HARBOR COMMAND (TV SERIES 1957-1958)

Although on the big screen the film noir/crime b-movies were on their way out (or morphing into something else), television held onto this B&W gritty aesthetic that, in this case, takes from the 1930's law propaganda programmers involving a narrator and perfectly-suited cops, in this case led by Wendell Corey of the titular waterfront HARBOR COMMAND...

The best thing is that each episode is 30 minutes, so you get in and out without a lot of fuss or... as happened on another noir-series, NAKED CITY... without an abundance of early Actor's Studio-style staging and melodrama, despite the fact that that crime-pays narration can get too wordy, mainly with expository dialogue the actors could have tackled otherwise, if not for a few lines...

And right when the plot gets underway, usually beginning with a certain crime or heist going bad around the dockside or surrounding warehouses, the episode cuts to the chase... or rather, the starting gate... So HARBOR COMMAND is always primed to move... each episode making for tight, nifty story-telling without an overboard cliche evil dame or monologue-spouting heavies, and... different from most shows of this era... there aren't a lot of non-famous cameos... so you feel like what's being played out is more real than otherwise. RATES: ****

DETOUR (1945)

Year: 1945 Rating: **

Ann Savage's famous femme fatale would be the kind of classic Noir character had she entered the picture earlier on... 

Instead, during Tom Neal's story as he, a low-rent piano player, hitchhikes from New York to L.A. to see his girl who's trying to make it big in Hollywood, Savage's Phoenix AZ con-artist babbler simply kills the self-narrated road movie buzz that'd belonged more comfortably to the far more subtle and intriguing Neal... 

Her incessant bickering is annoying while their collected con (that HE'S bickered into) is so far-fetched you'll wish poor Tom did what he initially promised: Instead of thumbing the ride that'd changed his life and given Savage the chance to blackmail him, to make the whole trip across country all alone, by himself, on a pogo-stick.

 

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

When much-too-wordy-for-a-dead-guy narrator William Holden tells us about the dark ominous mansion he's happened upon, the direction and atmosphere doesn't match up. He could be walking up to a local tavern and it'd be equally as suspenseful...

The best thing about SUNSET BOULEVARD is it's really a monster movie/creature feature and in that, a terrifyingly creepy Gloria Swanson makes up for a bland and overly glib Holden who, outside the main location, has a flirtatious affair with super-cute Nancy Olson as part of a soapy Hollywood-satire melodrama that simply isn't thrilling enough to be called a thriller...

And it's definitely not a Film Noir: If anything, SUNSET is a satire on Hollywood created and adored by Hollywood with built-in gripes that aren't very universal: a lot like another show biz satire (considered a classic as well) decades later, also starring William Holden, called Network: Both are vastly overrated. But Gloria Swanson's tour-de-force is far less forced than Peter Finch, and she's impossible to not be intrigued with. It just seems the audience has more interest than her smug leading man. GRADE: B

OUT OF THE PAST

year: 1947
rating: **

Jacques Tourneur is a personal favorite director, but not because of OUT OF THE PAST, considered his very best work for those who didn't pay close attention to the unique, intricate details of CAT PEOPLE, THE LEOPARD MAN, CANYON PASSAGE or CURSE OF THE DEMON...

Those movies had tiers to climb, and obstacles to cross. This movie, like Robert Mitchum's character, sleepwalks from scene to scene where everything is just too easy: Find the pretty girl who stole Kirk Douglas's money. No problem. She's in Mexico and in a matter of scenes she's found, and quickly swept off her feet. After all, Mitchum is handsome and Jane Greer's really pretty. But this is a hollow, mannequin romance, and there have been more intriguing, risque affairs on daytime soaps. Not even Tourneur's direction rises above the dull script, so full of contrived, forced-quotable one-liners, there's hardly a complete sentence uttered: it's a random collection of snapshots that aren't even postcards.

KEY LARGO

title: KEY LARGO
cast: Humphrey Bogart
year: 1948 rates: **

Locked inside a Florida Keys ocean-front hotel during a hurricane, war vet Humphrey Bogart, ingenue Lauren Bacall and her endearing crippled father spend so much time running-down and chewing out, lecturing and even heckling mobster Edward G. Robinson, he hardly has time to steal a picture that desperately needs stealing... HIS way...

FEMALE JUNGLE

working title: THE HANGOVER

cast: Lawrence Tierney, Burt Kaiser, Kathleen Crowley, John Carradine, Jayne Mansfield
year: 1955 rating: ***1/2

Anvil-faced tough guy Lawrence Tierney is a cop who, drunk in a bar, escorts a lovely lady to her cab. She's killed and left on the street, and now he has to wander around, with a bad headache, town retracing his steps. Meanwhile we're introduced to more bar-folk, in an urban Agatha Christie style, including a lovely waitress played by Kathleen Crowley and her husband, unassuming Burt Kaiser (who also wrote and produced), a frustrated artist who draws caricatures for little pay. Then enter John Carradine. When our ingenue's alone in his house, a foreboding, accusational score pounces forth. Of course you know he's but a red-herring... And so the question remains: who done it and who'll get it next? This is sort of a mystery, sort of a Film Noir, with a totally misleading title, but a lot of fun with the poster's starlet, Jayne Mansfield, providing a glorified but scene-stealing cameo.

DILLINGER (1945)

title: DILLINGER

year: 1945

cast: Lawrence Tierney, Anne Jeffries, Marc Lawrence, Elisha Cook, Edmund Lowe, Ralph Lewis, Eduardo Ciannelli, Constance Worth

rating: ****

This was obviously a way to cash in on a big name. At that time John Dillinger was a slain folk hero as much as a villain. It'd been ten years since his death and perhaps many people didn't remember the particularities of his story - or the producers didn't care. But this film noir starring Lawrence Tierney in the title role is a lot of fun anyway. After the stage is set - a young JD goes to jail for robbing a store for beer money - he and a group of crooks chat in prison about busting out and robbing banks. Eventually this happens, and the heists are terrific, one including smoke bombs on a rainy street. Tierney plays the stone-faced-thug so well that he never really got out of it. Even his "comeback" many decades later in "Reservoir Dogs" has his tough-as-nails character muttering the line "Dead as Dillinger", a nod to this classic that, although historically inaccurate, is a terrific ride where every scene has something going for it: almost like a bunch of really neat skits pieced together.

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.

BIG HOUSE U.S.A. (1955)

Howard Koch directs this Bel Air Productions crime-prison film-noir with everything. Ralph Meeker "happens upon" a rich kid with asthma in the mountains, who'd escaped from a camp before getting a shot, takes him to a tower and tells him to stay put. Then makes a phone call to the kid's rich father, demanding ransom. After the kid dies accidentally (or is he really dead?), Meeker coldly throws the body off a cliff, then collects the ransom and stashes it. Soon after Ralph is busted. No one can prove he actually kidnapped the boy, so he gets an easy five years for extortion. Ralph is called "Ice Man" because he won't admit what everyone knows, and now he has to face a group of cell mates, all experienced criminals who, using their new tenant, escape to the mountains find that ransom. There's plenty of intrigue and just as much action, and the story takes us to several locations, outdoors and in, and doesn't feel claustrophobic like many old prison movies: the title, although pretty neat, is somewhat misleading. Broderick Crawford, Lon Chaney, William Tallman, and a young muscular Charles Bronson play the hardened convicts wielding Meeker as a cog in their wheel, one that never stops rolling till the climactic shootout. A narrating FBI agent, investigating the nurse who caused the kid to initially run off - perhaps not accidental - provides a nifty peripheral to this forgotten fifties gem.

STEP BY STEP

year: 1950

cast: Lawrence Tierney, Anne Jeffreys, Lowell George

rating: ***

Lawrence Tierney plays mean and sinister so naturally it's odd seeing him as a friendly guy who travels around with a cute little doggie. Toned and shirtless on the beach, he meets a pretty girl (Anne Jeffries, his DILLINGER moll) who turns out to be a pawn in the murder of a politician and then Larry, the dog, and the girl, falsely accused, drive around to find the real killers... Or are being chased by the real killers... Aided by a helpful old Motel owner who really loves the camera. It's a lean, fluffy, fun ride - the perfect antidote for the usual dark and shady Tierney outing.

I CONFESS

title: I CONFESS

year: 1953

cast: Montgomery Clift

director: Alfred Hitchock

rating: **

I confess, I'm a big time Hitchock fan. I confess, I had never seen this movie until yesterday. And I confess, this one didn't do it for me. The Master seemed on sabbatical - I didn't feel his presence at all. I must also confess... I didn't even watch the entire movie. I guess I should now review the dream I had while sleeping through most of it...

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT

title: THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT

year: 1940

cast: George Raft, Ida Lupino, Humphry Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Alan Hale

rating: **1/2

Strange seeing Humphrey Bogart play second fiddle in any film (unless it stars James Cagney), this came out only a year before he become a top-billed sensation. George Raft and Bogart are truck driver brothers (who REALLY look like brothers) bullied by a mob syndicate... or something... causing trucks to crash and men to die. The special effects are really cool for 1940, including trucks driving off cliffs and exploding (models do wonders). If you can get past not seeing Bogart but for twenty minutes (and in a somewhat filler role), or trying to sustain disbelief that gorgeous gals like Ann Sheradin and Ida Lupino could be so in love with blockhead Raft - you'll enjoy this mildly entertaining "old movie". Ida Lupino steals the show after killing her millionaire husband (Alan Hale i.e. Skipper's Dad) and trying to frame Raft for it. She then goes bonkers in prison and thinks the doors (not the band, the things) want to kill her. Fun melodrama. Kick back and enjoy.

MURDER BY CONTRACT

year: 1957

cast: Vince Edwards

rating: **1/2

Metronomic character-study of a professional hitman is interesting at times, dull at others. Scenes with a calculating yet creative professional killer played by handsomely bulky Vince Edwards offing folks with hypnotic jazz (a baritone guitar version of THE THIRD MAN theme) in the background is quite a treat. Having proven his worth with clean, efficient hits he's given a big job in L.A. to terminate a woman who will appear in court, and has a couple days to do it. Two men, who work for the main crime boss, tag along and try figuring out how he works. Edwards takes his sweet time without preparation: hanging out on the beach, deep sea fishing and playing golf... and the two tagalongs don't quite understand his habits: and why he isn't getting the job over with. These two paper-tiger thugs seem to have been created to fill empty space with dialogue. If this were made twenty years later we'd probably go deeper into the killer's brain; instead, having been made in the fifties when there were limitations on anti-hero films, and this not being a paramount vehicle within the groundbreaking genre, we're left with what seems like half a movie.

REVOLT IN THE BIG HOUSE

year: 1960

cast: Robert Blake, Timothy Carey

rating: ****

Gene Evans is a tough convict who plans a prison break. Robert Blake in an early role plays a Mexican getaway driver (with a heavy accent (a grown up version of his character in "Treasure of the Sierra Madrea") who REALLY wants a parole, and is deadset on being a good prisoner until he is "forced" into joining cellmate Evans and Timothy Carey - a bent gunman who's as dependable as a broken screw - on this seemingly impossible escape. Everything flows well and there's some intense scenes, including the climax where the cons take over the prison. Everything you want in a prison flick this film noir curio piece has it: in droves.

SAN QUENTIN

title: SAN QUENTIN

year: 1946

cast: Lawrence Tierney

director: Gordon Douglas

rating: *

"Reservoir Dogs" introduced me to Lawrence Tierney. Like Tim Roth's character says about him (pp): "He looks like The Thing". So true. The old Tierney does in fact look as if he were made of giant stones. But when you go back fifty years, you find another kind of superhero altogether: a thin, good looking one that's still tough as nails. In the forties, Tierney starred in many classic low-budget noirs: including "Dillinger", "Devil Thumbs a Ride", "Kill or Be Killed", "The Bodyguard", and "Born to Kill", and unlike those mentioned, this one stinks. First off, the title is misleading. This has almost nothing to do with "San Quentin". It's not a prison flick. Wouldn't it be great if it centered on Tierney playing a tough convict (which he was in real life)? That's what most would assume with the title and the star. But Larry plays an ex-con who's a really nice guy who's tracking down a couple escaped cons - not nice guys - who are giving other ex-cons a bad name. This film noir entry (or in this case, film snore) is a complete dud. Lock this turkey up and throw away the key.