MY GUN IS QUICK. United Artists, 1957. Robert Bray, Whitney Blake, Richard Garland. Screenplay: Richard Powell and Richard Collins, based on the novel by Mickey Spillane. Directed by George White.

   You’re going to make a movie based on a book by the bestselling writer of the decade, so naturally you totally ignore the plot and instead do a poverty row rehash of The Maltese Falcon only with Mike Hammer instead of Sam Spade.

   Richard Powell, who wrote the screenplay with Richard Collins, obviously was no Spillane fan. A fine novelist (The Philadelphian) and top notch mystery writer (the Arab and Andy Blake series of screwball mysteries), he scrapped everything save the opening scene where Mike Hammer (Robert Bray) meets the prostitute Red in a late night diner, and sets out to avenge her death when she is brutally murdered.

   We’re in Los Angeles and Mike does have an office, a secretary named Velda, a cop pal named Pat Chambers, and he is a brutal lout, but from that point on you won’t recognize Spillane or Hammer, or the plot of My Gun is Quick the novel.

   Bray was a personable enough actor, most probably remembered as Lassie’s forest ranger owner in the color series, but as Hammer he is brutal, stupid, a slob, and can’t even wear the pork-pie right (neither could Kevin Dobson or Stacy Keach — the crown is not creased, which is why it’s called a pork-pie). Granted Spillane’s Hammer isn’t a barrel of laughs, but he is a snappy dresser, and however brutal and rude, he isn’t stupid.

   The falcon — I mean the Bianchi jewels — are the meaningless McGuffin, and the femme fatale is wholesome Whitney Blake, Mrs. B from Hazel, the television series based on Ted Post’s Saturday Evening Post cartoons about the impossible maid of the same name played by Shirley Booth. She’s about as seductive as coconut cream pie. (Well, okay, she’s nowhere near as seductive as coconut cream pie, but she is as wholesome.)

   The story and direction are all competent, but they are generic fifties private eye 101, which is the one thing Spillane’s Hammer never was. Love him or hate him, he was never just another private eye nor Spillane just another mystery writer. Hammer isn’t really a detective half as much as what Robert Sampson called a Justice figure, an avenger.

   It’s no accident that Spillane’s roots lie in Carrol John Daly’s Race Williams, Tarzan, Doc Savage, the Shadow, the Spider, Captain America, and the Saint (inspiration for Morgan the Raider). Hammer is closer to d’Artagnan (he’s a huge Dumas fan as well, with The Erection Set and The Long Wait both as inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo as Hammett’s Red Harvest) and James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumpo, Hawkeye, than Poe’s Dupin or Doyle’s Holmes.

   Urban hero that he may be, Hammer is last of Rousseau’s ‘noble savages,’ the natural man arriving full blown without history or family, a force of nature, white hot, and consumed by a overarching sense of justice — if not law. The crudity of Spillane’s early work (he became a very good writer as he learned) never-the-less shows a deep seated identification with the post-war psyche and a natural affinity for the written word. You don’t have to like Spillane to recognize his power as a writer.

   To ignore all that, to ignore Spillane for what he is and Hammer as himself, as this film does, negates the whole point of Mickey Spillane’s role in the world of fifties popular literature.

   Bray’s Hammer is just another private eye, with just another case, and just another femme fatale. The plot would have been perfectly suited t,o an episode of 77 Sunset Strip (which did one Spillane plot seven times) or any of its numerous off shoots. Bray’s Hammer is everyman private detective, but he isn’t Mike Hammer though he is the closest physically to Spillane’s concept of the actors who have played the role.

   I can’t say much more. The people you suspect are the ones who did it, the brutality mostly consists of grabbing one small owner of a diner by his shirt, Velda isn’t much of one thing or the other, only another faithful private eye secretary, and Pat Chambers is just another best buddy cop to warn the hero about crossing the lines the hero of these things can’t see anyway. There is no attempt to capture anything of the feel of Spillane and Hammer.

   There’s a half decently shot bit where Hammer watches a murder investigation through the skylight of Blake’s split level beach house, but if that’s the films highlight’, you can guess what the rest is like. The climax and Bray’s version of the ‘I have to turn you in because I’m a detective’ speech are just flat. No one gets gut shot, blown away with a shotgun, or blown up by a gas-filled basement, much less shot by a baby in his crib, and Blake at worst looks like she never really expected to seduce anyone in the first place.

   I won’t say skip it, it is Spillane and Hammer, but watch it on Netflix, don’t buy it, even for $5. It’s just not very good, nor bad enough to be fun. The posters for the film are nice though. And yes, it’s the kind of movie where you review the posters. Watch Kiss Me Deadly, The Girl Hunters, or the Keach or McGavin series, even that little one off made for television movie set in Miami is arguably more interesting than this.

   Skip this, save as a completist, or just to see Hazel’s Mrs B. as a seductress.

A FINE PAIR. National General Pictures, 1969. First released in Italy as Ruba al prossimo tuo (1968). Rock Hudson, Claudia Cardinale, Leon Askin, Ellen Corby. Tony Lo Bianco. Score by Ennio Morricone. Directed by Francesco Masselli.

   Sadly that is the best line in this rather strained caper comedy that never quite lives up to the jaunty Ennio Morricone score.

   Rock Hudson is dour police Captain Mike Harmon, a pain in everyone’s ass, who was close to Esmerelda’s policeman father with young Esmerelda having a schoolgirl crush on him that has carried over to the present day.

   It’s not a match made in heaven though, Esmerelda is a rebel and jewel thief.

   She wants Hudson to help her return the jewels she stole in Austria from a wealthy American’s villa and he reluctantly agrees (all too easily).

   Of course she is breezy, fun, amoral, smart, sexy, and only half clothed most of the time so it is natural the stiff cold Captain is going to melt — almost literally when he has to get the villa they are robbing to 194 degrees to disable the alarm and she holds the place up in nothing but wet bra and panties.

   Nor does he suspect he returned paste jewels while she stole the real ones — again.

   By the time he finds out she has to return more jewels in Rome, he is hooked on her and crime, and they have a big row when she decides to turn hones,t so Mike pulls off the heist and frames her having her own uncle arrest her so she can’t leave.

   After a narrow squeak the two end up happily together.

   And it just ends.

   One thing, with Rock in black framed glasses you now know how he would look as Clark Kent or Rip Kirby.

   This light film would like to be something along the lines of A Man and A Woman, with an infectious score, flashy photography, and a naturalistic look. The problem is Francesco Masselli is a heavy-handed and unimaginative director, Hudson doesn’t seem comfortable with his character for the first half of the film, and while Cardinale is gorgeous and fun, she makes no sense as a character.

   Had they done this a few years earlier as one of those slick Universal films Hudson was so ubiquitous in from the late fifties through the mid-sixties, it might have been the light playful romantic comedy caper it was meant to be, but this is just a bore.

   Cardinale is beautiful, funny, sexy, and screwball, the scenery is lovely, and the two actors have some chemistry once Hudson is able to move into a more familiar mode, but it’s a highly unsatisfying film otherwise.

   I missed it the on its initial release and it has taken until now to see it. I wish now I had waited another couple of decades.

   Not bad so much as ho, hum.

THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG. Columbia Pictures, 1939. Boris Karloff, Lorna Gray, Robert Wilcox, Roger Pryor, Don Beddoe, Ann Doran, Jo De Stefani, Charles, Trowbridge, Byron Foulger. Director: Nick Grinde.

   If in Night Key (reviewed recently here) Boris Karloff was a bumbling but revengeful old inventor who was seriously wronged, he was at heart a kindly old gentleman with (as I made a point in mentioning) a beautiful daughter. In The Man They Could Not Hang, Mr. Karloff is a scientist, not an inventor, and even before he is serious wronged (see below) he doesn’t have the best of dispositions to begin with.

   But after he is hanged (see the title), his quest for revenge upon the jury, the judge, prosecutor, and the members of the police force who helped convict him turns him into a mad scientist whose vengeance is clever, wicked and just plain diabolical.

   His crime? That of killing a medical student who had willingly agreed to become the subject of Dr. Henryck Savaard’s latest experiment – a crucial one indeed, one in which the student is put to death under controlled conditions, expecting to waken again by means of a strange, weird-looking apparatus in Savaard’s laboratory.

   The police are summoned before the test of the equipment is completed, however, and their intervention means the student cum guinea pig is doomed to a permanent death.

   The middle third of the movie is the slowest moving one, taking place as it does in the courtroom, with plenty of room for the prosecutor and Dr. Savaard to speak their views and respond to the other’s. Savaard suggests that being able to bring patients back to life on the operating table would mean more lives saved during surgery; nix on that, says the D.A.: a death is a death, and murder is murder.

   The last third of the film could have been the most fun, with many of well-recovered Dr. Savaard’s would-be victims locked up together in a booby-trapped house, and for the most part is it is, but the ending seems rushed. Here (not so coincidentally) is also where the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter comes into play – an essential role, to be sure, but one well telegraphed in advance.

                  

NIGHT KEY. Universal Pictures, 1937. Boris Karloff, Warren Hull, Jean Rogers, Alan Baxter, Hobart Cavanaugh, Samuel Hinds, Ward Bond. Director: Lloyd Corrigan.

   This film, as I understand it, was unavailable in the non-bootleg market for some time, but it finally made an official appearance in a nicely done Boris Karloff box set that came out about eight years ago. I think it safe to say that if Mr. Karloff were not in this film, this would be yet one more orphaned film never to see the light of day on DVD, much less one as clear and crisp as this one is.

   Night Key, though, might disappoint those fans of Mr. Karloff who think of him as only a villain or a mad scientist (often both at the same time). He plays an elderly old inventor named Dave Mallory in this one, a bumbling old fellow who got cheated out of the royalties for his earlier invention, one that has made thousands if not millions for the owner of a security firm who has used his electronic locking device for several years now, installed in hundreds if not thousands of businesses, both large conglomerates and small mom-and-pop’s.

   So much a bumbling old fellow that when he comes up with a new invention, one that improves on the old one by a huge factor, where does he go with it? To the very same guy who cheated him once before. Even using a lawyer to draw up the contract does not avail – the lawyer himself is crooked.

   To avenge himself upon these miscreants, the near-sighted Dave Mallory recruits a fellow in small crime (Hobart Cavanaugh, as “Petty Louie”) to break into firms that use the old security device, not to steal or thieve, but to rummage around, rearrange things, and simply let the bad publicity take its toll.

   There are two distinct parts to this movie, split right down the middle at the halfway point. The first is nearly a comedy-type adventure as well as it is a set-up for the second half – it turns out that Petty Louie was the lucky 10,000th victim nabbed in the act by the security company’s first device, only to be snatched out the lockup by Mallory and the skillful use of the new one – and Mr. Karloff’s version of an elderly old man shuffling around in a constant state of bewilderment is right on – body language and all. (He was 50 at the time. His character seems to be nearing his eighties.)

   But the second half, which begins the minute a gang of real crooks gets wind of Mallory’s new device, is as straightforward as a line drawn from this point to the next. Lots of cars speeding their way down streets, sirens wailing; kidnapping and other threats at gun point, and subsequent shootouts – there’s not much funny stuff going on here, especially not when one the primary participants ends up dead, to the notice of very few. Mr. Karloff’s skill in creating the wonderful character which he did is all but wasted.

   There is also a small romance going on throughout the film, between one of the security guards (Warren Hull, in a silly uniform throughout) and Jean Rogers (Dale Arden, once upon a time), which serves largely as a time-filler. It does make one wonder, though, how old bumbling scientists and inventors obsessed with their work ever find the time and opportunity be sire such beautiful daughters as they do in movies such as this one.

ARMORED CAR ROBBERY. RKO Radio Pictures, 1950. Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, William Talman, Douglas Fowley, Steve Brodie, Don McGuire, Don Haggerty. Director: Richard Fleischer.

   Armored Car Robbery is a heist film/film noir directed by Richard Fleischer (Fantastic Voyage, The Vikings). Filmed on location in Los Angeles, the film stars Charles McGraw (The Narrow Margin, Spartacus) as Lt. Jim Cordell. He’s tasked with tracking down a gang of four criminals responsible for a fatal armored car robbery. While the film’s acting isn’t particularly memorable, it benefits considerably from a solid plot, believable criminal characters, and its postwar Los Angeles setting.

   William Talman (Perry Mason) portrays Dave Purvis, a greedy and ruthless piece of work who isn’t above murdering anyone who gets in his way. Early in the film, Purvis convinces the down on his luck Benny McBride (Douglas Fowley) to join him in an armored car job. McBride is still very much in love with his burlesque dancer wife, Yvonne LeDoux (Adele Jergens). Problem is: she’s not in love with him. In fact, she’s carrying on a dalliance with Purvis.

   Purvis and McBride, along with two other men, Al Mapes (Steve Brodie) and William “Ace” Foster (Gene Evans) hold up an armored car outside Los Angeles’s Wrigley Field, a baseball stadium. Of course, things don’t go as planned. The timing of the operation is off and the cops arrive on the scene too soon. Lt. Cordell’s partner is killed and McBride is wounded.

   The four ill-fated criminals flee the scene by automobile, driving past the Los Angeles oil fields and toward the harbor. Tensions between the men reach a boiling point. Funny thing: newly, and illicitly, acquired cash seems to do that to a certain class of criminals. Unsurprisingly, Purvis ends up shooting and killing the already wounded McBride. After all, Purvis not only after McBride’s share of the loot; he’s after his cheating wife.

   Soon after, Lt. Cordell and the police arrive at the harbor and begin their extensive manhunt for the criminals responsible for the heist. For a good portion of the rest of the film, we see Cordell and his new rookie partner in pursuit of an increasingly reckless Purvis. This cat-and-mouse chase culminates in an impressive, tension filled showdown at an airfield where the doomed ringleader forgets to look both ways before he runs across a runway.

   Although it’s a relatively short film, running just over an hour, there’s more than enough action and suspense to keep one engaged throughout the film. The Los Angeles settings are spectacular. From the ballpark to the oil fields, from the harbor near the San Pedro to a motor lodge, one feels transported back in time to 1950 Southern California.

   The weakest part of the film is the dialogue. There just aren’t all that many memorable lines in the film, at least none that will stay with you for any considerable amount of time. But then again, one does not watch movies such as Armored Car Robbery primarily for the acting or for the dialogue.

   In conclusion, though, Armored Car Robbery is a real gem. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s definitely worth consideration. If you’ve seen it long ago, it’s worth a second look. It’s definitely a lesser-known film, but it’s one that stands up to the test of time. Armored Car Robbery may not be a classic, but it’s still a perfectly good heist film and one of Fleischer’s earlier works that doesn’t get nearly as much appreciation as it deserves.

THE LINEUP. Columbia Pictures, 1958. Eli Wallach, Robert Keith, Richard Jaeckel, Mary LaRoche, William Leslie, Emile Meyer, Marshall Reed, Raymond Bailey, Vaughn Taylor, Warner Anderson. Screenplay: Stirling Silliphant. Director: Don Siegel.

   The Lineup is a visually captivating thriller set in the historic buildings and on the daytime streets and roadways of San Francisco. It stars Eli Wallach (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), in one of his earliest big screen roles, as a Brooklyn-accented sociopathic hired gun for an international heroin smuggling operation.

   Directed by Don Siegel (Dirty Harry), The Lineup is best interpreted as two distinct films wrapped together in one package. Indeed, the film, based on both a CBS radio show (1950-1953) and television show (1954-1960) of the same name, is two movies in one: a formulaic, somewhat forgettable, police procedural and a very good, albeit under-appreciated, film noir. It’s the story of a disturbingly violent, and somewhat pathetic, criminal on the margins of polite society, a man whose own unbridled rage propels him to his inevitable doom.

   The film begins as a standard police procedural, opening with a fast-paced action sequence near the San Francisco docks. A porter throws a suitcase into a cab that promptly, and recklessly, speeds away, ramming into a truck and killing a police officer in the process. Lt. Ben Guthrie (Warner Anderson, reprising his role in the TV show) and his partner, Inspector Al Quine (Emile Meyer) are called on to investigate.

   Neither of the characters come across as particularly devoted to the task at hand, although Anderson’s portrayal of a detective is far more engaging than is Quine’s. But the movie isn’t really about them — more on that in a minute.

   The two San Francisco cops discover that the cab driver was part of a heroin smuggling operation and that an international cartel is utilizing unsuspecting passengers from East Asia to smuggle heroin into the United States. One such passenger is Philip Dressler (Raymond Bailey), a prominent member of San Francisco society employed at the architecturally impressive San Francisco Opera House. Dressler is called into the police station to witness a lineup, but he doesn’t recognize the porter who yanked his suitcase from his arms and threw it into the cab. Still, it’s not long until the porter shows up dead.

   The film quickly shifts gears from a police procedural to a film noir about two hit men tasked with finding — and killing — other passengers who inadvertently smuggled heroin into the United States and to deliver the dope to a criminal known only as The Man (Vaughn Taylor), a real piece of work who only appears on the screen for a several minutes.

   We first see the film’s protagonist/anti-hero, the brutal hired gun Dancer (Wallach) sitting on an airplane with his partner and mentor, the incredibly creepy Julian (Robert Keith). Dancer is reading a book of English grammar in an attempt to learn how to properly use the subjunctive tense so as to sound less like a New York gangster. This, of course, was Julian’s idea. Somewhere along the way, Julian made Dancer his pet project and clearly wants to smooth over the killer’s rough edges.

   The men arrive in San Francisco and are quickly greeted by their driver, Sandy McLain (Richard Jaeckel). The three men, all losers each in their own way, successfully track down the first two carriers. It’s when they are tasked with retrieving the heroin from a woman, Dorothy Bradshaw, and her daughter Cindy that things, in classic noir fashion, all fall apart. The turning point in the film occurs when Dancer wants to kill Bradshaw and is stopped from doing so by Julian.

   Wallach is simply excellent in this film. He portrays Dancer, a man born of rage and without a relationship with his father, convincingly. Watch throughout for his Dancer’s eye, and facial, expressions, particularly during his showdown with The Man in Sutro’s Museum.

   Keith is equally convincing in his portrayal of Julian, a bizarre man who enjoys jotting down the last words people say before they die. In a one remarkably unsettling scene that shows characterization, Julian, upon seeing his female hostage weep, bursts out with his own self-serving pseudo-intellectual rhetoric. It’s not so much his misogyny that’s appalling; rather, it’s that he actually seems to believe his own nonsense:

   â€œSee, you cry. That’s why women have no place in society. Women are weak. Crime’s aggressive and so is the law. Ordinary people of your class—you don’t understand the criminal’s need for violence.”

   She replies (how else could she reply?): “You’re sick.”

   But as The Lineup shows us, that type of criminal sickness has real consequences. By the time the movie ends with a dramatic car chase on the unfinished Embarcadero Freeway, both Julian and Dancer, not to mention The Man, are dead, with their own character flaws playing significant roles in their not particularly tragic demises. Although the film takes place during the day rather than at night, it’s noir at its very best.

WELCOME TO THE PUNCH. IFC Films, 2013. James MacAvoy, Mark Strong , Peter Mullan, Johnny Harris, David Morrissey. Written and directed by Eran Creevy.

   This Brit neo-noir bristles with violence, moral ambiguity, hard driving atmosphere, shadows, and edgy camera work, but like the best of the British crime films it is driven by character. The people are not violent cartoons, but human beings. The heroes are flawed and the villains all too human.

   The film opens with hard-driven London detective Max Lewinsky (James MacAvoy) catching a high end heist. Against orders he pursues the gas-masked villains on motorbikes even though he is unarmed. That ends badly with Max knee-capped by the leader or the team, Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong).

   Years later Lewinsky is in constant pain and addicted to pain killers, but still a cop, working with his partner and lover Sarah (Andrea Risenborough) on a case involving arms smuggled into England, assigned by his friend Metropolitan Police Commander Thomas Geiger (David Morrissey). When a low level street hood, Ruan Sternwood (Elyes Gabel), is killed in relation to the case, Max knows it will bring his long-since-missing father back for revenge, and his chance to bring him down.

   Sternwood shows up wanting revenge, and with the help of his old friend Roy Stewart (Peter Mullan) sets himself up with the men who killed Ruan. Soon he and Max find themselves alone against para-military killers with powerful connections and Max finds he was assigned to the case to fail.

   When Dean Warns (Johnny Harris), one of the para-military killers, murders Sarah because she is onto something, Max and Sternwood find themselves allied with one goal: vengeance.

   Welcome to the Punch moves quickly, and depends on strong performances with MacAvoy and Sternwood sketching in their relationship without a lot of extraneous dialogue. Nothing is spelled out in long-winded speeches, but is shown instead in their faces and actions. MacAvoy in particular brings a great deal of nuance to his wounded, angry, but honest policeman. Neither he, nor Strong are playing supermen for all their skills, and the shootouts have actual suspense because they are very human targets. The “Punch” of the title is a loading dock where the final odds against survival shootout takes place.

   They do survive bullet wounds that in real life would throw them into instant shock and likely kill them, but at least they are more than the famous flesh wound of a million cowboy pictures, and you can just buy that adrenalin might get them through to the end in the real world. If you truly did one of these realistically, the film would be a one-reeler, mostly watching the hero bleed out in ten minutes or less, if shock didn’t kill him first, while he lay on the ground in a semi-conscious stupor.

   These kinds of action films are no more realistic than comic book, fantasy, western, and science fiction films, and it is equally pointless to hold them to the standards of realism (or any film for that matter). This is no more the real world than a Fred Astaire musical is. At best film and literature create an illusion of reality, and you buy it or not.

   The complex plot behind all the violence hardly matters, but is filled in enough to cover the action and provide a suitably large conspiracy for the two loners to confront. There is enough at stake to make the conspiracy seem plausible, yet not so much it is improbable two violent men couldn’t bring it down once they know who the key players for.

   This is no cop-buddy film, not a British 48 Hours, or anything like. Max and Sternwood are drawn together by their loss, rage, and desire for revenge, but though they might respect each other, there aren’t going to be any hugs at the end of the film. There may be a brief moment when they recognize uncomfortably that they are more alike than not, but they are far from bosom buddies.

   I don’t want to oversell this, you are likely better off to catch it on cable, Red Box, or Netflix it than pay through the nose to see it in a theater, but it is a well thought out and acted action film. It’s no Lock Stock and Smoking Barrel, Get Carter (the Michael Caine original), Long Friday Night, Mona Lisa, or even the belly laugh cop buddy send up Hot Fuzz, but it is fast paced, stylishly shot, and it won’t insult your intelligence.

   There are no surprises, it is all predictable, but it is also marked by the good acting, script, direction, and action, all handled with nary a hitch, and you won’t come away from it with your seat numb because it ran on forever.

   There is something to be said for a film that does what it sets out to with success whether it is innovative and new or not, and the cinematography by Harry Escott is sharply done.

   If you watch it and like these kind of movies you will likely enjoy Welcome to the Punch quite a bit. It’s a well done gritty action film that has more brains and heart than many films like it with bigger stars, credits, and budgets.

TIGER IN THE SMOKE. J. Arthur Rank, UK, 1956. Donald Sinden, Muriel Pavlow, Tony Wright, Laurence Naismith and Beatrice Varley. Screenplay by Anthony Pelissier, from the novel by Margery Allingham. Directed by Roy Ward Baker.

   First off, you should know that I watched this quite by accident. Maybe even by mistake; after reading Never Come Back, I ordered the movie supposedly made from it (Tiger by the Tail) but the dealer sent me this instead — and I’m very glad he did.

   Fans of Margery Allingham (I know you’re out there; I can hear you knitting your tea-cosies) may be disappointed to find that the makers of this film dispensed completely with Albert Campion, but lovers of tricky, off-beat movie-making will be delighted by it—or at least the first half, which opens with a visual symphony worthy of Welles or Vorkapich.

   It’s all set in a thick London smog, through which the characters pursue one another, appearing and vanishing at odd moments, lurking half-seen, or unseen, or maybe-seen with eerie precision. Director Baker (or maybe Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth deserves the credit) knows just when to generate suspense by looming a shifty shape up in the background, and just when to lose it in the mist. And there’s a remarkably fine extended business with a band of sinister performing street beggars, who wander in and out of frame in movements that look to have inspired the opening stretch of Touch of Evil.

   The film itself is as intriguing plot-wise as visually: As the story opens, Meg Elgin (the delightful Muriel Pavlow) is being escorted by the police to rendezvous with a mystery man who may be her presumed-dead-in-the-war husband. Her helpful/hopeful fiancé (Donald Sinden) is also along, as the party make their way through the treacherous smog, dogged by those oddly menacing (and horribly off-key) street performers, and discover that the man who arranged the meeting is an only actor who resembles her late husband — but he’s wearing the dead man’s coat!

   From here things diverge, with Sinden trailing the actor and getting caught up with the malignant cacophonists, while Pavlow and the cops try to find out how the actor got the coat. Along the way we find that a bad guy called Jack Havoc has broken jail and is out there searching for… we don’t know for what yet, but we do know it has something to do with the late husband, and Havoc is willing — even eager — to kill for whatever it is. As one of the detectives comments, “He’s pure evil.”

   Eventually Jack Havoc makes his appearance, and at this point the film falters badly. Tony Wright, who plays the part, may have been a capable actor for all I know, but he simply doesn’t project the menace we’ve been led to expect. Moreover, the fog dissipates and the visuals quiet down as the plot eventually moves off to sun-drenched Brittany and a conclusion that recalls the endings of Saboteur and North by Northwest.

   There’s a surprising scene at the three-quarter mark where the heroine’s vicar father tries to reclaim Havoc’s soul, intelligently done and well-played, but it somehow misses the pathos and emotion it should have carried.

   Ah well. There is, however, one surprisingly effective character: one Lucy Cash, a respectable, church-going and totally repellant creation who sucks blood out of the local poor people, and she’s played with quiet assurance by Beatrice Varley, whom you may remember from Horrors of the Black Museum. At any rate, she leads us to a minor plot twist where (SPOILER ALERT!) it turns out she’s Jack Havoc’s mum. Which makes his real name Johnny Cash, so you can see why he changed it.

Editorial Comment: David Vineyard reviewed both the book and the film nearly four years ago on this blog. Check out what he had to say here.

THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF. 20th Century Fox, 1950. Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt, John Dall, Lisa Howard. Screenplay: Seton I. Miller & Philip MacDonald. Director: Felix E. Feist.

   The Man Who Cheated Himself is a 1950 film noir set in San Francisco. Directed by Felix E. Feist, the movie reunites Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt, who starred together in Elia Kazan’s Boomerang (1947).

   Lt. Ed Cullen (Cobb) and his younger brother, Andy (John Dall) are cops working homicide. Ed’s been around the block for a while; he’s tough, cynical, and a committed bachelor. Andy’s new to the homicide division. The kid’s got good looks, ambition, and an inquisitive mind. He’s a Boy Scout, hardworking and perhaps a bit too pure of heart for the job. And unlike his brother who’s a notorious skirt chaser, the younger Cullen is eager to settle down with his lovely new bride.

   Andy Cullen’s first homicide case gets underway after witnesses spot a car pulling out of the airport, leaving a bullet riddled body in its wake. As it turns out, the man who was killed turns out to be the estranged husband of the woman with whom Ed Cullen is carrying on an illicit affair. Complicating matters for the enterprising young detective is that he and Ed are pretty close, both figuratively and literally. Not only do the two share an office, they also live in the same apartment.

   The movie itself begins with Howard Frazer (portrayed by Harlan Warde) sitting at his desk with a newly acquired gun. Although he’s able to hide the gun before his estranged wife, Lois Frazer (Wyatt), enters the room, Frazer accidentally lets the sales slip fall to the ground. They argue. He leaves for the airport, headed to Seattle for something to do with salmon fishing.

   After Howard Frazer leaves the house, Lois finds both the sales slip and the gun. She’s beside herself, petrified that her husband is plotting to murder her. Fortunately for her, she’s got a direct link to the police in her paramour, Lt. Ed Cullen (Cobb), who heads over to the house and tells her to calm down. That’s then things begin to go awry for Cullen, transforming the cynical cop into a corrupt one.

   Soon, Howard Frazer comes back into the house, apparently looking for his gun. It’s not exactly clear whether he came back to rob the house or to murder Lois. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Lois has his gun and she uses it to plug her husband in the chest a couple of times, killing him. At that moment, would-be divorcee’s action hysteria prompts Lt. Ed Cullen to dispose of both the body and the gun. The thing is, he really doesn’t need much convincing.

   As one might suspect, Cullen’s plan to get rid of Howard Frazer’s body doesn’t work out quite as planned. His car is spotted leaving the airport where he dumps the body, and his attempt to throw the murder weapon off the Golden Gate Bridge into the water doesn’t work out exactly as planned, either. Making matters even worse for him is his brother who’s eager to solve the crime no matter where it leads him. Andy Cullen even postpones his honeymoon to work on the Frazer murder case.

   The film’s penultimate scene features a cat-and-mouse chase between the two brothers in Fort Point, an American Civil War-era structure set underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s one particularly visually stunning scene in which Andy Cullen walks through a long hallway with flanked with many open doorways. Alfred Hitchcock would go on to make ample use of Fort Point in Vertigo (1958).

   During the final scene, if not before, one begins to suspect that Lois’s hysteria was just a big act. The question of whether she was using Ed all along in a plot to get rid of her husband remains unanswered, leaving viewers to make up their own minds. Viewers likewise will have to decide for themselves whether Wyatt was a good fit for the role of Lois Frazer, who seems to be capable of only two emotional states: complete hysteria or complete control.

   The plot of The Man Who Cheated Himself is not particularly unique, at least within the detective or film noir genres. It’s Cobb’s acting that makes the film worth viewing. Look, in particular, for the scene in which Cullen, after dumping Frazer’s body, is driving across the bridge. Cobb’s facial expression at that moment epitomizes his all his hard-boiled character’s doubts and fears. He’s crossed several lines, and boy, does he know it.

   Given Cobb’s acting and the appealing San Francisco setting, it’s unfortunate that a remastered copy of this film isn’t available. Neither the audio and visual quality of the DVD I watched (from Alpha Video) is very good, with moments in which the sound is garbled, making it somewhat difficult to catch all of the dialogue. I also didn’t find the soundtrack to be all that memorable. That said, The Man Who Cheated Himself is a solid film noir well worth watching at least once.

STORM WARNING. Warner Brothers, 1951. Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Doris Day, Steve Cochran, Hugh Sanders. Screenplay: Daniel Fuchs & Richard Brooks. Director: Stuart Heisler.

   As much a cultural artifact as it is a film, Storm Warning (1951) is about a big city woman who witnesses a murder in a small town, the KKK’s stranglehold on otherwise decent people, and a county prosecutor’s determination to both solve a murder and to bring down the local Klan. Directed by Stuart Heisler (The Hurricane) and starring Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Doris Day, and Steve Cochran, the film is both a captivating tale of suspense and a cinematic jeremiad against the Klan’s role in the post-war South.

   With a screenplay written by Richard Brooks (Elmer Gantry) and Daniel Fuchs (Criss Cross), Storm Warning is notable for its strong anti-Klan message, its bleak depiction of the mores of a particular slice of small town America, and its tragic, downbeat ending.

   Indeed, shadowy black and white cinematography, a setting with dark streets, a neon-lit diner, and an abandoned bus terminal, and a brutal on screen murder, signal Storm Warning’s arrival as a film noir. After about forty minutes or so, however, the film morphs into a middling courtroom melodrama more suited for television than for the big screen. It then reverts to noir, albeit of an even darker shade, for film’s shockingly violent and tragic conclusion.

   The plot’s basics are as follows. A bus is passing through the small southern town of Rockpoint. One of the passengers, a dress model named Marsha Mitchell (Ginger Rogers), has a sister in town. Since she hasn’t seen her sister in person for two years, she decides to get off the bus in hopes of catching up with her sibling, promising her traveling companion that she’ll catch up with him soon.

   Something seems eerily wrong with the town. The guy who checks luggage at the bus terminal is in a hurry to close up, the local cab driver has no interest in driving his cab, and a diner is closing unusually early. Without a cab to take her to the recreation center where her sister works, Mitchell has to walk alone through the town’s dark, abandoned streets.

   Soon Mitchell witnesses a scuffle outside the local jail. Klansmen are beating a print journalist, Walter Adams, who had been imprisoned on possibly trumped up charges after investigating the Klan. Mitchell witnesses the violence and tries to hide. Things go from bad to worse when one of the Klansman, his hood removed, shoots and kills the reporter.

   Mitchell finally makes her way to her sister’s house. While catching up, she learns that her sister, Lucy Rice (Doris Day in an early non-singing role), is not only happily married, but also pregnant. Soon, her sister’s loser husband, Hank (Steve Cochran), comes home. Not only do we learn that he has an alcohol problem; he’s also the same guy who shot and killed the reporter.

   Marsha Mitchell has an ethical dilemma. Does she admit that she knows what the husband did? Does she tell the authorities? What responsibility does she have to ensuring her sister’s happiness? What responsibility does she have to tell the truth? What would the consequences be of each possible choice? The movie deals with these very questions.

   Tasked with solving the murder is the local district attorney, Burt Rainey (Ronald Reagan), who is well aware that many of his former high school classmates and neighbors are either in the Klan or are afraid to say anything negative about them.

   Rainey is determined, however, to seek justice for Walter Adams. He doesn’t think much of the Klan, essentially viewing it as a corrupt racket. Eventually, Rainey learns that Marsha Mitchell had witnessed the crime and orders her to a coroner’s inquest. From there, the film takes several twists and turns, only to culminate in an especially noir ending that takes place at a chillingly realistic looking Klan rally out in the woods.

   As I viewed Storm Warning, several things struck me. First, despite its clear anti-Klan message, there are no explicit references to the Klan’s racism. The viewer is supposed to understand what the Klan is and what it does. This is no Mississippi Burning.

   More notable is the fact that the Klan is presented as a corrupt, fraudulent organization rather than as a vehicle for hate. There are also very few non-white faces in the film. Likewise, not a single character has a Southern accent. Finally, the film is notable for its almost complete lack of levity. Except for a moment in which Rainey’s mother notes that she didn’t vote for her son in his election for district attorney, but would do in the future, the film has almost no memorable humorous or happy moments.

   Reagan succeeds in portraying Rainey as a lonesome warrior for good. Steve Cochran portrays Hank Rice as almost too stupid to be truly evil. The two female leads, Ginger Rogers and Doris Day, portray sisters who have completely different personalities. While Mitchell (Rogers) is guarded and cynical, Rice (Day) is ebullient and distressingly naïve.

   Storm Warning is very dark, unhappy, and claustrophobic film. But it’s not one a viewer will soon forget. If you choose to watch it, the violence of last ten minutes or so will probably stay in your mind for some time to come. I’m pretty sure that’s what the screenwriters wanted.