The Black Dahlia

During Junior High football season, some of the guys would walk down to Rite Aid to...

Wait a minute. I've already told that story.

You remember: me getting caught by the Rite Aid clerk reading Oui magazine? And how I dropped the magazine like it was on fire, ran from the store and didn't go back for years?

That's the one.

Prior to the incident where I was caught looking at porn, I'd often frequent the Rite Aid's magazine rack for other reads as well. (Really, I did.) They had an average selection of comics at the time, and a rack full of goodies that were almost as good as porn.


True Detective Mysteries. Or, True Crime. Or, Master Detective Magazine.

The monthly always had a picture of a beautiful--although, most often frightened looking--barely clad woman on the cover, with the main article titled something a bit sensual sounding, like:The Passion-Mad Slayer, or Midnight Rescue From A Sex Monster.

The magazine name didn't matter, nor did the title. For a 13 year old not yet brave enough to pick up the adult mags, this stuff was gold.

That's how I first discovered the case of The Black Dahlia. A row or two in front of Playboy and Hustler were the True Detective mags. And on that particular day I shelled out a couple of bucks and took one home.

I was fascinated with the case early one. The tragic murder of Elizabeth Short was gruesome, sure. But the lure of the case was that it felt dirty, as if the cops investigating the murder didn't really want to solve it. There were theories that were outrageous--like, for example, the theory that Orson Wells was the killer--and some that seemed plausible and could have resulted in arrest if the leads had been investigated correctly.

I put away the True Detective mags after a few years, and didn't think much more about the Black Dahlia until the movie was made. Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart sounded like good leads as LA cops who investigated the murder. Casting Scarlett Johansson as the siren of the flick was a good call. And you can't beat Hilary Swank. Her two Oscar wins weren't by accident, you know.

I eagerly put in the DVD, and settled back with some popcorn.

The Black Dahlia is one of the worst films I have seen this year. And maybe one of the worst I've seen in the last five.

The movie tries so hard to create a 1940s feel that it comes off stiff and rigid. The dialogue is hard to follow, and the various plots are somehow never really connected, even in the end. Hartnett and Eckhart never develop any real chemistry in their roles as partners investigating the murder, which allows the film to fall flat when it turns out one of them was secretly on the take.

Johansson is rarely used in the second half of the movie, while Swank is used too much. Seems every scene after hour one has Swank in it. First she's in bed with Hartnet, then she's visiting her father, then in a hotel room with some other guy we've never met...It just makes no freakin' sense!

And the worst offense, for me at least, is The Black Dahlia isn't really about The Black Dahlia. The murder of Elizabeth Short plays a minor role in moving the plot along, but the film's really about this four-some, and the distrust that connects them in so many ways.

Skip this one entirely, and read about the murder in True Detective instead.