Murder on Washington Square
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Turn-of-the-century New York City midwife Sarah Brandt and Detective Sergeant Frank Molloy are...
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
7.7
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This 1965 exploitation film by Russ Meyer follows three go-go dancers on a desert crime spree.
cult exploitation 1960's
The Murderer
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Dr Kuperus lives in a Dutch town and murders his wife and his lover. It depicts his journey from...
Entertainment Editor (1988 KP) created a video about Overdrive (2017) in Movies
Oct 24, 2017
The Beast (2019)
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A criminal action movie about two detectives in conflict who solve a murder that shakes up the...
The Sound of Philadelphia (2020)
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A tale of family, friendships and betrayal in the violent world of the Philadelphia mob.
Cold Eyes (2013)
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A high-tech police surveillance team attempts to take down a gang of ruthless bank robbers.
The takedown (2022)
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Diakité and Monge as police officers who are the complete opposite, and get paired together to...
Ross (3284 KP) rated The Paris Mysteries in Books
Dec 27, 2019
This phrase was clearly coined after Poe's demise, as he doesn't seem to have ever heard it.
Yes, he is undoubtedly the first and most important writer of detective/crime fiction. This by no means suggests it is any good.
The three stories are really just a setting out of a mysterious crime with some facts/suspicions, with a lengthy monologue where C August Dupin solves the mystery. That's it. No suspense. No character development. No real scene setting. Just a slightly puzzling crime followed by a smartarse giving the solution.
The main thing to take away from these three Poe stories is that the police and detectives used to be rubbish and looked for the wrong evidence, or were sidetracked by what they wanted to see. There are many crimes and stories with apparently impossible solutions which can't seem to be unravelled. This idea absolutely was the genesis of the rich and varied crime genre we have today. The idea that a strange set of circumstances can arise where an apparently normal crime can be committed but with the evidence so obscure and tangled that unravelling it would take a genius.
Sadly, Poe didn't put the story around the bare bones of these crimes. So all we have is three exam questions with a know-it-all giving the answer, with no charm, no suspense, no thrilling conclusion. One of them barely even concludes the murderer, just spends an age picking holes in the logic applied by various newspapers in trying to document the crime.
I might be interested in reading a retelling of these stories (except the one where a letter has simply gone missing and is found my looking somewhere obvious), where someone actually weaves a narrative around the bare bones.
I appreciate Poe's efforts because of what followed, but not for what they themselves are.