SHACK OUT ON 101, Allied Artists, 1955. Terry Moore, Frank Lovejoy, Keenan Wynn, Lee Marvin, Whit Bissell and Len Lesser. Written by Edward & Mildred Dein. Directed by Edward Dein.

   Probably the best movie made that year about commies infiltrating a diner, this is in fact a film of bewitching badness, enchanting ineptitude and the occasional good part that serves accentuate the awful rest of the thing.

   Briefly, Keenan Wynn runs the Diner; Terry Moore works there as a waitress but she’s studying to pass the Civil Service exam so she can get a good job and make her boyfriend proud of her. Said boyfriend is Frank Lovejoy as a Nuclear Scientist (!?!?) who is working on some shady deal with Slob (Lee Marvin) the short-order cook. Whit Bissell is a salesman/old army buddy of Wynn’s who hangs around to pad out the running time.

   Okay, that’s the dramatis personae. As for the plot, well there isn’t much. We quickly learn that Slob, in addition to being a boorish letch, is also a commie spy, buying secrets from Frank. Is Frank really a traitor? Will Slob attack Terry? What about the two chicken vendors who sneak around at night watching the place through binoculars? Or the nasty-looking fish-peddler appropriately named Perch who keeps passing things to Slob in buckets of fish? And will any of this ever amount to anything?

   Actually there’s a rather nice bit toward the end when Slob drops the mask and starts stalking Terry around the dark, deserted diner. But it’s a long time coming, delayed by perfunctory love scenes and stretches where everyone just seems to be killing time. The action (I use the term loosely and with tongue in cheek) stays in and around the same cheap set for the whole movie, and the comedy relief… well the less said the bitter.

   At this point you’re probably asking yourself, “So why bother?” and I have to admit that Shack Out on 101 seemed to touch some childhood chord in my memory; I remembered being a kid in the 1950s and wondering when the Bomb would drop. Hearing about the HUAC hearings and trying to figure out who in my neighborhood was a commie spy: How about my 6th grade teacher? Or the old couple with the foreign accents who ran the musty old newsstand? Could they be Foreign Agents passing secrets in innocent-looking out-of-town papers, and stuff like that?

   Shack Out taps into this collective paranoia with an engaging innocence, terrible in an enjoyable way, with a few old pros and a talented newcomer ignoring the badness and playing out their parts with straight faces and even some energy. Writer/director Dein (who helmed Curse of the Undead — the first vampire-western — and The Leech Woman, and co-wrote The Leopard Man) gets through it quickly and efficiently, and there is that odd glimmer of passable filmmaking that seems to glitter all the brighter for being mired in a film like this.

   And if the character of Perch looks familiar to you, that’s because he’s played by Len Lesser: Uncle Leo on the Seinfeld series.

ONCE A THIEF. MGM, 1965. Alain Delon, Ann-Margret, Van Heflin, Jack Palance, John Davis Chandler, Jeff Corey. Screenplay: Zekial Marko, based on his novel Scratch A Thief as by John Trinian (Ace Double F-107, 1961; Stark House, 2016). Director: Ralph Nelson.

   This better than average crime heist film came along a few years after the height of the noir era, and while truth be told, it doesn’t break any new ground, it’s well-filmed, well-acted and beautifully photographed (in black and white when they knew how to film in black and white).

   The thief in question is Alain Delon, who plays Eddie Pedak, a guy who’s done some time but is now married to Ann-Margret and has an honest job down by the San Francisco docks. He’s just made a down payment on his own boat when his nemesis, Inspector Mike Vido (Van Heflin), figures he’s the one who killed a Chinese woman in the process of robbing her small store.

   When the woman’s husband can’t identify Eddie as the killer, he’s allowed to go free, but in the meantime he’s lost his job. Ann-Margret gets a job in a local nightspot — this doesn’t go over well — and then along comes his brother Walter (Jack Palance), a hustler and small-time hoodlum with an offer Eddie, desperate for money, can’t refuse.

   A heist, in other words, and Walter needs Eddie. (I did mention, didn’t I, that not much in new ground is broken?) Heists never go as planned, but the story’s not really about the robbery. It’s about the characters, and while you can’t believe that Alan Delon and Jack Palance could ever be related, they make their roles ones they seemingly were born to play. Ann-Margret’s histrionics may go over the top a couple of times, but she managed to convince me that any mother whose young daughter is being held by a gang of sadistic thieves would react exactly the same way.

   Did I say the heist goes badly? Indeed it does.

THE HYPNOTIC EYE. Allied Artists, 1960. Jacques Bergerac, Merry Anders, Allison Hayes, Marcia Henderson, Joe Patridge, Fred Demara, Lawrence Lipton. Director: George Blair.

   The theme of this second-rank crime film — not a horror film per se, although there are some horrific scenes that take place during the course of it, but mostly offstage — is stage hypnotism. The film takes great pains to point out the beneficial results that hypnotism can produce — but at the end, with a wink, there is a warning to say in essence, don’t try this at home.

   It seems that a wave of beautiful women mutilating themselves has hit the city: attempting a facial massage with an electric fan; using a razor instead of lipstick; drinking lye instead of coffee; washing one’s hair over a gas flame instead of a sink. What could be behind these ghastly accidents?

   Det. Sgt. Dave Kennedy, played Joe Patridge, an actor previously unknown to me, doesn’t have a clue, but when his girl friend (long-haired brunette Marcia Henderson) insists they go see a stage hypnotist named Desmond (Jacques Bergerac), events start happening that even the slow-witted Kennedy can’t downplay or deny.

   The aforementioned Bergerac isn’t a great actor, but he has the eyes and voice (and French accent) of a stage magician, and if he ever had the chance to play Dracula in a film, I think he’d be remembered a lot more than he is. Allison Hayes plays his assistant on stage, but in one of her better roles, she — well, if I tell you any more then you’d know the whole story.

   The problem with this film isn’t its leaky plot devices, it’s that there just isn’t enough story to fill its running time. One long scene taking place in one of those hippie places of the early 60s, complete with Lawrence Lipton reciting a poem called “Confessions of a B Movie Addict,” accompanied by drum and acoustic bass is at least amusing. A longer scene that is probably not as long as it seems comes toward the end of the film as Desmond shows off his great powers by mass hypnotizing his entire audience.

   Pretty much pure hokum, in other words, but I would be willing to see Allison Hayes in almost anything, and if the story line doesn’t come to the level of the often noirish camera work, it isn’t Ed Wood level either.

SIMON KENT (MAX CATTO) – The Lions at the Kill. Hutchinson, hardcover, 1959. No US edition.

SEVEN THIEVES. Fox, 1960. Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Joan Collins, Eli Wallach, Alexander Scourby, Michael Dante and Berry Kroeger (that’s seven, isn’t it?), plus Sebastian Cabot and Marcel Hilaire. Screenplay by Sydney Boehm, based on the novel The Lions at the Kill, by Simon Kent. Directed by Henry Hathaway.

   This is the first Max Catto I’ve read, and I’m asking myself what I was doing with the rest of my life.

   Lions opens with Philippe, co-owner of a moribund Paris night club, reluctantly meeting with a Police Inspector who casually informs him that some of the money stolen a year or so ago in a daring Casino burglary has been passed in his club. (The serial numbers of the hot money were recorded before the theft, meaning it will be necessary to sit on the loot for years before trying to pass it.) Two of Philippe’s employees, Manuel and Melanie, match descriptions of two of the suspects, and the Inspector thinks he can use them and the money to flush out the rest of the gang by the simple expedient of publicizing his news…. the theory being that:

      1.) Manuel and Melanie have been holding the lucre for the rest of the gang, and

      2.) When the others find out they’re spending it, they’ll converge on the club like Lions at the … kill.

   The trap is sprung in a scene of enjoyably terse violence, leaving a few loose ends to dangle intriguingly, whereupon we cut to a flashback about the robbery itself.

   This takes up the bulk of the book, and does it very well as Catto details the roles and relationships of the people involved: the planner, the organizer, the technician, the extra hands, the weak-link (unreliable but necessary to the scheme) and the woman who has seduced him into compliance. The characters are not developed so much as they are gradually revealed to us with each turn in the plot, so that the complications (and they are many and well-turned) vie for attention with what we are learning about the people involved, and our curiosity about how they will interact.

   Suffice it to say that the caper ends ironically but with edgy realism, whereupon we cut back to the aftermath of the police trap for yet another suspenseful and oddly moving twist to wrap up a tale I will remember.

   All of which was too much to put in a movie, and the ending would never have passed the censors in those days, so when they filmed this as Seven Thieves they cut out the beginning and end and just filmed the middle. And I must say they did a fine job of it, too. Writer/producer Sydney Boehm kept the best lines from Catto’s book, threw in a few effective wrinkles of his own, and got the story across quite capably indeed. For his part, that old pro Henry Hathaway filmed it with his usual expertise: effective (but never showy) camera angles, a good sense of pace, and a knowing sensitivity for the actors and the characters they portray.

   Barry Kroeger, normally cast as a slimy schemer, plays the Muscle here, and he looks convincing, Michael Dante makes a smooth safe-cracker (especially effective showing a fear of heights at the crucial moment on a high ledge) and Alexander Scourby, normally the tough old Celt, does a surprising turn as a French weakling, visibly crumbling under the pressure of the job.

   Eli Wallach is fine as usual but doesn’t have much to do except for a cool Sax solo to highlight Joan Collins’ lusty strip-tease. (She was coached for this by Candy Barr.) Edward G. Robinson displays his usual cold aplomb as the brains of the gang, cool in emergencies and unruffled by rebellion in his ranks.

   But most of the attention is focused on Rod Steiger as Robinson’s chosen organizer: the one who keeps the gang in line for him and moves things along, and if the chubby guy seems a bit unlikely as the romantic interest, he carries the tough-guy business just fine. There’s some interesting ambiguity about his relationship with Robinson, too patly resolved near the end, but for most of the picture he remains a complex and intriguing protagonist, and one who keeps us guessing.

   Ultimately, Seven Thieves betrays the tough premise of Lions at the Kill, but I have to say it does it so enjoyably that I can’t carp — and I don’t think you will either.

DIAL 1119. MGM, 1950. Marshall Thompson, Virginia Field, Andrea King, Sam Levene, Leon Ames, Keefe Brasselle, Richard Rober, James Bell, William Conrad. Director: Gerald Mayer.

   There are a few things about Dial 1119 that make it particularly unique. Most noticeably, the film is largely bereft of any music, background or otherwise, giving it a rather somber, claustrophobic atmosphere. Which is fitting given the film is about an escaped murderer named Gunther Wyckoff (Marshall Thompson) holding a ragtag group hostage at a neon-lit watering hole.

   The sensibility is pure noir, as one cannot help but feel the undercurrent of despair and hopelessness. Lurking in the background are the aftereffects of the Second World War and its impact on postwar American society.

   Also adding to the film’s uniqueness are two additional elements that, in my estimation, work in its favor.

   First, the cast largely consists of actors and actresses who weren’t top billed names in the business. Crime film fanatics will surely appreciate Sam Levene and William Conrad. But neither of them is present in the movie for very long. Instead, the focus is really front and center on Marshall Thompson, who you may recognize from the sci-fi classic, It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958). Trust me when I say that he’s very good in this and plays his part to the hilt. There’s something about his expressionless face that makes his character particularly memorable.

   Second, the film serves as a seething and prescient indictment of news media saturation in which tragic events are transformed into spectator sports designed for mass public consumption. Like many of the best crime films, Dial 1119 tells us as much about the society that produced the criminal as the criminal himself.

   Overall, Dial 1119 is worth a look. I didn’t know all that much about the movie going in, but after watching it, I can easily imagine myself returning for a second viewing sometime in the years ahead.

  CRY DANGER. RKO, 1951. Dick Powell, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Erdman, William Conrad, Regis Toomey, Jean Porter and Jay Adler. Written by William Bowers and Jerome Cady. Directed by Robert Parrish.

   A tight, fast-moving and witty noir, done by folks who knew how to do it.

   Dick Powell stars as Rocky Mulloy, just released after five years in prison for an armed robbery he didn’t do, freed when his alibi is belatedly substantiated by the rather suspect testimony of ex-Marine Delong (Erdman.) Actually, Delong thinks he’s guilty, but he’s angling to cut himself in for a share of the $100,000 still missing from the robbery.

   Also involved, in ascending order of importance, are Regis Toomey as Cobb, a dull cop who still thinks Rocky’s guilty but figures he can shake things up by tailing him around town; Castro (William Conrad) the Gang Boss who engineered the heist but kept his hands clean, and Rhonda Fleming as Nancy, an ex-love of Rocky’s now married to his buddy Danny, who is still serving time for the caper.

   Now that he’s out, Rocky hopes to clear his own name and that of his friend Danny, and maybe even get a cut of the loot to repay himself for the five years in stir. To this end, he and his new friend Delong move into a trailer court — a wonderful blend of location and studio work that seems really tacky in the way only a 1950s trailer court could — as a base for their operations while Rocky begins following up the loose ends left dangling for five years: the widow of the Security Guard who identified him, Castro’s involvement, and just how innocent his old buddy Danny really was.

   By this time in his career, Powell had mastered the cool, hard-boiled, faintly mocking persona that had been his stock-in-Spade since Murder My Sweet (1944) and Writer Bowers (Criss-Cross, The Web, The Law and Jake Wade, etc.) gives him plenty of laconic dialogue to deal out, which he does with perfect deadpan comic timing.

   There’s some debate over whether this was directed by Parrish or Powell — both have some fine films to their credit — but whoever did it captured a nice feel for that post-war early 1950s ambiance, evoking atmosphere without letting the pace flag for a minute. Additionally, Cry Danger achieves a moment of some depth and emotional complexity, which I’ll preface with a

SPOILER ALERT! It will come as small surprise to noir buffs that Nancy turns out to be playing a double game, hoping to keep the loot and get Rocky back into her larcenous arms, but we get a nifty spin on it here when Rocky uses her love for him to get her to betray herself. All through the scene we can see him leading her on and hating himself for it, see him crushing his feelings under his own heel, and finally walking away, officially innocent, free and very alone. A fine and unusual moment, written and played to perfection. END OF SPOILER ALERT.

   Along the way to this remarkable ending we get a full quota of twists, turns, rough stuff and the kind of tough guys and deadly dames they just don’t make anymore — if they ever did.

CRACKERJACK. General Film Distributors, UK, 1938. Released in the US as The Man with 100 Faces. Tom Walls, Lili Palmer, Noel Madison, Leon M. Lion, Edmond Breon. Screenplay A.R. Rawlinson; adaptation by Basil Mason Based on the novel by W. B. N. Ferguson Directed by Albert de Courville.

   Crackerjack is a fast-paced British comedy mystery replete with a mysterious monocled gentleman thief (the Crackerjack of the title: “Don’t think because I wear this eyeglass I won’t drop you,” he warns a roomful of criminals he holds at gunpoint), a beautiful Baroness who used to be a spy, and a dancing and singing troupe of airborne hold up-men, complete with two musical numbers. I honestly can’t think what more you could want from a thirties British film.

   The film opens as Sculpie (Noel Madison) and his gang pull a daring daylight robbery of a millionaire diamond merchant on a plane. On board the plane is monocled Jack Drake (Tom Walls), a droll type who calmly decks a Scotland Yard man to save him from Sculpie. When Sculpie and his pals drop the passengers off though and take off with the plane they soon find they have an empty case, no swag, and someone else has the diamonds.

   The someone else is Crackerjack, Jack Drake, who has turned Robin Hood to finance his charitable work when his own fortune dwindled from too many good deeds. He even writes a bestselling book about himself that sets London on its ear, but when the hospital he financed needs money and his bank draft overages press it is time for Crackerjack to strike again, this time in London where his one time inamorata, Baroness Von Halz (Lili Palmer), is visiting and would like nothing more than to see the man who left her waiting in Berlin (not knowing he and his secretary barely escaped the police), but for whom she still has feelings.

   Crackerjack strikes again at an elegant ball (“Today I endow an crib, tomorrow I crack one.”), and again Sculpie and gang hit the same target and come up short, this time killing a man; something Crackerjack won’t tolerate. Meanwhile Baroness Von Halz old friend Golding (Leon M. Lion) tells her he lost a family heirloom to Crackerjack at the ball and asks her aid as a one time German spy in contacting Crackerjack. If he can catch him in the act, maybe he can persuade him to return the heirloom.

   Little does the Baroness know that Golding is the fence for Sculpie’s gang and the trap is a deadly one or that her beloved Jack Drake is Crackerjack. She sets up the meeting with Crackerjack who remains hidden and arranges for him to steal some papers she claims she is being blackmailed with.

   Drake knows it is a setup (“I’ll do anything for you,” he tells the Baroness, “but drop my ‘aitches.”), but he can’t resist heisting all the goodies the gang stole and betraying them to the friendly policeman he saved on the plane, who having recovered most of the loot from the theft of the ball and captured the murderers could care less if Crackerjack gets away.

   Walls, seems an odd choice for hero, and it is more than a bit difficult to imagine that the young and lovely Palmer is head over heels in love with him. For one thing he is middle aged, balding, has a huge beak of a nose, no chin, jowls, and a silly ass upper class English twit manner better suited to Bertie Wooster than Simon Templar — in fact he wouldn’t be a terrible Peter Wimsey — but the film is so good-natured, short, fast paced, and often clever you quickly warm to its hero, or at least don’t mind him too much.

   I know nothing sbout Walls, but assume he was a popular stage or music hall star, since the film seems designed to exploit his persona. Palmer, on the other hand, is young and beautiful, and the scenes with her show her off to great advantage, even if she hasn’t a lot to do but look decorative. Noel Madison was usually cast as American gangsters in British films and plays a variation of that here in a Jack LaRue, Marc Lawrence, Joseph Calleia key.

   Droll, rapid-paced, relatively clever sub-Saintly stuff with a minor league gentleman thief in the Raffles/Lupin/Baron vein, Crackerjack is an attractive, sprightly, witty, little distraction that leaves a much better taste behind than you might expect it to when it starts. It also helps there is no moralizing or preaching here. It isn’t giving anything away to say the hero gets the girl and the swag and flies away with both, nose firmly thumbed to propriety, Hollywood’s Code, and any and all dull moralists watching.

   Considering that it came as a total surprise that I stumbled upon quite by accident, having never heard of the film or the book it is based on I could not be more pleased with the result.

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THE KILLER IS LOOSE. United Artists, 1956. Joseph Cotten, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey, Alan Hale Jr., Michael Pate, John Larch, Dee J. Thompson. Based on a novelette by John & Ward Hawkins (The Saturday Evening Post, 13 June 1953). Director: Budd Boetticher.

   A more or less straight forward crime suspense thriller, with a remarkable performance by Wendell Corey as an escpaed convict obsessed with killing the wife (Rhonda Fleming) of the cop (Joseph Cotten) who mistakenly killed his wife while tracking him (Corey) down as part of a robbery, an inside job, at the bank where he previously was only a mild-mannered teller.

   I wasn’t sure that I could do it, but it looks as though I managed to get almost the entire plot summarized in one paragraph. One thing I decided not to squeeze in, though, was the fact that Cotten’s wife is after him to quit the police department and get a job a lot less dangerous. The irony, of course, is that she’s the target, and Cotten does his darnedest to protect her, while at the same time keeping her from finding out.

   There are a few awkward — no, make that contrived — moments that weaken the story, such as having the wives of the two policemen who nabbed Corey there in the courtroom when he’s found guilty, and having him confront the two couples afterward. Just a little shortcut in storytelling, that’s all, but for a moment, it was jarring.

   The final scene is almost predictable from the moment you see Corey make his escape. But what makes it suspenseful anyway is that Corey, almost blind without his thick glasses, kills three people, some in shocking fashion. You’re sure everything will work out right in the end, but in hands of someone like director Budd Boetticher, you’re just never really sure.

Jon and I watched this movie last night, the original, the one with with Martin Balsam, Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau, not either of the two remakes. The movie probably doesn’t need one more review, but here’s the music that plays over the opening credits:

FORT APACHE, THE BRONX. Time-Life/20th Century Fox, 1981. Paul Newman, Edward Asner, Ken Wahl, Danny Aiello, Rachel Ticotin, Pam Grier, Kathleen Beller. Screenplay: Heywood Gould, suggested by the experiences of Thomas Mulhearn and Pete Tessitore. Director: Daniel Petrie.

   I would venture that Fort Apache, The Bronx is one of those movies that elicits either strong positive or negative reactions, with few observers taking a neutral position on this gritty police procedural. Part of it, I suppose, concerns the subject matter; namely, the NYPD and its efforts (or lack thereof) to police the decaying, drug-infested, burnt-out South Bronx in late 1970s/early 1980s.

   The other aspect that likely provokes strong reactions is the fact that Fort Apache, The Bronx is less a plot-driven story than it is a character study of a middle aged cop trying to find meaning both personal and professional life. Indeed, the movie veers from crime film to romantic drama in the blink of an eye and then back again to crime film, often leaving the viewer less that surefooted as to where the movie is headed and what’s coming up next: more personal drama or a nasty, violent sequence showing the utter depravity of the criminal element in one of (at the time) New York’s roughest neighborhoods.

   Count me in the (all things considered) strongly positive camp, albeit with some caveats.

    Fort Apache, The Bronx was not directed by a well-known auteur and it certainly doesn’t have the same emotional punch as the grindhouse classic, Death Wish (1974), let alone Martin Scorsese’s brilliantly bleak Taxi Driver (1976), gritty New York films both.

   It does, however, have some exceptional standout performances by not only leading man Paul Newman, but also by supporting cast members Ken Wahl, Ed Asner, and Pam Grier.

   Newman, a fine actor more than capable of taking on demanding roles, portrays Murphy, a cynical, world-weary middle-aged cop stationed in the South Bronx. The precinct house, his real home, is nicknamed “Fort Apache” signifying that the station is less akin to a “normal” police station and more like a Western cavalry outpost in hostile Indian territory. Unfortunately, it’s a theme that doesn’t get played up as much as it might have.

   The plot basics: After a strung-out prostitute named Charlotte (Grier) murders two cops in broad daylight, Murphy and his young partner, Corelli (Wahl) are tasked by their new by-the-book boss (Asner) with rooting out the criminal element from the neighborhood and shaking them down for information on the cop killer. Little do the cops know that the killer isn’t a male suspect; rather that it’s the devilishly sociopathic hooker who has been responsible for an entire series of seemingly senseless grisly slayings. Complicating matters for the mismatched duo is endemic police corruption, the local heroin trade, and Murphy’s burgeoning romance with an emergency room nurse.

   Eventually, all the various subplots come together, some neatly and others not so comprehensively. All of this may give some viewers a sense of incompleteness, as if the various strands were never adequately resolved. But that, in my estimation, was the whole point of the film. Police work, especially in a beleaguered neighborhood in a dying part of town, is never really going to provide its participants with a total sense of closure.

   Overall, Fort Apache, The Bronx is a solid piece of filmmaking. Largely filmed on location, what the movie lacks in imagination, it more than makes up with stark images of decay and dilapidation. There’s one scene in particular, located toward the end of the movie that remains etched in my mind. Murphy (Newman) is walking alone on the sidewalk just below the elevated subway tracks. In the context of what has recently happened to his character, it’s a beautifully haunting scene begging the question as to what possible impact a solitary man can have in the midst of such sadness and disorder.