THE BIG COMBO. Allied Artists, 1955. Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace, Robert Middleton, Lee Van Cleef, Earl Holliman. Screenplay: Philip Yordan. Cinematography: John Alston. Director: Joseph Lewis.

   Wilde, a detective investigating mobster Conte’s activities, is obsessed with breaking up Conte’s operation and winning his mistress (Jean Wallace) for himself.

   Superbly scripted, directed, and photographed, this film by a director I had never heard of reminded me how little I know about this period. There is a brilliant beginning as Wallace runs down an alley with the fluidity of a trapped moth in beautifully composed and lighted frames.

   One of the strongest performances of his career is given by Brian Donlevy as a deposed monster chief who’s now relegated to backing up Conte. He wears a hearing aid, and Conte likes to torment him by turning up the mechanism and shouting, but he turns it off when Donlevy is gunned down by the Conte’s two henchmen (Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman). The guns blaze in complete silence as the shots light up the dark and the film.

   The reaction of the more knowledgeable members of the audience was that this is certainly a fine film but the Lewis’s masterpiece is Gun Crazy (1950).

HORACE McCOY – Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. Random House, hardcover, 1948. Paperback reprints include: Signet 754, 1949; Avon, 1965.

KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE Warner Brothers, 1950. James Cagney, Barbara Payton, Helena Carter, Ward Bond, Luther Adler, Barton MacLane, Steve Brodie, Rhys Williams, Herbert Heyes, John Litel, William Frawley. Based on the novel by Horace McCoy. Director: Gordon Douglas.

   In 1948, just two years after Lindsey Gresham wrote Nightmare Alley, successful novelist and screenwriter Horace McCoy penned the unforgettable Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, which is the sort of thing you’d get if Proust wrote for Black Mask: a head-long, careening, totally amoral thriller about an escaped con on a crime spree — typical hard-boiled stuff, but couched in syntax that requires a dictionary close at hand.

   Ralph Cotter, the anti-hero of the piece is an alienated super-intellect (or a Sadistic Grad Student) and his first-person narration bandies terms like propliopith-ecustian (primitive) once or twice a page. McCoy laces the tale with ramblings like:

   That sort of thing. And lots of it. Incredibly, McCoy also provides a fast, taut violent tale set in a vivid background of casual corruption and dreamy decadence. An exchange early on, between our “hero” and the cell-mate he will shortly kill before escaping from the chain-gang, sets the tone:

   And so it goes. McCoy parades his cast of killers, bought cops, paid-off politicos and shady ladies with an alluring personal style I found hard to put down and impossible to forget. Like Nightmare Alley, this is not to every taste, but for those who like this sort of thing, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is required reading.

   By the way, there’s a bit in the book where the wealthy daughter of a powerful politician, intrigued by Cotter’s deadly charm, runs away with him for what they called in those days, a night of illicit passion. When her Dad and his rented cops burst in on them, they claim to have been married, then hustle to an out-of-state chapel before he can check up on them.

   Hold that thought a minute, we’ll get back to it. Meanwhile, I should add that this review is based on the unabridged Avon reprint from 1965. The Signet edition is abridged by about a third and includes a snide comment from McCoy on Paperbacks and their readers.

   Someone called the film of Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, “Vicious and uncompromising.” Well, it is enjoyably vicious, thanks mainly to the punchy direction of Gordon (Tony Rome, Rio Conchos, etc.) Douglas, and there are some dandy turns from the likes of James Cagney, Luther Adler, and especially Ward Bond and Barton Maclane (who performed similar function in The Maltese Falcon) as a pair of badly-bent cops, but Harry Brown’s script throws w-a-a-y too many sops to the censors to keep its integrity.

   For starters — literally — McCoy’s tale is presented within a frame, showing, the denizens of his shady universe brought to trial for their misdeeds. During the course of this proceeding, the characters get on the Witness Stand and relate the story in flashback, testifying to things they couldn’t possibly have seen and incriminating themselves and others with cheery abandon. And the Night of Illicit Passion? In the film, when Daddy bursts in on the young couple, they’ve already had their quickie wedding, and are lying in twin beds wearing pajamas looking about as depraved as Ozzie and Harriett.

   I sometimes think only an artist of unflinching vulgarity like Gordon Douglas (who also directed Liberace’s only movie, Sincerely Yours, and did it with a straight face) could have taken material as gutless as this and still made a fairly worthwhile film out of it, and only with a cast as good as he got. Recommended, but with reservations.

THE FIRM. Paramount Pictures, 1993. Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Terry Kinney, Wilford Brimley, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, David Strathairn, Gary Busey, Steven Hill. Based on the novel by John Grisham. Director: Stanley Pollack.

   The Firm takes stabs at evoking a fairly interesting dichotomy between the monied privileged college-degreed Haves vs. the working-stiff Secretaries, Truck Drivers, Small-Time Operators and other Have-Nots, but director Sidney Pollack soft-pedals this, lest he offend the upwardly mobile types the film (and the book it rode in on) is marketed toward.

   After his promising early efforts, like the beguiling, pretentious Castle Keep or the fitfully elegiac Jeremiah Johnson, I’m disappointed to see Pollack work so hard at being slickly professional, but he does accomplish one pleasantly quirky effect: The whole theater cheered when lovable, crusty old Wilfred Brimley got the tar beat out of him. And I never thought I’d see that in a Movie.

DIVA. Les Films Galaxie, France, 1981. United Artists Classics, US, 1982. Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, Frédéric Andréi, Richard Bohringer, Thuy An Luu, Jacques Fabbri, Chantal Deruaz, Anny Romand, Roland Bertin. Based on a novel by Daniel Odier (as Delacorta). Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix.

   I am beginning to think that recommending films to friends should be relegated to the same, ill-advised category as counseling friends who are battling toward divorce or who want to prevent their teenagers from making the same mistakes yours did.

   E. T. made me feel better about children and aliens than anything since Close Encounters, and the newly released French import Diva provoked in me similar feelings about opera singers, French postal workers, and fourteen-year-old Vietnamese flower children. I thought it the most exhilarating thriller in my recent memory, the most stylish, the most imaginative in its use of fairy-tale elements to grace an unlikely mix of operamania/record pirating/corrupt police officials/drugs and prostitution with wit, affection and visual beauty.

   I also liked the references to other film directors (of which the most engaging was the Renoir sequence involving a “blind” beggar) and wallowed in the sentimental ending.

   The friends to whom I had recommended the film stared glumly into space when I asked them what they had thought of it. One of them muttered something about the film being too “self-conscious,” while the other was more to the point: “Why when I see only two films a year, does one of them have to be Diva?”

Well, I will say no more except to add that I think that Diva may be a movie buff’s delight, but too special for some people’s tastes, and if you happen to see it and don’t like it, don’t complain to me. I’m only recommending it to myself, and I am going to see it a second time.

ILLEGAL. Warner Brothers, 1955. Edward G. Robinson, Nina Foch, Hugh Marlowe, Jayne Mansfield, Albert Dekker, Howard St. John, Ellen Corby, Edward Platt, Jan Merlin. Screenplay: W. R. Burnett and James R. Webb. Director: Lewis Allen.

   When District Attorney Victor Scott (Edgar G. Robinson) discovers that he’s sent an innocent man to the chair, not only are his ambitions for a higher office (governor) gone up in smoke, but soon after so is his political career altogether. He resigns, finds he can’t make a go of it as an attorney dealing in civil law, and in spite of the concern of his former assistant (Nina Foch), begins spending more time in bars than he does practicing law.

   But as chance would have it, Scott discovers that his skills in the courtroom on one side are just as good on the other, and soon the money is rolling in as one of the best defense attorneys around, with some of his performances on behalf of his clients putting to shame even the wildest ever dreamed up by the previous master of them all, Perry Mason.

   This attracts the attention of not only the local crime boss but the new D.A., who suspects an inside man is leaking information out of his office. This leads in turn to Nina Foch’s character being accused of murdering… Well, it is complicated, but to the screenwriters’ credit, the story is clearly presented from beginning to end, perhaps to the extent of being at times a little too obvious.

   This is Edgar G. Robinson’s role all the way. The triumphs and failures of the character he plays need someone with a super-sized sense of the extravaganza, and Robinson is just the person to do the job. The rest of players are mere moths flitting around his constant flame.

   Save, just maybe, Jayne Mansfield’s character, a wasp-waisted singer and live-in companion for the aforementioned crime boss makes her a perfect witness on the stand, her breathy whisper-like Marilyn Monroe voice making everyone in the courtroom sit up and take notice.

  DETOUR TO DANGER. Planet Pictures, 1946. Britt Wood, John Day, Nancy Brinckman, Eddie Kane, Fred Kelsey, Si Jenks, Eddie Parker, Ashley Cowan, Bud Wolfe, Ken Terrell. Screenwriter: Alan James. Producer-directors: Harvey Parry & Richard Talmadge.

   I’m not going to kid you. This is one really bad movie, put together by a group of amateurs, I’d bet you think by looking at the credits, but you’d be wrong. Not about this being a bad movie, since it is, but the men behind it, from the producers-directors on down, all had lengthy careers in the movies. Almost all of them have long lists of movies they were involved with in some way or another, some of them up to 300 entries long, perhaps more, going back to the silent days.

   Mostly in bit roles, to be sure, or as stunt men. The leading man, John Day (John Daheim) and both directors did stunt work in loads of movies. They must have decided to put up the financing together to form Planet Pictures, which made only one other movie, Jeep Herders, also in 1946, and while they also probably went broke very quickly, they must have had a lot of fun doing so.

   The plot is nothing, and it’s poorly told. A gang of payroll robbers are forced to land their getaway plane near a summer resort spot somewhere near Big Bear Lake in southern California, where they mingle with the guests until two fishing buddies, Speedy (Britt Wood, and the funny one) and Steve (John Day, the husky clean-cut one) save the day.

   While the crime solving is inept, the romance is even worse. Things are livened up a little when a runaway excursion wagon filled with screaming girls is saved by the two heroes in their beat-up old jalopy, and a fight scene that lasts the final five minutes, much of it taking place in an another runaway truck careening its way down a narrow mountain road.

   What’s remarkable is that this movie was filmed in color. What’s even more remarkable that this movie still exists today, but only Alpha Video would believe it was worth releasing on DVD.

TOUCH OF EVIL. Universal, 1958. Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Joanna Moore, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Screenplay: Orson Welles, based on the novel Badge of Evil, by Whit Masterson. Director: Orson Welles.

WHIT MASTERSON – Badge of Evil. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1955. Reprinted as Touch of Evil, Bantam A1699, paperback, 1958; Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1992.

   In contrast to The Long Wait, reviewed here, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, now available in a restored Director’s Cut, begins its cinematic fireworks with the first shot and never pauses for the smoke to clear. The tale of bigoted cops and a corrupt investigation unfolds in scene after scene of sheer cinematic brilliance —

   — and I have to say it gets a bit tiring after a while; like watching unending MTV videos or Previews of Coming Attractions that never stop. The eye tires after forty minutes or so (This eye did, anyway.) and I was glad for the relative quiet of a few reflective moments with Marlene Dietrich at her weary best as a Gypsy fortune-teller (“Your future’s all used up.”) just one of a number of cameo appearances that include Ray Collins and Joseph Cotton from Citizen Kane, and Mercedes McCambridge as a lesbian biker.

   On the other hand, Whit Masterson’s book that this was based on, Badge of Evil, is so bland as to be resolutely unreadable. The flat prose recounts little but a few cardboard characters moving slowly through an unremarkable plot to no discernible end. But perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on this book, since I couldn’t finish it; maybe things really picked up after the first fifty-odd pages.

  THE UNSTOPPABLE MAN. Argo Film Productions, UK, 1960. US release, 1961. Cameron Mitchell, Marius Goring (Inspector Hazelrigg), Harry H. Corbett, Lois Maxwell, Denis Gilmore, Humphrey Lestocq, Ann Sears. Based on the short story “Amateur in Violence,” by Michael Gilbert. Director: Terry Bishop.

   Sometimes criminals, despite all the possible planning, still pick the wrong target. That’s definitely the case in The Unstoppable Man, a taut British thriller. Directed by Terry Bishop, the movie stars Cameron Mitchell, a veteran actor best known for his work in American and Italian film as well on American television.

   Mitchell portrays James Kennedy, an American businessman in London whose business acumen seemingly is unparalleled. Kennedy is put to the test when his young son is kidnapped and held for ransom by a motley crew of thugs. Scotland Yard wants to take the lead, but Kennedy has his own plans. They include paying off the hostage takers in a greater amount than they demand, with the expectation that thieves aren’t the most honest of men and will gladly turn on each other for a few quid more.

   In The Unstoppable Man, that proves to be the case.

   One of the kidnapper gang ends up dead and helps lead Kennedy (and the cops) to the house where his son is being held. It’s there that the action finally, and somewhat belatedly, kicks in. Although he’s a man more used to the boardroom, Kennedy shows he can brawl as if he were in a barroom. There’s even a great scene – a pivotal one – where Kennedy utilizes a would-be flamethrower against a man involved in his son’s kidnapping.

   While there’s nothing in The Unstoppable Man that’s exceptional, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good — make that a very good — crime film. Running at around seventy minutes, it’s economical both on plot and the viewer’s time. But what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in atmosphere and an early 1960s jazz-influenced soundtrack that works very well.

   For crime fans, it’s worth watching if you get the opportunity. For Mitchell fans (and I know that some are out there), it’s a must see.

THE CAT BURGLAR. United Artists, 1961. Jack Hogan, June Kenney, John Baer, Gregg Palmer, Will White, Gene Roth, Bruno VeSota. Screenwriter: Leo Gordon. Director: William Witney.

   The Cat Burglar doesn’t have the most unique plot, the best actors, or the greatest cinematography. But what it has going for it is atmosphere. An atmosphere of low-rent criminals, sleaze, and the type of world-weariness and despair you’d expect to find on the margins of polite society. Plus there’s a pretty great fight sequence in a warehouse at the end of the movie.

   Directed by William Witney, the story follows the tragic life of third, make that fourth, rate Southern California cat burglar Jack Coley (Jack Hogan). Coley gets more than he bargains for when he breaks into a woman’s apartment and steals a briefcase that contains – you guessed it – documents and papers that a foreign spy ring is more than eager to get their hands (and fists) on. As I said, it’s not the most unique plot.

   Witney’s direction takes us to the low-rent side of Los Angeles: a pawnshop, the broken down apartment of a criminal low-life fixer, Coley’s ratty garden apartment, and a warehouse filled with cardboard boxes. Coley is a tragic figure, a man who knows he’s really not a very good person. In the course of the film, he gets chewed out by his landlady and beaten to a bloody pulp. He also redeems himself at the very end, demonstrating to himself that his life hasn’t been a complete waste.

   All told, it’s a fairly bleak, albeit disconcertingly entertaining, little production. Part of this is due to the Buddy Bregman jazz soundtrack. Granted, it’s a bit unusual to have an early 1960s jazz sound to a taut, low budget crime thriller. But The Cat Burglar is, in many ways, a quite unusual film.

   Yes, the story doesn’t really make all that much sense or hold up to scrutiny all that well. But in a way, it really doesn’t matter. The film is less about the story, than it is about taking the viewer a cinematic sojourn through the frighteningly sleazy shadows of sun-baked Los Angeles. And with Witney at the helm, The Cat Burglar does that pretty darn well.

THE LONG WAIT. United Artists, 1954. Anthony Quinn, Charles Coburn, Gene Evans, Peggie Castle, Mary Ellen Kay, Shawn Smith, Dolores Donlon. Based on the book by Mickey Spillane. Director: Victor Saville.

   Victor Saville’s film of The Long Wait from the novel by Mickey Spillane, is an action-packed but mostly banal affair, bucked up somewhat by Anthony Quinn as a hard-boiled amnesiac who loses his fingerprints and memory in a fiery car crash that opens the thing.

   Wandering back to his home town, he finds himself wanted for an old murder by the local cops, and definitely unwanted by the local crooks, who find his presence somehow threatening to Organized Crime thereabouts. Indeed, the only ones with a friendly interest in Quinn are a half-dozen beautiful women who — because this is a Spillane story — fling themselves at him, knees akimbo, and — because this is a 50s movie — take him up to their apartments and dance with him.

   The story proceeds mostly by-the-numbers, competent but unremarkable, helped along by vigorous thesping from the likes of Charles Coburn, Gene Evans and Bruno VeSota as the sweatiest henchman in film noir.

   Anthony Quinn, who cut his acting teeth playing small-time hoods in Paramount “B” movies, brings a mean-spirited panache to the goings-on, and then…

   … and then for some reason there are five minutes in The Long Wait of pure, sadistic brilliance: A protracted execution, set in an abandoned warehouse, with harsh lights, minimal sets and camerawork that spreads like an expressionist dream across the screen as Gene Evans taunts and toys with his bound victims until….

   But that would be spoiling things. Suffice it to say that The Long Wait may be a more descriptive title than the producers intended, but it’s definitely worth the time.