“FROM DIVES TO DAMES… FROM DARK TO DAWN…”

Hell Is A City… a rare example of a film that took Hollywood noir and aesthetics and created/recreated them not only in the UK but also in the North of the country (at a time, 1960, when most films took the South of the country/somewhere indefinable as their locale and just pre/concurrent with the kitchen sink/Taste Of Honey/Saturday Night Sunday Morning etc New Wave of British film).

It features Mr Stanley Baker at his hard northern finest and has some quite frankly astonishing, other world and time scenes of unlicensed gambling that take place in the Northern countryside; all cloth caps and penny throwing – a fine capturing of a very specific geographic, cultural and historic point in time…

…and if memory serves me correctly, an end sequence of driving through the night that is pure LA Noir but… well, over here.

Well worth an hour or two of your time.

Below is part of the pressbook, as has been mentioned around these parts before, always something of a favourite to find.

More details on the DVD release at Mondo Esoterica and Studio Canal.

Peruse the film here.