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CHALLENGE #11

Detour
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
1945 - United States - 67 min


Summary:

Detour was adapted by Martin Goldsmith from his own novel, and was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. The film was released by the Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), one of the so-called "poverty row" film studios. Detour was shot in only six days.
Piano player, Al (Tom Neal), sets off hitchhiking his way to California to be with his girl friend. Along the way, a stranger in a convertible gives him a ride. While driving, Al stops to put the top up during a rainstorm. He discovers that the owner of the car has died in his sleep. Al panics and dumps the body in a gully and drives off in his car. Later, he picks up another hitchhiker. Vera (Ann Savage), a femme fatale, threatens to turn him in for the supposed murder unless he assumes the identity of the dead man to collect an inheritance.


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POEMS FROM THIS CHALLENGE:


NEON BLUES
By
A.J. Savage

Love is brutal - get used to it.
Sometimes you get in the wrong car
and it takes you to somewhere
with a sign that says:
'welcome to the end of the road'
Life is a lonely motel...a one way ticket to
neon hell
and the woman on the highway
the one with the wildest eyes
with a promise of something nice
like a night between the thighs:
she is the devil in a blue dress
she has the power to make you confess
all your miserable sins
she gets into your mind
she crawls under your skin
but like I said:
love is brutal so you might as well get used to it
the truth is hard to take
there's nothing you can do about it
lipstick traces on bullet kisses
that go straight to your head
she'll take you like a mantis
and smile to see you dead
oh brutal, brutal lover:
why do you treat me mean?
oh brutal, cruel lover
you make me want to dream


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CONVERTIBLE MAN
By
Zach Goldstein

Put on your best coat, sonny, and give 'em a smile
For tonight
You're a convertible man.

Don't look back, sonny.
The fog of your vision only makes her figure all the more angelic
Rumpled and draped over
As linen upon linen.
Her plush, flushed lips
Still wet of drink and yet still of spirit
While echoes of lusty ultimatums
Reverberate in the corners.

Her collar strung with a choker
Cold plastic black against her pinched pink velvet skin
Eyes wide blind in a gasp incomplete
With her breath caught up in telephone wire.
'Twas a dry, stainless murder
Linens unsoiled
And only a body remains.
Cut the lights in this cheap, roadside mausoleum, sonny
And let the shadows swallow her whole
For tonight, in her best evening dress, she shall rest in unrest evermore.

Take your suede mac off the rack, sonny, and curl up those lips.
Take your felt cap from the rack, sonny, and bear your unblemished grin.
Leave your implication in the bedroom
and pull a gentleman's veil over your convertible frame
For you're not the man clasping the chord
Anymore.


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