KILL OR BE KILLED

title: KILL OR BE KILLED

year: 1950

cast: Lawrence Tierney, George Coulouris, Marissa O'Brien, Rudolph Anders, Veloso Pires, Mira Lobo

rating: ***1/2

Simplicity at its finest. A low-budget adventure-based film noir about a building constructor played by badass-heavy Lawrence Tierney as a good guy this time around (actually singing and dancing in one scene), returning from the jungle to a South American nightclub to collect a debt for installing air conditioning units. The boss doesn't wanna pay and Tierney tells an employee "If he doesn't pay I'll kill him". Well guess who dies and who gets blamed for it? Tierney escapes and stowsaway on a river boat with a rich woman who's husband lives in a plush mansion within the jungle squalor. He joins a crew and, realizing the haves are screwing the have-nots, lets the husband/bossman - responsible for the initial murder which Tierney is blamed - know he's not happy. The cold-classy villain tries to get the handsome, peskily idealistic intruder - who's also in love with his wife (and vice versa) - to bathe with a riverful of piranhas c/o henchman George Coulouris (Thatcher from CITIZEN KANE). And that's about it. The scant plot and short run-time work in its favor: everything that happens completely matters.