Double Feature: CROOKS IN CLOVER (aka LES TONTONS FLINGUEURS aka MONSIEUR GANGSTER) & SERIE NOIRE September 11, 2010

Double Feature: CROOKS IN CLOVER (aka LES TONTONS FLINGUEURS aka MONSIEUR GANGSTER) 1963, Gaumont, 105 min. Director Georges Lautner helmed this deliciously funny but dark gangster spoof with Lino Ventura as a former mobster lured back into the business by a dying friend's final request. Obligated to tie up some "loose ends" as well as look after the dead man's soon-to-be-married daughter, Ventura abruptly finds himself running afoul of gangster hard case Bernard Blier. In French with English subtitles.

SERIE NOIRE. 1979, Tamasa, 111 min. Director Alain Corneau expertly adapts one of Jim Thompson's most twisted pulp masterworks, A Hell of a Woman. Patrick Dewaere stars as Frank Poupart, a human ferret scurrying around the bleak edges of Nowhere, trying to sell cheap trinkets door-to-door and collect on small mob debts. When he stumbles across a gorgeous teenager (Marie Trintignant) with a rich and repulsive aunt, Dewaere gets sucked into the blackest vacuum of all. In French with English subtitles.