. It's amazing how she goes from repulsive to sexy so quickly, often without the help even of changed camera angles or anything. But you never really feel anything about her but fear.

Really funny but kind of cheap how Roberts lectures Vera on the way to the used car guy about how she should let him do all the talking, but when they get there he doesn't say a word. And then in the voiceover he talks about "we haggled" for the right price, but it still seems like he probably didn't speak.

Also it was especially creepy that Vera seemed the most purely attractive and sexy when she was dead. She was shot to look beautiful at that point, even. Instead of showing what would have been a truly gruesome picture, most likely, at that point she becomes a true femme fatale.