Richard Fleischer, 1916 - 2006

"Soylent Green" was people. Richard Fleischer was a director.

Fleischer died Saturday at 89, leaving a curious, occasionally wonderful filmography behind. He was the son of the creator of Betty Boop who went on to give us Arnold Schwarzenegger as "Conan the Barbarian" -- a more cheerfully journeyman career in movies can't be imagined.

Fleischer directed hits like "Soylent Green" (1973) and bombs like "Doctor Dolittle" (1967), and he's responsible for one of the great camp fiascos of all time: the parboiled plantation bodice-ripper "Mandingo" (1975). But he also made "Fantastic Voyage" (1966), that great Saturday-matinee sci-fi flick that shrunk Raquel Welch and a team of medics to molecule-size and injected them into the bloodstream of a patient. (Donald Pleasence's death by white blood cell gave me nightmares for weeks.)

Fleischer got his start in late-40s film noir, and the gritty little miracles he made back then have yet to be properly assessed. "Trapped" (1949) is one of those docu-realist crime dramas that were in fashion at the time, with a young Lloyd Bridges cast as a counterfeiter caught in a Treasury department sting. It's on DVD, but unfortunately the same year's "The Clay Pigeon" isn't -- that one's a solid little paranoid thriller about a guy who wakes from a coma to find himself accused of war crimes, and it punches its story across in 63 no-nonsense minutes.

Best of all is "The Narrow Margin" (1952) -- remade in 1990 with Gene Hackman, but, trust me, you want the original. The great B-movie slattern Marie Windsor plays a mobster's wife being escorted by the Feds on a cross-train to the trial where she'll testify; wiseguys on both coasts want her dead. The movie's relentless, funny, and bizarrely moving, and there isn't an ounce of fat on it. (And, yes, it's on DVD too.) What happened to Fleischer over the course of his career -- trading in filmmaking efficiency for big-budget bloat -- is the story of what happened to Hollywood during the same time-period. He should be mourned, certainly, and his career should be learned from.