THE KILLERS (1946) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Siodmak. Hellinger. Hemingway. Huston. Lancaster. Gardner. Noir. Criterion. Blu-Ray. 'Nuff Said.

The Killers (1946)
Dir. Robert Siodmak
Prd. Mark Hellinger
Scr. Anthony Veiller, John Huston (uncredited),
Richard Brooks (uncredited), Ernest Hemingway (Short Story)
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker,
Jack Lambert, Jeff Corey, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The angst, existential and otherwise, is so thick in Robert Siodmak's classic film noir adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers, you'd need more than the de rigueur knife to slice through it - a chainsaw, however, would do quite nicely. Hell, even a simple hacksaw might do if the blade is sharp, taut and you have a solid grip. Either way, you're going to hit some raw nerve endings buried in that dense atmosphere.

The first order of business here is to extol the virtues of Mark Hellinger, the film's visionary producer (an advertising man, a newspaper man to the bone, maven of all things Broadway and producer of Brute Force, The Naked City, High Sierra, They Drive By Night, etc.) who revolutionized American cinema with his hardboiled tastes and his savvy for packaging. It's no surprise, then, that the writing here takes as big a centre stage as Siodmak's expressionistically-tinged direction and to-die-for cast. Hellinger not only valued scribes, he was one of the best himself.

Most importantly was how Hellinger took a cue from his Italian Neorealist colleagues across the pond and used real locations whenever possible (and when not, insisting upon studio/backlot art direction and locations which came as close as possible to the real thing).

As for the picture itself, it's cleverly housed via Edmond O'Brien's Jim Reardon, an insurance investigator assisted by cop Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene) in piecing the events of a killing together. This approach allows for a variety of perspectives upon the tale of a heist weighted down by plenty of betrayal, ennui and focusing in particular upon the doomed gang member The Swede (Burt Lancaster), a washed-up boxer who turns down a shot at being a cop to enter a life of crime.

The fractured, but easily-followed storytelling structure, has always had scribes comparing it favourably to Citizen Kane, but this is, I think, a bit of a backhanded compliment (and a typically unimaginatively egg-headed response) since Siodmak's overall approach to the material feels wholly original and his writers have brilliantly addressed how to remain true to Hemingway's original whilst also addressing the fact that they're fleshing-out a feature film.

And what fleshing-out! Adhering closely to Hemingway's short story, the movie opens with two especially scuzzy hit men (William Conrad, Charles McGraw) waiting to whack their quarry at the appropriate time. Their target, the aforementioned "Swede", knows they're coming for him, but is resigned to his fate and waits for their arrival. They eventually show up and blow him away.

Well, if this was a simple adaptation of Hemingway's original, the movie would now be over. It's not. True to the spirit of Hemingway's story, the film fills in all the details leading up to and following the events of the picture's opening minutes with terse, matter-of-fact brutality and provides added post-war ennui to a story originally written during the gangster overload of the Prohibition Era. No flappers here, just the promise of a better life in the 40s which in turn, offers bupkis, bad judgement and shattered dreams.

The biggest shattered dream of the equation is femme fatale Kitty Malone (Ava Gardner in her most delectable Sinatra-baiting prime) who not only lands The Swede 3 years in the hoosegow for stealing a whack of jewels for her, but then takes up as the main squeeze of the mean-spirited criminal mastermind (and eventual construction contractor, 'natch), Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker) who eventually hires Swede and two other thugs, Dum Dum (Jack Lambert) and Binky (Jeff Corey) to assist him in a risky, dangerous, but lucrative heist. Not only is Kitty receiving the root from Big Jim, but she's not above some mega-betrayal to scam a big score for herself.

However, this femme fatale can't be all bad. She seems rather genuine when she explains why she's with an animal like Big Jim. "I'm poison, Swede, to myself and everybody around me! I'd be afraid to go with anyone I love for the harm I do to them!" She's happy to harm, Big Jim. It gives her strength. Alas, she also, for good measure, no doubt, manages to harm those she loves.

Dames. Can't live with 'em. Can't live without 'em. But it's a mug's game that can land any schlub a prime piece of six-feet-under real estate.

The Killers is guaranteed to knock you on your ass. Tense, tragic, often claustrophobic and featuring one of the best heist scenes in movie history. Siodmak's expert coverage and pacing here comes close to holding its own against Jules Dassin's Rififi heist (kind of interesting since two of Dassin's best pictures, Brute Force and Naked City, were also produced by Hellinger). Bolstered by the starkly contrasted black and white cinematography by the great Woody Bredell and an evocative Miklós Rózsa score (and yes, the main theme's opening few notes were eventually ripped-off for the theme of Jack Webb's long-running TV series Dragnet), the picture delivers all the noir goods any serious aficionado of the form would want.

It's a heart-breaker and then some. When insurance investigator Reardon ties up all the loose ends, he's commended by his boss. In true post-war fashion, a prescient reality in the film which has only increased exponentially to this day in the world in which we live in, the boss claps Reardon on the back and offers the following accolade: "Owing to your splendid efforts, the basic rate of The Atlantic Casualty Company - as of 1947 - will probably drop one-tenth of a cent."

Hitler was dead. No matter. "The Man" took his place.

The Film Corner Rating: *****

The Killers is available on the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. In addition to including Don Siegel's blistering 1964 adaptation with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Clu Gulager, Claude Akins, Norman Fell and Rompin' Ronnie Reagan as the scumbag villain, Blu-Ray is loaded with great stuff including a new high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, Tarkovsky’s short 1956 student-film adaptation of Hemingway’s story, a terrific 2002 interview with Stuart Kaminsky, the Screen Directors’ Playhouse radio adaptation from 1949, starring Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters plus, ever-so delectably, a 2002 audio recording of actor Stacy Keach reading Hemingway’s "The Killers".

Order directly from the links below and contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

In Canada, order HERE

In USA, order HERE

In UK, order HERE

CHEATIN' - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Noir Meets Opera Meets Pulp Meets Melodrama

Cheatin' (2013)
Dir. Bill Plympton

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A new animated feature film by Bill Plympton is always cause for celebration because nobody, but no-body makes movies like he does. His perverse sense of humour blended with an innate (if not submerged, but always present) sweetness and most of all, his unique visual style, add up to cooler than cool.

Cheatin' might be my favourite Plymptoon yet. It's a deceptively simple romantic comedy: girl meets boy, they fall madly in love, they marry, boy thinks girl is cheating even though she's as loyal as loyal can be, boy doesn't let on that he thinks girl is cheating, boy considers suicide but chooses revolving door infidelity, girl is devastated and doesn't know how to get his love back until she meets a mad circus magician who can transfer her spirit into the myriad of bodies whom the boy is dallying with. Reconciliation seems inevitable. Or is it? Is this mad plan fraught with danger? Yeah, probably.

What Plympton has wrought with this basic (on paper) love story, which then adds an unexpected, but very welcome fantastical twist, is layered with sheer mad inspiration. He blends several shades of genre and storytelling style to render one of the most original films I've seen in many a year. Juxtaposing the seedier elements of middle America like carnivals, roadside gas stations and sleazy motels, with the sun-dappled heaven of green lawns, cozy suburban bungalows, beauty parlours and fancy dress shoppes, Plympton manages to out-Blue-Velvet Blue Velvet by wallowing greedily and happily in the muck of both darkness and light.

Plympton begins his tale with the beautiful, stylish Ella, gorgeously attired in a bright yellow dress and wide-brimmed hat with a long red ribbon wafting across the drooling, enchanted faces of boner-induced men, her face buried deep in a book as she strides forward through the streets and eventually a carnival replete with rides and sideshows. Torso forward, her eyes glued to words on the page seem to naturally propel her. She doesn't at all notice every single man ogling her with eyes popped and fixed upon her with such distraction that they cause all manner of mishaps amongst each other (and raising the ire of their frumpy wives and girlfriends). Barkers try to distract her to partake of their wares and it's only until she is literally hooked and yanked into a bumper car ride does she take her nose out of her book.

Hell, this looks like fun.

She jumps into a vehicle and the bumper madness begins. And here is where love blossoms. Plympton hands us a stereotypical "meet-cute" of such absurd proportions that one wishes every "meet-cute" in every movie could be this insane. Let's not give too much away save for describing the physical elements it involves: a bumper car on its side, a dazed Ella in a pool of water, a snapped electrical cable whipping around and sparking up a storm and Jake, a dreamy hunk who's been unable to keep his eyes off Ella (and she to him) and risks his life to save hers.

It's a meet-cute that yields love gone mad.

This leads to one of the most demented love montages I've ever seen with Jake and Ella crooning the joyous Libiamo Ne' Lieti Calici from "La Traviata" to each other as their bodies whirl about, split apart into various pieces, meld in and out of each other, with gondola rides across massive bathtubs, soaring high in flying roadsters, an entire suburban household coming to life and singing the chorus - items in the refrigerator, slabs of butter, carrots - anything and everything that can morph into a dizzying surrealist melange of cartoon images that leaves both the Fleischer Brothers and Disney's Silly Symphonies way behind like so much dust in the wind.

Seeing Ella spread-eagled and popping out one baby after another into Jake's arms is a fantasy image I suspect I'll take with me to my grave.

Disaster strikes when a jealous dress shop owner snaps an incriminating photo of the innocent Ella and places it in Jake's hands as a means to drive him into her arms. It works. He's so devastated, so heartbroken, that he begins balling Madame Dress-Shoppe and virtually every woman who wants him (and it is a ludicrous number). At one point, a devastated Ella secures the services of a hired killer, but when that goes wrong and the couple's life as lovebirds is doomed to a purgatorial wasteland, she secures the assistance of the grand impresario of magician-ship, El Mertos.

You want unhinged, unbridled, completely preposterous forays into the fantastical? Never fear. Plympton delivers big time since El Mertos has the aforementioned mysterious, dangerous and magical machine that can transport Ella's soul into the bodies of ALL the women Jake is boning in Room 4 of the ultra-sleazy E-Z Motel.

Plympton not only pulls off a miracle of mad romanticism, he does so by blending opera, pulp fiction, film noir and almost Douglas Sirkian-high-melodrama. Not only that, but the entire movie has NO dialogue. It's pure visual storytelling with a knockout soundtrack that includes an astounding original score by Nicole Renaud blended with the previously mentioned piece from "La Traviata" in addition to the heartbreaking Leoncavallo's Vesti la Giubba (sung by Caruso, no less), Ravel's Bolero and King Bennie Nawahi singing the immortal south seas exotica of Muana Keana.

Cheatin' is sheer madness and as joyous an experience as you're likely to have at the movies in these dark days of imagination-bereft cinema. If you live in Toronto, you have just one night, one chance to see it on the big screen.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Cheatin' plays for one night at The Royal Cinema in Toronto on May 20, 2015. It deserves a longer run than that. Hopefully other independent Canadian Exhibitors will play the film. In the meantime, I highly recommend you buy the DVD from E.D. Distribution in France. They not only released the film properly/theatrically, but now have it on their very distinctive label. Cheatin' is known in France as Les Amants électriques. Order directly from their website. While you're visiting it, you'll notice they have a shitload of Bill Plympton titles. They're gorgeous packages/transfers. I know. I've got 'em all. Browse the site. They have the coolest, most eclectic catalogue of titles one could ever imagine. They're not only the best distributor of wacko art in France, but one of the best in the world. I know. They distribute a bunch of my crazy-ass film productions. Visit the website by clicking HERE.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". Curated by TIFF Senior Programmer James Quandt.

"I couldn't hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man."

Double Indemnity (1944)
Dir. Billy Wilder
Scr. Raymond Chandler & Wilder
Src. Novella by James M. Cain
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred McMurray, Edward G. Robinson, Tom Powers, Jean Heather, Byron Barr, Porter Hall, Richard Gaines

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is one of the creepiest, most chilling film noir thrillers of all time. That after 70+ years Double Indemnity still manages to pummel us with the force of a raging bull is a testament to the genius of director-and-co-writer Billy Wilder, his dark-matter-infused screenwriting partner Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, the original author of the novella upon which the film is based.

No matter when I've seen it, the movie never lets me down and continues to raise my goose-fleshy hackles with the same force Barbara Stanwyck's performance pumps streams of blood to engorge my, uh, appendage.

The movie begins with a car's mad dash through the streets of Los Angeles until its driver, one seemingly distraught Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) stops, slowly exits his vehicle, stumbles into an office tower, then into the domain of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Company. In the pitch black of night, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse; though, it seems, a few weary cleaners work quietly as they sweep, vacuum, mop and wax the floors, occasionally emptying the contents of wastepaper baskets near the desks that now sit empty and silently in the vast workspace. Neff, still unsteady, carries himself along the hallways until he lunges into a dark room, slumps into a chair and flips on the dictaphone.

"You said it wasn't an accident, check.
You said it wasn't suicide, check.
You said it was murder…check." 

Neff has a story to tell, a confession if you like. His voice, filled with an odd mixture of regret and cynicism, begins to pour out the events which will comprise the vast majority of the film. It's a story rooted in lust and love, one that slowly tunnels into the muck and mire of paranoia, dreadful secrets and murder most foul.

A routine visit to remind a client (Tom Powers) that his automobile insurance is about to expire is the thing that turns Neff's life completely upside down. The client isn't home, but his wife, the shapely Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) most certainly is.

Being a man obsessed with keeping his standing as Pacific Assurance's top-flight salesman, he's had little time for love.

Lust, maybe, but Cupid's Arrow has always eluded him.

Phyllis, much younger than her hard-working oil man hubby, is trapped in a loveless marriage which she thought would yield riches, but has instead, served up an all-you-can-eat buffet of unhappiness, abuse and the most modest financial stability.

These two are primed, so to speak, for a good pump.

Phyllis: Do you make your own breakfast, Mr. Neff?
Neff: Well, I squeeze a grapefruit now and again.

Love, however, is a deadly game and a secret affair twixt Neff and Phyllis turns positively noxious when the ace salesman hatches a devious scheme based upon his confidence (due to experience) in being able to successfully pull off the ultimate insurance scam. Initially inspired and supported in his efforts by Phyllis, she of the Gorgeous Gams, lustful eyes, sexily curled lip and provocative anklet, perfect a plan that seems perfectly in the cards. If someone has life insurance, you see, there's a little clause called a "double indemnity". If the death occurs in a number of rare locales, then the payout is twice the normal amount. A tidy sum, indeed.

Nothing's ever perfect, though. Neff's best friend, mentor and bonafide father figure is the crafty, dogged insurance investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). Neff is more than aware that Keyes will be a tough nut to crack, but he's ultimately convinced that his dark premeditated enterprise will succeed.

"You know, you ought to take a look at the statistics on suicide some time. You might learn a little something about the insurance business… you've never read an actuarial table in your life, have you? Why they've got ten volumes on suicide alone… of all the cases on record, there's not one single case of suicide by leaping from the rear end of a moving train. And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour. Now how can anybody jump off a slow-moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself?"

This is a great film. Though it captures the post-war ennui of the 40s, it's a film that still packs a punch in a contemporary context. Its protagonist, Walter Neff, unfettered by the "normal" desires of the upwardly mobile, seems to be content with his place in the world. He doesn't need love, a home with a hearth, a family, nor a desire to take to a desk-job in order to justify that he's "made it". He wants to be in the field, out in the world and finally, he takes a certain degree of pride (albeit of the laissez-faire variety) in being the Pacific All Risk Insurance Company's top salesman.

His patter to sell insurance is sprinkled with seemingly caring advice; counsel which indeed might have the potential to interfere (albeit positively) upon the lives of others, but is ultimately self-serving. It boosts his ego, his pride in selling more successfully than anyone, but most of all, Neff, as a human being seems to share the psychological portrait of a corporate entity. In the official synopsis of Mark Achbar, Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott's 2003 documentary The Corporation, a corporation. which is a legally constructed individual, or if you will, a "person", is defined thusly:

"The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social 'personality': it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism."

This seems to describe Neff to a "T" and yet, we like the guy. Why shouldn't we? He's a charming, oddly handsome and wryly funny human being. He sees something he wants - Phyllis - and he's willing and able to do what he needs to do to get it/her. All this said, though, the Wilder/Chandler/Cain Holy Trinity have carefully inserted enough shadings to Walter's character, which gradually reveal a man who honours friendship, wants love and is also imbued with a sense of sacrifice. It's true that he's painted himself into a kind of "the jig is up" corner, but it's a sense of both mortality and morality which work upon the un-oiled hinges of that tiny door nestled deep in his heart and sacrifice, he will, and does.

Phyllis: We're both rotten.
Neff: Only you're a little more rotten.

In many ways, it's a heartbreaker of an ending. Neff breaks the hearts of too many, including himself and he takes the ultimate plunge into seeking a kind of skewed redemption - one which we all too clearly understand. Fred McMurray is fundamentally perfect for the role of Walter Neff. It's no surprise that he eventually went on to depict the wise TV-Dad of the long running series "My Three Sons". Wilder/Chandler/Cain have created a character who fits very nicely into a cusp, one between war and post-war and yet another twixt hard-line film noir and mid-60s mainstream sentiment.

As filmmaker/critic Paul Schrader notes in his terrific essay "Notes on Film Noir", the film "… provided a bridge to the post-war phase of film noir. The unflinching noir vision of Double Indemnity came as a shock in 1944", but I'd go further and suggest it's as shocking now as it once was. We all want to believe in man's inherent goodness and though, as Schrader notes, "Double Indemnity was the first film which played film noir for what it essentially was: small-time, unredeemed, unheroic", I'd again go a step further and suggest that Neff's final act of sacrifice goes beyond all that.

There are two deep loves in the film. Firstly, there's the love between friends - Neff and Keyes. The body language between the two men and even the way they look at each other subtly betrays the notion that Neff is a true psychopath. Secondly, there's the love between old man Dietrichson's daughter Lola (Jean Heather) and her hot-headed-with-jealousy boyfriend Nino Zachetti (Byron Barr). It's a love thwarted by Lola's Dad, Phyllis and through his nefarious actions, Neff himself.

"Who'd you think I was anyway? The guy that walks into a good looking dame's front parlour and says, 'Good afternoon, I sell accident insurance on husbands. You got one that's been around too long? One you'd like to turn into a little hard cash?'"

Even Phyllis, the ultimate noir femme fatale, feels like she transcends using her charm, her seductive powers in the manner in which the Neff-Phyllis affair plays out - in secret, unconsummated, behind dark sunglasses and furtive whispers in a public supermarket where they can hide in plain sight. Stanwyck's performance is a whirlwind of sensual/evil force, but in her final confrontation with Neff, she's as cold and calculating as she's also tinged with a bitter regret, clearly inspired by the entire abnormal set-up of seeking to make love a reality.

Neff's narration of the tale has the same impact as Wilder's use of narration much later in Sunset Boulevard. Schrader defines the narration of film noir as being imbued with "an irretrievable past, a predetermined fate and an all-enveloping hopelessness." The sad and salient difference is that Sunset Boulevard is brilliantly narrated by a literal dead man, but the earlier and equally powerful Double Indemnity is narrated by a dying man, or rather, a man facing the inevitability of death, a life wasted save for his sacrifice for a love between two people that might only have been achieved by his acts of deception and murder.

And this, maybe more than anything, is why Double Indemnity is truly and virtually unequivocal in its greatness. The immoral actions of one man lead to sacrifice, which in turn leads to love. If this isn't as cynical as it is profoundly and deeply moving, nothing is.

The Film Corner Rating: ***** 5-Stars

Double Indemnity plays Saturday, February 21 at 3:30 p.m. at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX in James Quandt's amazing series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". The film is presented in a BRAND NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION. For further info, visit the TIFF website HERE. The film is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray via Universal Pictures replete with a phenomenal set of extra features. As well, there are many other Stanwyck films from this TIFF series which can be ordered directly below and, if so, you'll be contributing to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

"YES, I KILLED HIM. I KILLED HIM FOR MONEY AND A WOMAN.
I DIDN'T GET THE MONEY AND I DIDN'T GET THE WOMAN.
Pretty, isn't it?"

In Canada - BUY Double Indemnity HERE, eh!

In Canada - BUY Barbara Stanwyck Movies HERE, eh!


In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Double Indemnity - HERE!


In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Barbara Stanwyck movies - HERE!


In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Double Indemnity - HERE!


In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Barbara Stanwyck Movies - HERE!

RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Criterion Collection Elevates Don Siegel's Prison Classic To Heavenly Heights on Blu-Ray

Don Siegel's name is synonymous with hard, brutal, manly action and his first great picture Riot in Cell Block 11 is restored to its original glory on the Criterion Collection Dual Format Blu-Ray/DVD package.

Neville Brand & Leo Gordon
are ready to take out some screws.
Are YOU ready?

Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) *****
Dir. Don Siegel Prd. Walter Wanger
Writ. Richard Collins
Starring: Neville Brand,
Emile Meyer, Frank Faylen, Leo Gordon

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some movies are charged with the blood, sweat and tears of brutal shocking truth, a sense of genuine life experience infused into every frame of celluloid. Riot in Cell Block 11 is one of those pictures. It spits hatred in your eyes like venom and it doesn't take long before you're on the side of mean, hardened men fighting back at loathsome conditions and abuse.

The team responsible for this, one of the greatest prison pictures of all time, surely begins with producer Walter Wanger (surname pronounced "DANGER"). Wanger fought in World War I where he flew dangerous reconnaissance missions in the signal corps. He eventually got his taste for film when he was transferred to the propaganda department. When the war ended, Wanger, a well educated and highly literate young man with a love for theatre was hired by Paramount Pictures, served as the President of the Academy for seven years, moved to Columbia and also served occasional stints as an independent producer. His two loves were theatre-based comedies and musicals and dramas with a high degree of social commentary. He also loved working with directors who had a strong personal voice and Wanger's producing credits included John Ford's Stagecoach, Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Robert Wise's I Want To Live.

The impetus for Wanger to produce Riot in Cell Block 11 came after he blasted two shots into the leg and groin of Hollywood agent Jennings Lang whom he suspected was carrying on with his second wife Joan Bennett. Luckily for Wanger, he had the good sense to secure the famous scumbag lawyer Jerry Giesler who was able to get the producer a reduced sentence in jail with a plea of "temporary insanity". Given Wanger's experiences in stir and the fact that prison conditions had become so abominable in post-war America, the first movie he knew he wanted to make would be a prison picture that took the side of the beleaguered and abused convicts, many of whom were instituting large-scale riots to fight for better conditions.

Wanger secured ace-screenwriter Richard Collins, a former creative affairs executive, story doctor and long-standing member of the Communist Party which resulted in his being blacklisted by the House of Un-American Activities. He returned to active duty in the movie business, like so many, he crawled back to HUAC and named names. To direct, Wanger selected Don Siegel who'd cut his teeth directing thousands of great montages for Warner Brothers, helmed a few decent gun-for-hire genre pictures and was now looking for a property he could put a personal stamp on.

The legendary Sam Peckinpah even got his first screen credit here. Hired as a gopher, he soon became invaluable to both Wanger and Siegel. In fact, it was Peckinpah who charmed the officials of Folsom Prison to allow the filmmakers to shoot the film on-location.

Siegel directed Collins' screenplay with all the ferocity he'd brought to the distinctive rat-a-tat-tat of the Warner montages and inspired by the real location of Folsom Prison, he fashioned a dark, brutal and breathlessly thrilling action film with his own take on the film noir approach to making movies. Siegel delivered big time. Riot in Cell Block 11 is a taut, searing open-pustule of a picture that never lets up.

We follow two perfectly matched cons played by Neville Brand and Leo Gordon who team up to lead a massive revolution within the prison. Brand is ferocious, but has great leadership abilities and Gordon's not only a psychopath, but a huge, powerful and merciless killer. Guards are taken as hostages and in no time, the entire prison is owned by the cons. The Warden is played by the great character actor Emile Meyer, whom noir fans will remember as the thuggish Lt. Kello in Sweet Smell of Success, but his character here, while tough as nails, is also sympathetic to the plight of the prisoners - he's been raising hell for years with the politicians and bureaucrats. Now he needs to negotiate with men whom he believes have a genuine concern, but he's shadowed by a horrendously persnickety by-the-book politician played to smarmy perfection by Frank Faylen.

Siegel handles the violence and tough talk like a master. As the film charges to a spectacular climax with all the panache you'd expect from a prison picture, you can't but occasionally realize that Riot in Cell Block 11 is from the director who eventually gave us a whole whack of great pictures, pictures we loved and admired. Interestingly we get a denouement which comes on the heels of fiery high tension and gives way to a conclusion which is tinged with melancholy, bitterness and maybe even just a bit of disgust - not unlike Siegel's bonafide masterpiece of 1971, Dirty Harry.

Riot in Cell Block 11 is available in a dual format box from the Criterion Collection. It comes with the usual bevy of goodies including a fresh 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, an audio commentary by film scholar Matthew H. Bernstein, my favourite extras which are excerpts from the director’s 1993 autobiography, "A Siegel Film" and Stuart Kaminsky’s phenomenal 1974 book "Don Siegel: Director", both read beautifully by Siegel's son Kristoffer Tabori. Add to the mix a 1953 NBC radio documentary "The Challenge of Our Prisons" and a first-rate booklet that includes a Chris Fujiwara essay, a 1954 article by producer Walter Wanger and a 1974 tribute to Siegel by filmmaker Sam Peckinpah.

THE KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK - DVD review by Greg Klymkiw - Low budget, independently produced film noir thriller blends plague and crime.

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) ***
dir. Earl McEvoy
Starring Evelyn Keyes, Dorothy Malone, Lola Albright, Charles Korvin, William Bishop and Barry Kelley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Within the course of day-to-day existence, crime itself can be perceived as an epidemic - it takes root and spreads like wildfire. And so it is in the movies. There's nothing quite like mixing illegal anti-social behaviour with the emergence of a deadly plague.

In 1950, two pictures managed to blend these elements in very interesting and entertaining ways. The most prominent of this odd sub-genre was Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets, a 20th Century Fox release which featured Richard Widmark as a Public Health officer in pursuit of a pair of criminals (Jack Palance and Zero Mostel) afflicted with the deadly pneunomic plague.

Complimenting Kazan's high-profile item is an almost-forgotten entry in the post-war noir blend of threats to health and public safety, The Killer That Stalked New York, a low budget, independently produced picture. The former title is clearly the better film of the two, but the latter is not without merit, and seeing as it's been so rare, the picture is especially worth looking at.

One of the weirder aspects of this lesser-known crime melodrama is the central figure - a female character who is, by no means a traditional bottle-blonde bad girl. She's desperate, love-stricken, decidedly older and, I might add, vaguely pathetic - not a traditional hardboiled female heroine in the least. While cinema has had its share of suffering women, they always suffered gorgeously, and often, triumphantly, but here, we are shoved face-to-face with the 34-year-old-and-rather-long-in-tooth Evelyn Keyes (Scarlett O'Hara's sister Sue Ellen in Gone With The Wind).

She's not especially well-costumed, nor made-up and lit in a manner befitting a leading lady. (In fairness to Keyes, though, she's definitely in the realm of MILF-dom, just not in a traditionally glamourous Garbo-Crawford-Dietrich manner.) This is something that makes her performance a lot more interesting, but there is also the nagging reality that Keyes was cast in such a low budget picture PRECISELY because she was affordable and that the poverty-row of the production didn't allow for the grooming and lighting NORMALLY afforded to a leading lady.

Playing the title role, we first discover Keyes stepping off a Cuban boat and onto the harbour platforms of New York. Having smuggled $50k worth of diamonds into the country for her smarmy, no-good, foreign accented boyfriend (Charles Korvin) - we know he's rotten to the core because this is America in the 50s and he sure doesn't sound American at all. He's also oily.

In American cinema - especially during this period - oily men are always evil. Visiting a doctor, Keyes meets and briefly befriends a little girl who, as it turns out, is afflicted with smallpox. And before you can say "epidemic," Keyes desperately wanders the city, spreading plague and out-running law enforcement and public health investigators.

Proficiently directed by Earl McEvoy (he worked primarily as an assistant and second unit director), it's a picture that, even for it's relatively short running time, feels about 20 minutes too long. In spite of this, it still delivers the goods as an entertaining and intriguing dark melodrama, especially because of its excellent use of actual New York locations for much of the film.

Most notably, the movie is blessed with a talented and delectable trio of leading ladies. In fairness to the once-radiant Keyes (and director), part of her frumpy, haggish appearance could be chalked up to the filmmakers (and Keyes) trying to be realistic about portraying a desperate, over-the-hill moll with smallpox. That said, Keyes is buoyed by the appearance and performances of Dorothy Malone (hubba-hubba) as a nurse and the yummy Lola Albright as Keyes's little sister who is having a torrid, shameful, guilt-ridden affair with the handsome slimebag Korvin.

Another oddball aspect of the picture is how our leading lady Keyes is so dour. She suffers through the picture to a point where she begins to look and feel almost cretinous. Whereas Palance and Mostel in the similar roles in Panic in the Streets are so manic and over-the-top that they elicit a lot of (intentional) laughs in addition to their malevolence. There is, ultimately, nothing malevolent about Keyes and she's humourless to boot.

We're basically forced to watch a pathetic frump flailing about. That said, there IS a bit of sadomasochistic pleasure in witnessing her performance, and that's nothing to sneeze (and/or cough up bloody phlegm) at.

"The Killer That Stalked New York" is available on DVD via Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in Volume 1 of the two volume series "The Bad Girls of Film Noir".

Fritz Lang's SCARLET STREET with Edward G. Robinson - Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw - On Blu-Ray via Kino-Lorber

A timid cashier celebrates 25-rip-snorting-years of toil in a mens clothing store. Sauntering home to be with his harridan wife, he wonders what it would be like to have a young woman love him. He gets his wish. Sort of. A streetwalker cons him with expert assistance from her brutal pimp and lover. Can murder be far behind?

Scarlet Street *****
(1945) dir. Fritz Lang
Starring:
Edward G. Robinson,
Joan Bennett,
Dan Duryea

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I've been waiting to laugh in your face ever since I met you. You're old and ugly and I'm sick of you. Sick! Sick! Sick!"

-Joan Bennett to Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street

If you've never felt - even once - that dreadful, sickening, soul-sucking feeling of digging yourself into a deeper hole, then good for you. You must obviously live a charmed life. Most of us know, however, when we're already in one of those holes and instead of clambering out while we still can, we shove our respective spades into God's good earth and just keep digging. Why do we do it? Especially when we know we're digging ourselves deeper than we can ever possibly hope to clamber out of? Well, sometimes one just hangs on to a wisp of hope that the thing you think you need is, like some buried treasure, just a few more feet below.

Once in awhile, a hand will thrust itself down and offer you a way out of the depths. Sometimes you'll take it but oft-times you won't. Even those who do accept the helping hand will, most of the time, do so with regret. They allow themselves to be hoisted up just long enough to grab a few fresh breaths, grab a bite to eat and maybe think about packing a box lunch and then dive back down into the open jaws of the hole.

When we first meet Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) in Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street, we hear a boisterous, heartfelt group of men singing "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" so loudly that their voices are spilling onto the wet, dark streets of New York. Once we're inside the brightly lit party room of a private gentleman's club, remnants of a sumptuous meal with liquor still flowing, the singing builds to a rousing climax of cheers. A meekly appreciative Chris, is clearly the recipient of this gleeful admiration. His boss delivers an extremely moving speech that extolls the virtues of honesty, loyalty and hard-work that Chris has displayed over the years as a cashier with the company - capping off the tribute by presenting his "old friend Chris" with a gorgeous gold watch encrusted with jewels.

It's when the boss departs early for the reason that one can "never keep a woman waiting", Chris looks out the window just as his employer exits the building and enters the awaiting limo below - its only other passenger being a stunning, young, platinum blonde.

Chris knows this is not the boss's wife and he wonders aloud: "I wonder what it's like to be loved by a young girl." Cue hole-digging just about here. Chris has picked up the spade and is eager to use it.

Later that evening, Chris walks the empty streets. He hears a scream. From a distance Chris sees a woman under a lamppost being slapped around by a man. Chris surprisingly bolts into action and rescues the beautiful young woman by beating the vile pig with his umbrella. The weasel scurries away, clutching the money he's robbed from the woman. Chris walks the young lady home and they stop for a drink in a basement dive. Anyone else would have realized that the sexy Kitty March (Joan Bennett) is a common streetwalker (and not a fashion model as she claims to be) and that the rat-faced thug who stole her money is not some random thief, but Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea), her pimp and lover.

That Chris is oblivious to this and swallows all her lies, exaggerations and vaguely disingenuous flirting is pretty much the beginning of the end. His spade plunges deep into the ground. The hole-digging begins in earnest.

It's also to actress Joan Bennet and director Fritz Lang's credit that we almost believe Kitty, too. She's packed tightly and curvaceously into her - ahem - Sunday go to meetin' time best and her straight, lush tresses that hang down to her shoulders, progressively unravel into schoolgirl-like curls and frame her soft, square face with a distinctively high forehead, pert nose, soulful eyes and ready-for-kissin-and-a-slurpin lips. Yup, she's Madonna and Whore, but discretely dolled-up like a teenage Catholic High School girl. Bennett's sultry voice and the dialogue (courtesy of the great screenwriter Dudley Nichols) veer from innocence to slutty, from genteel to crass and from surprising erudition to white trash street smarts. She's an incredible and indelible female character - a smart cookie in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting by as best she can in what is decidedly a man's world. Even more haunting is that there are more than enough hints that she's suffered a great deal of abuse over the short time she's been alive on this planet. She takes the foul Johnny Prince's beatings with a grain of salt since they're almost a small price to pay for his "support", companionship and first-rate cocksman-ship. In another instance, she only seems to be half-cracking a wiseacre when she describes her feelings about Chris, Edgar G. Robinson's staggering portrait of the jowly, hangdog white-knight-moneybags-meal-ticket in this way: "If he were mean or vicious or if he'd bawl me out or something, I'd like him better."

Robinson, of course, is great - an actor who's never delivered anything less than a brilliant performance throughout his long and distinguished career. In Scarlet Street, we're moved and repulsed by his character in equal measure. He toils away as a cashier at the high-end men's clothing store, surrounded by handsome, well-dressed colleagues who all seem content with their manhood and place in the world. Chris, on the other hand, goes home every night to his wife, a shrieking harridan who might best be described by quoting George about Martha in Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - she's neither a woman, nor much of a human being, but rather represents a kind of "slashing, braying residue that calls itself" his wife. Not that Chris is a prize catch. He admits to marrying her, almost in a whine, because he was afraid of being lonely. It's sad as all hell, but frankly, pretty damn pathetic. And God knows if Chris was even able to perform his husbandly duties in the boudoir when he admits with only the slightest hint of irony (so slight, it might not be ironic at all) that:

"I never saw a woman without any clothes."

Even more pathetic is that he's clearly a gifted artist, but creates his work in an atmosphere of his wife's verbal abuse and threats that she'll toss all his paintings in the trash. Granted his painting is the only escape he knows, but he thinks so little of his work that he doesn't even sign his paintings.

Worst of all, Chris displays inordinate stupidity and weakness when he allows himself to be duped by Kitty and Johnny. He not only keeps handing her scads of cash he's embezzling from his employer, but eventually allows her to take full credit for his artwork which eventually catches the eye of a prominent New York art dealer and visual arts critic. For all of this, he's getting no nookie and when he tries to hug or kiss her, she shrinks away in disgust.

One of the most complex, brilliant and emotionally wrenching scenes in movie history occurs when he realizes he's been duped and still professes his love for her. He begs her to marry him and Kitty's response is unbearably vicious. What's amazing about this moment is that we're moved by both characters (and performances). We're shocked and saddened by how mean she is to Chris, but at the same time, we sympathize with this young woman who's been dealt far too many bad hands in life and is surviving in way that stems directly from her social situation. Looking at the deep hurt in Chris's eyes is also profoundly moving, but we also want to slap that pathetic, jowly face of his and demand that he "man-up".

Scarlet Street is an American remake of Jean Renoir's equally wonderfully picture La Chienne, but for me, the main difference is that Lang's film descends even deeper than Renoir's into a pit of the most foul, ugly human behaviour. And even though it does, the film is infused with a high degree of humanity.

From dramatic beat to dramatic beat, Scarlett Street moves lower and lower on the rung of humanity's ladder. Just when you think the picture has reached the lowest depths, it plummets even deeper. As such, the film is both courageously relentless and astoundingly ahead of its time.

Recent Friedkin and Ulrich Seidl excepted, Fritz Lang - in 1945!!! - managed to pull off a picture that seems more fresh and vital than most anything made today. Scarlet Street feels like it could have been made just yesterday.

After many years languishing in the public domain, the movie has been digitally restored from materials on deposit at the Library of Congress and brought to Blu-Ray via Kino Lorber. The Bluray features a stills gallery and an audio commentary by David Kalat.

THE GLASS WALL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Compelling Post-War thriller deals with both the Holocaust and displaced Europeans seeking asylum in America. Picture lays claim to some of the most extraordinary location footage ever shot in Manhattan during the 50s.

The Glass Wall (1953)
Director: Maxwell Shane
Starring: Vittorio Gassman and Gloria Grahame

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Cinematographer Joseph Biroc's career spanned a rich period of American cinema. From the silent/part-talkie period in the late 20s through to the 1980s, his six decades of shooting movies include a diversity of titles. From Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life to the Zucker Brothers Zero Hour parody Airplane! - Biroc shot everything, including the kitchen sink. Sandwiched between the aforementioned he developed a solid working relationship with such directors as Samuel Fuller (notably Run of the Arrow and Forty Guns) and Robert Aldrich. The latter director used Biroc's eye to lens 16 of his pictures including Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, Ulzana's Raid, Emperor of the North and The Longest Yard.

No job was too big (his Oscar-awarded work on The Towering Inferno) or too small (some of the coolest sci-fi second features of the 50s like Donavan's Brain and The Red Planet Mars). Biroc was a meat and potatoes cinematographer who was equally comfortable shooting the liberation of Paris in World War II as he was capturing the famous campfire-bean-farting sequence in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles.

His work on The Glass Wall is truly exceptional. This low-budget Columbia second feature has some of the most extraordinary location footage ever shot in Manhattan during the 50s (and not just the dirty mean streets, but the starkly beautiful United Nations Building as well). Blending documentary realism in many of the exteriors and sharp proficiency in the interiors, Biroc's work contributes immeasurably to this thrilling, offbeat tale of a refugee on the run from both police and immigration officials.

Directed and written by Maxwell Shane, an extremely prolific screenwriter who specialized in genre pieces and as a director, delivered two of the 1940's more memorable crime pictures Fear in the Night and City Across the River, The Glass Wall is still one of those gems that's been largely forgotten. Thanks to the medium of DVD, the movie can now be seen by many more people.

And it deserves to be seen. Its moving portrait of a political refugee seeking asylum and a subplot involving the sexual exploitation of women in the workplace (as well the significant story element which exposes the lack of a proper public health system in the United States), all blend seamlessly to deliver a film that's as relevant to contemporary audiences as to those who saw it in 1953.

Starring the great Italian actor Vittorio Gassman in his American debut, we're immediately sucked into the tale of this desperate, sad-eyed displaced person and Holocaust survivor Peter Kaban, who, after illegally stowing away on a freighter and evading customs officials, begins a desperate search for the American soldier whose life he saved during the war. The soldier, in gratitude, offered Kaban a sponsorship to begin a new life in America, but in wartime, unexpected separation is an inevitability and the seemingly inextricable link between the two men is broken. Kaban has no contact information for the soldier and immigration officials are having none of his story. With various levels of law enforcement pursuing him, he is treated like a common criminal instead of both a war hero and Holocaust survivor.

Kaban is befriended and aided by the sultry Gloria Grahame. The gorgeous Grahame was no stranger to roles where she was attracted to doomed men or involved in doomed relationships. Her legendary parts include Violet Bick, the prostitute with a heart of gold who delays leaving the "life" by loaning her nest-egg to the troubled George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life and the gangster moll in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat. In the latter picture, poor Miss Grahame's character receives gruesome scars after the brutish Lee Marvin tosses a pot of scalding hot coffee in her face.

Set over one night, The Glass Wall becomes a desperate race against time for the couple to find Kaban's ex-G.I. friend and climaxes as Kaban storms the United Nations, seeking justice and sanctuary.

It's an almost-perfect little post-war thriller with all the right dark and tragic elements. It's also, to my knowledge, the only American film of the period to deal with both the Holocaust and the plight of displaced Europeans seeking asylum in the U.S. What keeps it from achieving the perfection it yearns for is Shane's by-the-numbers direction. One can only wonder how much better Shane's fine script might have been in the hands of either a Fuller or Aldrich. It needed more than competence, but the sort of nasty, pulp sensibility its screenplay offers.

That said, Biroc's stunning photography, especially all the hidden camera nightime stuff keeps the picture buoyant. As well, Gassman and Grahame have fabulous chemistry and their performances bring incredible power and humanity to the proceedings.

One major bonus is that the picture features a very cool cameo with Jack Teagarden and his Orchestra. The ex-GI, it turns out, is a struggling musician who gets a shot auditioning for the legendary bandleader. The other major bonus is that Kaban must prowl numerous Manhattan nightclubs in search of his old friend.

Manhattan at night.

Gloria Grahame.

Jack Teagarden.

And, lest I forget, scenes filmed in both the United Nations building and on Times Square - in the 50s!!!

Things don't get much better than this.

"The Glass Wall" appears on Volume One of Sony Home Entertainment's two-volume DVD set entitled "The Bad Girls of Film Noir". Incidentally, Biroc's work is on view in "The Killer That Stalked New York" which also appears in this series. Biroc's work there is fine, but it's hard to say if the unflattering shooting of leading lady Evelyn Keyes is intentional. If it was, then the picture might actually deserve more credit than I've given it. Like many of the titles in this series, the leading lady of "The Glass Wall" is not a "bad girl" at all and while it shares some of the post-war disillusionment of film noir, it's finally not really noir. But that's a minor quibble. If this type of branding is what the studio needs to get a back catalogue of interesting titles out and into the hands of movie geeks, who am I to complain?

THE PHENIX CITY STORY - Uttered with a chilling matter-of-fact timbre and an unmistakable Alabamian accent, a fat, sweaty, cigar-puffing dispatcher in a dank, dirty and humid police station thick with smoke and the overwhelming karma of human rights violations, barks out: "Somebody just threw a dead nigger kid on Patterson's lawn. Go out and have a look." This occurs on the heels of the sickening, unforgettable image of a child's battered, bloodied body as it's flung like a rag doll from a passing vehicle and virtually into our laps. This is one of the great film noir crime pictures of all time. It's just as powerful and vital now as it was in 1955.

The Phenix City Story (1955)
dir. Phil Karlson
Starring: John McIntire, Richard Kiley,
Kathryn Grant, Edward Andrews, Jean Carson, John Larch

****

By Greg Klymkiw

“Somebody just threw a dead nigger kid on Patterson’s lawn. Go out and have a look.”

Uttered with a chilling matter-of-fact timbre and an unmistakable Alabamian accent, a fat, sweaty, cigar-puffing dispatcher in a dank, dirty and humid police station thick with smoke and the overwhelming karma of human rights violations, barks out the line above. This occurs on the heels of the sickening, unforgettable image of a child's battered, bloodied body as it's flung like a rag doll from a passing vehicle and virtually into our laps via a creepy low-angle pull-back.

Without a doubt, this is one of the most brutal and hard-hitting film noir pictures you’re likely to see in your lifetime..

The movie is The Phenix City Story.

And it’s a great movie!

Not only is The Phenix City Story one of the best crime pictures ever made, but feels like it hasn't dated one bit (save for the period in which it's set). The filmmaking seems as fresh and vital as when it first puked up the grotesque reality of the deep American south upon its release in 1955. That said, a number of its techniques may seem familiar to many, but keep in mind - they began here, folks.

Ace crime director Phil (Kansas City Confidential, Framed, Walking Tall) Karlson, working from a sizzling screenplay by Daniel (Out of the Past) Mainwaring and Crane (Andre De Toth's Crime Wave) Wilbur, delivers a picture that gets so under your skin it demands multiple viewings - each more aesthetically exciting and thought-provoking than the last. Karlson's command of cinematic grammar is so sharp and astute that he's able to frame his work within a structure that breaks quite a few rules by always knowing what the rules are and using them when he needs to and flouting them when he wants to shove our faces ever-deeper into the mire.

Phenix City, Alabama is a real place. Bordering the state of Georgia where the mighty Chattahoochee River (one of the locations used for the movie Deliverance) slices through it, Phenix City in recent years has become known as one of the best places in America to raise a family.

It wasn't always this way.

And frankly, I find it hard to believe it's changed all that much. My few visits and albeit limited exposure to that “Great State” suggest that Alabama is one of the nastiest, weirdest, most dangerous and distressingly prejudice-ridden places I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

Historically, Phenix City was the site of one of the last big battles of the Civil War and during the 1940s and 50s, it became known as Sin City, USA. On a per capita basis, there was more crime (much of it violent) in this mini-metropolis, than any other region in America. Corruption ran rampant as did gambling houses, prostitution and murder.

Situated near the military training facility in Fort Benning, Georgia, Phenix City was the go-to location for America's fine military to indulge in all manner of debauchery. The American military has always and continues to be one of the largest consumers of prostitutes world wide. Throughout the 20th century and beyond, Uncle Sam’s protectors, due to their gluttonous appetite for no-strings-attached stress-relief have, in a sense, been primarily responsible for the sexual slavery and exploitation of women the world over. (A prime example is the Eastern European sex-slave-trade that exploded during America's involvement in the post-Milosevic struggles in Croatia and detailed in the feature film The Whistleblower directed by Larysa Kondracki and starring Keira Knightley.)

During the 1950s, Phenix City, thanks mostly to the avid consumption of sexual favours, had the highest rate of venereal disease during WWII and in the post-war period. When off-site furloughs were unavailable, the army allowed truckloads of prostitutes to be brought right into Fort Benning to service the randy recruits. It has oft been rumoured that famed General Patton's death was actually rigged by organized crime since he threatened to clean things up when Fort Benning was under his command.

God Bless America! And the United Nations, of course - as both continue to disgustingly support sex slavery to keep the boys happy in the Middle East.

And, God Bless Phil Karlson - for real! One of America's great movie directors, Karlson chose a blend of docudrama, neo-realism and film noir to tell the story of the late Albert Patterson (brilliantly played in the picture by John McIntire), a lawyer who ran for the State Attorney General position on a major anti-crime-and-corruption ticket and was brutally and brazenly gunned down by the criminal mob running Phenix City.

The story begins with a benign Patterson, trying to live his life quietly. When Albert's son John (Richard Kiley, displaying his almost trademark, and here effective, moral outrage) returns home for a visit and discovers how corrupt things are, he decides to stay and fight the good fight. Albert joins the fight and agrees to run for Senator. Albert's old friend Rhett Tanner (a delectable performance from Edward Andrews - alternately next-door-neighbour friendly and malevolently smarmy), attempts to convince Albert to back down. When he doesn't the violence escalates to such extremes that men who believe in the law are faced with taking the law into their own hands.

Writing in his book "Essential Cinema", one of the few great living film critics Jonathan Rosenbaum addresses not only the potential for vigilantism in the story itself, but the sort of audience reaction garnered by The Phenix City Story:

"Though the movie's politics are liberal, its moral outrage is so intense you may come out of it wanting to join a lynch mob."

One of the more interesting thoughts that Rosenbaum's quote elicits is the different ways in which similar true-life situations were treated in the 50s and 70s - especially by director Phil Karlson himself. With The Phenix City Story Karlson creates the desire to "join a lynch mob", yet does so within a story wherein the central figures never quite get to that point and use "the law" to primarily battle the corruption.

In the 70s, Karlson revisited a similar tale - that of Sheriff Buford Pusser in the huge vigilante boxoffice hit Walking Tall. Not only did audiences all over the world want to join lynch mobs (I remember the trailers and TV ads featuring footage of audiences leaping out of their seats and delivering standing ovations at the end of the film), the story Karlson chose to tell was an out and out pro-vigilante tome where its central figure walked softly, literally carried a big stick and used it with abandon. Walking Tall bears all the hallmarks of Karlson's terse, effective direction and manipulation of audience emotion, but does so by going all out in celebrating the notion of taking the law into one's own hands.

Another interesting observation is just how similar the story elements are in The Phenix City Story and Walking Tall. Both films feature the following:

- A young man returns to his hometown to discover it is a den of iniquity and decides to fight back.

- An inveterate gambler wins fair and square, but upon exposing cheating in the gambling club, is beaten to death. This is almost a replay of Walking Tall's opening with the character of Lutie McVey played by Ed Call.

- The primary location of vice in both films is presided over by a butch bull dyke (played by Jean Carson as "Cassie" and Rosemary Murphy as "Callie" respectively).

- The good guys are secretly aided by a hooker with a heart of gold (played by Kathryn Grant and Brenda Benet respectively).

- The good guys are aided by a Black man (played by James Edwards and Felton Perry respectively).

- The Albert Patterson character is similar to that of Pa Pusser played by Noah Beery Jr. in the latter picture.

Looking at both films it's obvious Karlson ordered Walking Tall's primary scenarist Mort Briskin to use The Phenix City Story as a model.

One also cannot help but notice that Roger Corman must have taken a cue from Karlson's 1955 true-life depiction of crime and racism in the deep South when he adapted Charles Beaumont's book The Intruder in 1962. Corman shot his thriller dealing with racial integration in education on location in the towns hardest hit with the controversy. Karlson, of course, entered the territory first with his film.

Though in fairness, thanks to producer Mark Hellinger with the much earlier Naked City, noir and the crime genres during the post-war period were both highly influenced by the neorealist movement in Italy and led the charge for a whole new era of location shooting in American cinema.

Stylistically bold and downright daring in the myriad of chances it takes, The Phenix City Story begins with a series of interviews with actual citizens of Sin City, USA - major players in the real-life fight against the criminal element, some of whom admit to the camera that they have been the targets of harassment and death threats. These interviews are shot in the very locations in which the events took place - so real that we see people wandering in and out of the background - REAL PEOPLE - briefly looking at the cameras and/or quickly averting their gaze so as not to be caught on film.

In fact, if we didn't know going in that we were soon going to be seeing a dramatic recreation of the events, we might, during this lengthy pre-title interview sequence think the film was going to be a documentary. It's not, of course, but once Karlson begins the story proper, and shoots his tale on the very street where the Sin City crimes took place and goes so far as to have lead actor John McIntire costumed in the very suit that real-life Albert Patterson was murdered in, we're utterly mesmerized by this strange hybrid of docudrama and neo-realism - thus confirming that what we're watching is a movie that's going to be like no other we've seen.

"The Phenix City Story" can be found in Volume 5 of the Warner Home Entertainment box sets The Film Noir Classic Collection.