Film has almost completely evaporated from my memory...

Which is really STRANGE! I remember so many visual details from the film L.A. Confidential as well as specifics about its plot...and I didn't even read that book.

Yet I saw Black Dahlia AND read the book (years apart), and it made so much less of an impact on me!

I was excited when I learned Brian DePalma was doing the movie, because he's good with tense, trashy subjects sometimes, and is perverse. But this film is so....blahhhh.

About all I remember:

* One of the major sets has an exterior staircase, often seen at night. I think the building is adobe. This is Scarlett Johanson's pad, and she wears clingy pastel sweaters like Lana Turner.

* Hillary Swank is extremely stringy in this, and basically looks like a man. (Even more so than in Boys Don't Cry, when she had some softness about her.)

* The movie has practically nothing to do with Elizabeth Short. It's really about people investigating her death, and should have a different title.

I remember the (female) villain from the book, and the major clue (a clown painting in her home seen during questioning) and the murder location (a caretaker's shack at the foot of the HOLLYWOOD sign)...but I don't even remember if these are repeated in the film.

Am I stupid, or is the film really not very memorable? (Or, did someone slip something in my drink that night??)