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” I may not know a winner when I see one, but I sure as hell can spot a loser. “

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? will be screening at the St. Louis Public Library (1301 Olive Street St. Louis) on November 17th at 1:30pm as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. They Shoot Horses Don’t They? is part of Cinema St. Louis’ Golden Anniversary of films made in 1969. This is a Free event. With an intro and post-film discussion by We Are Movie Geeks’ own Tom Stockman. A Facebook invite can b found Here

In Depression-era America, desperation spawned a bizarre fad: the dance marathon. Couples competed to stay on their feet for thousands of hours, and audiences flocked to watch. But Gloria doesn’t think of herself as a spectacle. She is a fierce, unforgiving contestant in a battle she’s determined to win.

One of the best pictures to come out of Hollywood in the late 1960s, Sydney Pollack’s screen version of Horace McCoy’s hardboiled novel is a harrowing experience guaranteed to elicit extreme responses. Jane Fonda performs (!) at the top of an ensemble of stars suffering in a Depression-Era circle of Hell – it’s an Annihilating Drama with a high polish. And this CineSavant review ends with a fact-bomb that ought to start Barbara Steele fans off on a new vault search.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen 1:37 flat Academy / 120 min. / Street Date September 5, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Susannah York, Gig Young, Red Buttons, Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Dern, Allyn Ann McLerie.

Cinematography: Philip H. Lathrop

Production Designer: Harry Horner

Film Editor: Fredric Steinkamp

Written by James Poe, Robert E. Thompson from the novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?...

Desperate times call for desperate movies, and there are few movies that express genuine desperation better than Sydney Pollack’s 1969 dance-marathon melodrama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Released for the first time on Blu-ray last week, Horses was a film that made a big impression on me as a teenager. Partly it was that ominous title (which I first heard when Welsh rock band Racing Cars had a 1977 top 20 hit with a song with the same name) and partly it was the indelible concept: in Depression-era America crowds paid to watch couples dance for days on end in the hope of winning a cash prize for the last man and woman standing (a concept fascinatingly re-worked in the 1997 documentary Hands on a Hard Body). Nominated for nine Oscars (it holds the record for the film with the most nominations without a Best Picture nod), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?...

The Turning Point

Written by Warren Duff and Horace McCoy (story)

Directed by William Dieterle

U.S.A., 1952

It is with much hoopla and media coverage that district attorney John Conroy (Edmond O’Brien) is tasked with bringing a decisive end to the alarming crime wave and corruption that has swept Los Angeles in recent years. One crime syndicate has been singled out, an organization so foul that a palpable fear has stricken law enforcement and the public, a fear for their very lives as well as a fear towards knowing the truth as to how its nefarious influence has seeped into the city’s fine institutions. Old friend and current hard-nosed newspaper reporter Jerry McKibbon (William Holden) has a knack for sniffing out trouble and good news stories, the two of which often go hand in hand. His presence irks John’s assistant and current main squeeze Amanda Waycross...

My first real attempt at understanding the brilliance that was Stanley Kubrick came in my freshman year of college, when I wrote a research paper on 2001: A Space Odyssey for an English class. After all that work, I only received a B and found myself more confused than ever. But there it was – the spark that Stanley Kubrick’s work produces. Kubrick’s best films were experiences; it’s impossible to “half-watch” one of his many masterpieces. And that’s what the movies on this list do. They take you on an odyssey of visual wonder, psychological tremors, and expect you to do as much work as the people involved in the making of the films. Yet, in the end, Kubrick’s films didn’t feel like homework. They felt like vacations to a world where deep thought is a welcome respite.

20. The Thin Red Line (1998)

Directed by Terrence Malick

What makes it Kubrickian?...

10. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Directed by Sydney Pollack

Written by James Poe and Robert E. Thompson

USA, 1969

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? is a wildly acclaimed 1969 American drama directed by Sydney Pollack that went on to receive nine Academy Award nominations. Like most of the films to appear on this list, it is based on a novel, a 1935 tome by Horace McCoy. Penned by James Poe and Robert E. Thompson, the film is an allegorical drama set amongst the contestants in a marathon dance contest during the Great Depression.

So how does a movie revolving around a dance competition relate to The Hunger Games? Much like The Hunger Games, the participants (all teens) are broken down into couples in hopes of winning and taking home the prize money, cash that’s much needed during such hard economic times. There is even a sleazy opportunistic Mc who urges...

Editor’s Note: Max Allan Collins has written over 50 novels and 17 movie tie-in books. He’s also the author of the Road to Perdition graphic novel, off which the film was based. With his new Mickey Spillane collaboration “Lady, Go Die” in great bookstores everywhere, we thought it would be fun to ask him for his ten best films noir. In true noir fashion, we bit off more than we could handle… We have to begin with a definition of noir, which is tricky, because nobody agrees on one. The historical roots are in French film criticism, borrowing the term noir (black) from the black-covered paperbacks in publisher Gallimard’s Serie Noire, which in 1945 began reprinting American crime writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Horace McCoy, Jim Thompson, Mickey Spillane, W.R. Burnett and many others. The films the term was first applied to were low-budget American crime thrillers made during the...

6- The 10th Victim (La Decima vittima) (The Tenth Victim)

Directed by Elio Petri

Written by Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvioni, Ennio Flaiano and Elio Petri

Italy,1965

The 10th Victim was the first film to offer up the concept of a TV show wherein people hunt and kill one another for sport and to expand the idea into a satire on gameshows. Set in the 21st Century, the government and the private sector have joined forces to create a solution to crime by giving it a profitable outlet titled “The Big Hunt,” a popular worldwide game show in which contestants are chosen at random to chase one another around the world in a kill or be killed scenario. The winner of the first round moves on to the next. After ten wins, a player is retired from the game and gets a cash prize of one million dollars, but very few make it that far.

Though York couldn't maintain the Christie-like success of her 60s peak, her unusual choices made for an interesting career

There was a rage for Susannah York in the 60s like there was for Julie Christie and Vanessa Redgrave, so it seemed odd when it ended in the mid-70s. All of a sudden, the rush of good parts stopped. This seemed odd, after her Oscar nomination as best supporting actress in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). But then, why did she let herself take such roles as that of the superfluous wife in The Battle of Britain in the same year?

In her early career, York had seemed a conventional English beauty: as Alec Guinness's daughter in 1960's Tunes of Glory (her actual debut) and a touching lead performance the following year in Lewis Gilbert's The Greengage Summer as a young woman in France coming to sexual maturity.