Jim Thompson on AllMovie

An influential crime novelist of the "hardboiled" school, Jim Thompson collaborated on the screenplays for Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and Paths of Glory. In the 1960s, he scripted episodes for the TV shows Tales of Wells Fargo and Dr. Kildare and in 1975 he appeared as Judge Grayle in the remake of Farewell, My Lovely. A number of Thompson novels were adapted for the screen, including The Getaway (1972) and The Killer Inside Me (1976). The writer's career in later years was impaired by drinking problems, and by the time of his death in 1977, he had been all but forgotten in his home country. However, his reputation soared with the years, and in the 1990s, there was another wave of Thompson film adaptations, of which The Grifters and After Dark, My Sweet (both 1990) are the most notable.