Those are certainly no friends of Eddie Coyle. Robert Mitchum plays Eddie, a Boston-area family man and gunrunner who is facing serious jailtime for a New Hampshire hijacking. He tries to trade information with an ATF agent to reduce his sentence, but unbeknownst to him, there are others who are working similar angles. It’s a tragic story for Coyle and Mitchum plays him with a world-weary, grizzled desperation. The story is a bit twisty and it takes some attention to follow how all the pieces play together, but it’s fairly worth the commitment in the end. 

Dean Stockwell is a war orphan, kept in the dark of his parents’ fate, who is tossed from one home to another until he finally finds a forever home with retired actor Pat O’Brien. Unfortunately for Dean, after he discovers his status as an orphan, his hair suddenly turns green. The small minds of the local townsfolk can’t handle it. An allegory for war itself particularly its effects on children, it’s a bit of an oddity of a film, but the acting, and the adorable chemistry between Stockwell and O’Brien, keeps the story engaging.

I managed to fit in a rewatch of this Don Knotts classic in the middle of my normal Halloween holiday watching. Knotts is a typesetter at the local newspaper who really wants to become a writer. He manages to find some success after writing stories about a local haunted house. That is until the former owner’s nephew sues him for libel. It’s Knotts at his skittishy best and the story has a perfectly charming spookiness. It’s a great family-friendly Halloween flick.

Mark Harmon is a San Francisco detective. Sean Connery is a Lieutenant Colonel who used to be his commanding officer. After a shooting at the Presidio that also results in the death of two city cops, the two are forced to work together to find the killers despite their troubled history. It’s an entertaining but entirely forgettable crime drama. By the time the mystery behind the reason for the killings is revealed, I’d forgotten there was even a mystery to be solved. While I generally like Mark Harmon, he’s out of his depths in this film next to Connery and Jack Warden. A love story between Harmon and Meg Ryan is completely unnecessary and her entire role in the film feels rammed in.

Farley Granger escapes from prison with Howard Da Silva and Jay C. Flippen. They take refuge at the home of Da Silva’s brother where Farley bonds and falls in love with his niece, Cathy O’Donnell. The inexperienced couple would love to start their lives over with each other, but in the Hays Code world that was never going to be possible and that feeling of dread is a shadow over the young lovers from the moment they meet. A heart-breaking noir, it’s really hard not to wish things were different and root for the baby-faced couple which makes the end harder to take.