Cast a Deadly Spell (1991).
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 36m, rated 6.4 by 4,900 cinematizens.
Genre: Noir plus.
DNA: Hollywood and Vine.
Verdict: I ate it with a spoon!
Tagline: It’s magic!
LA 1948 where the latest trend, everyone is doing it, is magic. That is MAGIC. It’s the newest technology of the day activated by a snap of the fingers or an incantation. Most of it, most of the time is white magic, little conveniences, but where there is white…there is also black. Very.
Gumshoe Gus Grissom is on the case, using the nom de noir Phil Lovecraft. And what a case it is, the recovery of an overdue book purloined from Croesus. Phil may not be sharpest number in the phone book, but he is clean and honest.
Clean? He doesn’t use magic! That puts him in the same minority today that eschews mobile phones and scanners: as they are technophobes so he is a magicophobe. That makes him the right man to recover this book of the dark arts, because he won’t be tempted to use it.
Off he goes with his $40 a day and gas money, encountering a unicorn and, even more rare in Hollywood, a virgin. Everyone is up to no good apart from his landlady Hippolyte Kropotkin. That name, like many others draws on the Mythos of H P Lovecraft for the cognoscenti.
The screenplay has gaps but the direction is confident and brisk to keep things moving, and move they do. Part tribute like Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and part pastiche like Chinatown, and wholly original. Recommended to all Noiristas.
Pedant’s corner: yes, yes I know about Prince Kropotkin. I read his book Mutual Aid. Bet you haven’t.