In a recent post, Duane noted that in the film:
"'Bad Day at Black Rock' -- Spencer Tracy deals with a whole
passell of
bad-tempered folks full of ill will in a little village out
in the middle
of the desert. No urban setting here.
Some Westerns -- particularly some of those Jimmy Stewart
starred in and
directed by Anthony Mann -- have a distinctly hard-boiled
(and in some
cases noir) feel."
Actually, there's a whole tradition of PI stories, starting
with
Hammett's short story "Corkscrew" and novel *Red Harvest*, in
which the
HB hero comes into a corrupt rural area and cleans it up.
Aside from the
"quest-object" plot (i.e. *The Maltese Falcon*), the
"town-tamer" plot is
one of the most frequently recurring PI plots. A few examples
include
Brett Halliday's *A Taste for Violence*, Jonthan Latimer's
*Solomon's
Vineyard*, Cleve Adams's *Decoy*, Robert Parker's *Pale Kings
and
Princes*, Richard Prather's *The Sweet Ride*, Mickey
Spillane's *The
Twisted Thing*. The film *Bad Day at Black Rock*,
notwithstanding the
fact that Tracy's character isn't a PI, fits right into that
tradtion. -
Jim Doherty
--UNS_gsauns2_2999919287--
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