Ann Savage, nee' Bernice Maxine Lyon and fated to become one of the iconic femme fatales of no-budget noir, died on Christmas Day, at a nursing home, at the age of 87. She was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to an army dad who died before she was five years old and a mother with whom she lit out for Hollywood when Bernice was all of ten. She trained at Max Reinhardt's acting school at a time when it was managed by Bert D'Armand, who she married when she was twenty-one; the marriage--her second--lasted until his death in 1969. (Her earlier marriage, when she was eighteen, last two years and ended in divorce.) She appeared in thirty movies between 1943 and 1953 but failed to make much of a dent in the public's consciousness--but then, as she herself admitted, most of the pictures she was in didn't deserve much of an audience. The big exception is Detour, the 1945 cult classic in which she co-starred with Tom Neal for director Edgar G. Ulmer. Shot in less than a week on a budget of $20,000, it would develop a reputation as one of the most febrile and unforgettable noirss ever to come out of poverty row, and Savage's Vera would take her place in the history of the genre as one of the all-time greatest mistakes ever made by a man on the road, a woman who attaches herself to Neal's doomed antihero like a virus. (It was the fourth and final movie that she made with Neal, who in 1965 would be tried for the murder of his wife and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He died in 1972.)

In 1986, just about the time that the rediscovery of Detour (thanks to TV broadcasts and home-video releases) was reviving her name, Savage made her first film appearance since 1953, cast somewhat against type as a nun in the steamy romance Fire with Fire starring Virginia Madsen. After that, she resumed her retirement until last year, when Canadian auteur and Detour fan cajoled her into playing the mother of his on-screen alter ego in My Winnipeg.

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Opening this Friday, Neil Burger's The Lucky Ones is a bit of a gamble as a follow-up to The Illusionist.  Following the plight of three soldiers recently returned from Iraq (played by Tim Robbins, Michael Pena and Rachel McAdams), it quickly turns into a sort of social statement-cum-sign o' the times story as they find themselves on a road trip together across the country.  It's hard to predict how The Lucky Ones will be received; Iraq movies are always a crapshoot, and the movie's curious blend of comedy and drama may not fit in with the subject matter.  But it's always fun to see a new road movie, especially this late in the year when the possibility taking real-world road trips becomes more and more daunting.  Road pictures have a long and storied history in Hollywood, and filmmakers have managed to fold everything from bone-chilling noir to high-concept comedy to existential drama into the format.  America is especially adept at making road pictures, not only because of the grand canvas that is the national geography, but because of our total immersion in car culture.  Here's five of our favorites.

DETOUR (1945)

Film noir, despite its association with the urban environment, was never afraid to take its show on the road as long as there was a nice juicy crime at the center of the story, and Detour serves up a doozy.  A grade-z Poverty Row picture made for the cost of Clark Gable's lunch, Detour nonetheless proved to be one of the most effective noir films of its day, thanks to its relentless, grubby energy.  Tom Neal, who starts the picture looking like he's had his insides scooped out and just gets worse from there, plays a sad-sack piano player who just wants to get to the west coast so he can be united with his former flame.  But along the way he gets framed for murder after running afoul of Ann Savage in one of the most terrifying femme fatale roles of all time.  A terrific, unsparingly bleak little film that proves a little can go a long way.

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