Year 20, Episode 2

About this episode

Dean and Phil discuss various crime-themed films, analyzing their connections to the Hollywood blacklist and their impact on cinema.

Original Release Date: Monday 18 May 2026 Description: On this second episode of Year 20 (“the year we get it right!”), Dean and Phil have crime on their minds! They start with an appreciation of director Jules Dassin’s classic film noir Night and the City . Then a Hitchcockian thriller, Mirage , by Edward Dmytryk, the man largely responsible for Jules Dassin getting blacklisted gets analyzed. Both films show telltale signs of having been directed by men with quite different experiences of the Hollywood blacklist. A neo-noir that never disappoints is Robert Altman’s Philip Marlowe adaptation The Long Goodbye. Dean and Phil discuss the film as a “satire of melancholy” and share many stories about the filmmakers and actors’ remarkable approaches to telling the story. Another 1970s mystery film, the ill-fated Agatha about the real-life disappearance of the great mystery novelist Agatha Christie for 11 days in 1926 gets reviewed. The final suspense picture on the Chillpak crime blotter this week is Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterful The Wages Fear . Dean reviewed it several weeks back, and now it’s Phil’s turn to compare and contrast it with William Friedkin’s 1977 adaptation of the…

People in this episode

Hosts: Dean, Phil

Topics covered

• film analysis
• crime
• Hollywood blacklist
• film noir
• mystery
• legacy sequels

Keywords

• film noir
• Hollywood blacklist
• Agatha Christie
• Jules Dassin
• Edward Dmytryk
• Robert Altman
• suspense
• legacy sequel

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Night and the City, Mirage, The Long Goodbye, Agatha, The Wages Fear, Sorcerer, The Devil Wears Prada 2

More episodes of Chillpak Hollywood Hour

• Year 20, Episode 5 · June 8, 2026 · 1h 10m
• Year 20, Episode 4 · June 1, 2026 · 1h 14m
• Year 20, Episode 3 · May 25, 2026 · 1h 13m
• Year 20, Episode 1 · May 11, 2026 · 1h 7m
• 19th Anniversary Show · May 4, 2026 · 1h 25m
• Year 19, Episode 51 · April 27, 2026 · 60 min