Me: NIGHTMARE ALLEY has the bleakest ending, even for a Film Noir, that classic Hollywood ever made.
Mr. K: For me, it doesn't get bleaker than SCARLET STREET.
Me: Being bummed out over work and romance is bleaker than sticking a live rat in your mouth?
Mr. Z: ... [Uh, geeks bit the heads off live chickens, you moron.]
Me: Sideshow geeks ate live rats. It gets more horrifying the more you think about it. I would rather let a rat chew off my face, Room 101-style, than bite into a live one.
Mr. T: The writer of NIGHTMARE ALLEY was a medic in the Spanish Civil War, came back to the US and lived in Coney Island for two years to research carnie ways for the book. He became an incorrigible drunk and his wife divorced him, converted to Christianity and married C.S. Lewis, I think.
Fifteen years later, afflicted with cancer, the guy moved back to the same sleazy Coney Island hotel and killed himself.
ME: OK, that guy wins.
1 What Say Youse?:
I love Scarlet Street, but when you include William Lindsay Gresham into the same frame in which you consider the movie (and hey the book is, as Nick Tosches put it, "boderline brilliant"), Nightmare Alley does sorta trump all other film noirs.
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