Allen Baron

(On Cable TV, September 2022) I watch a lot of noir movies expecting, well, more of the same—the urban setting, the cynical attitude, the doomed characters, all wrapped up in classic Hollywood style. Blast of Silence is clearly a noir, but it doesn’t give the same feeling. Maybe calling it a noir is overstating it—coming from 1961, past the prime two decades of film noir, it could almost qualify as a neo-noir clearly aware of the genre’s characteristics and maybe trying to do something different in reaction to them. Executed on an ultra-low budget outside the studio system by writer-director-star Allen Baron, Blast of Silence deals with familiar noir archetypes—the quiet killer in town for a job, but who encounters complications that make it all even more dangerous. But the fundamental difference here is inherent in the execution: there’s nothing slick or polished about Blast of Silence. It’s competent, but the roughness follows the film everywhere—the actors aren’t marquee names, the cinematography often feels accidental (it’s not, but it’s clearly from a rushed production) and the ending is incredibly bleak. Despite noir’s reputation for not being a feel-good genre, its standard bearers usually leave viewers satisfied. This is not necessarily the case here, although the sting is somewhat lessened by having the characters almost all being reprehensible in some ways. It’s a tougher watch than you’d expect—with its world-weary narration and refusal to coddle viewers, it’s almost noirer than noir itself.