I spend so much of my free time endlessly scrolling through streaming services in search of something to watch. Sometimes I strike gold. Other times I am much less fortunate. Throughout the entire process, I find myself thinking: If only there were some way to take the guesswork out of picking a movie.
If you’ve found yourself in a similar conundrum, I have a lifeline to extend, dear reader. I’ve got a streaming recommendation handpicked by the one and only John Carpenter. It’s a noir thriller called Ace in the Hole. The picture is loosely inspired by the real-life story of a spelunker trapped in a cave in Kentucky and William Burke Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the ordeal.
The Halloween director named this film as one of his top ten picks from the Criterion lineup, saying:
“What an incredible movie—and talk about a downer! It’s a treatise on human nature and a really tough movie, but it’s so great. Who could not be taken with Kirk Douglas in this? The real-life incident that Ace in the Hole was based on actually happened near where I grew up in Kentucky.
Where is Ace in the Hole streaming?
You can find the flick streaming on Pluto as of the publication of this post. It’s free (with ad breaks), so you’ve got nothing to lose. And with Carpenter’s seal of approval, you really can’t go wrong.
Billy Wilder directed Ace in the Hole from a screenplay that he cowrote with Lesser Samuels, and Walter Newman.
The film stars Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, and Richard Benedict.
This John Carpenter-approved thriller plays out like this:
With flaws that outweigh his talent, reporter Chuck Tatum (Douglas) has bounced across the country from job to job. Winding up in New Mexico, Tatum gets work from the local newspaper but finds that there’s not much in the way of pressing news. However, when Tatum catches wind of a treasure hunter (Benedict) trapped in a mineshaft, he turns the story into a media sensation. Soon Tatum is using unscrupulous tactics to draw out the situation, an approach that comes back to haunt him.
That’s all we have for you, for the time being. Stay tuned to Dread Central for more streaming recommendations from your favorite Masters of Horror as we uncover them. If you’d like to chat more about John Carpenter’s impeccable taste or his cinematic oeuvre, hit me up on Threads @FunWithHorror.
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