Pulp **** (1972, Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Lizabeth Scott, Lionel Stander, Dennis Price) – Classic Movie Review 2164

Writer-director Mike Hodges’s acclaimed 1972 cult movie is a jokey homage to or send-up of the film noir genre. It stars Michael Caine as a seedy writer of sleazy pulp fiction novels called Mickey King, who is hired by a reclusive former old-time movie star named Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney) to live with him on his Mediterranean island house in Malta and help him write, assemble or ghost write his autobiography.

But soon the resort is full of deliciously weird folk like gangster Ben Dinuccio (Lionel Stander), a camp Englishman (Dennis Price) and a posh American, ersatz princess Betty Cippola (Lizabeth Scott).

This pretty smart comedy thriller has lots to recommend it: an excellent cast with Rooney particularly effective in outrageous mood;  a crisp, spoofy script with pastiche Raymond Chandler-style lines by the director, and plenty of pulp atmosphere.

And if this sort of parody of the noir genre is sometimes a bit muddled and hesitant in the way the phrase ‘sort of parody’ implies, that doesn’t spoil the amiable fun too much at all. After all, any screenplay trying to make a success of pulling in characters like an ersatz princess, a henpecked clairvoyant and a cross-dressing hit man has its work cut out for it.

The result is that it’s a good movie, even if it is not as outstanding as the other Caine-Hodges venture, Get Carter (1971), the previous year.

Caine and Hodges also produce, along with Michael Klinger.

Mickey Rooney died on April 6 2014, aged 93.

And it proved the last film of 40s femme fatale Lizabeth Scott, who was born Emma Matzo in 1922. After making Pulp, she was engaged in real estate development and volunteer work for various charities, such as Project HOPE and the Ancient Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Scott suffered heart failure at Cedars Sinai Medical Center and died on January 31 2015, aged 92.

© Derek Winnert 2015 – Classic Movie Review 2164