Crashout (1955): William Bendix and Arthur Kennedy in a Jailbreak Noir

Posted on November 10, 2023 by 4 Star Films

If you wanted to string together a noir cast with the quintessential mélange of rogues who never quite made it to bona fide A-lister status, Crashout more than fits the bill. It’s a different kind of mission movie for a different kind of mission and a different brand of protagonist. They’re all prison convicts.

William Bendix and Arthur Kennedy both have fine pedigree. It’s a bit unfair to Kennedy because the Academy loved him — offering him 5 Oscar nominations — just never enough to ever bequeath him any hardware. Somehow, this snub alone makes him right at home in this company.

For their parts, William Talman, Marshall Thompson, Gene Evans, and Luther Adler are the kind of actors who eat these kinds of crime pictures for breakfast, and it starts with their faces. None of them are classic Hollywood handsome — even Thompson is a bit severe — but they’re invariably interesting to look at.

Cinematographer Russell Metty is more than well equipped to help instill the film’s grungy, sweat-caked aesthetic. We feel like we’re knee deep in all of their stink and squalor. The crooked preacher among them, sent up for murder (Talman), baptizes a wounded man (Bendix) in the swampy hideaway they’ve staked out while waiting through the hysteria of the prison’s search parties.

It’s hard to know where the picture can go if they’re forced to bide their time for 3 days. Fortunately, the cast carry the picture as they rub up against each other only unified in their pursuit of self-preservation. Ultimately, they form a pact to retrieve Bendix’s dough, an alliance that’s easy enough to doubt the legitimacy of. Still, they don’t have much choice. They need money to live.

Much of the movie going forward is made by these standalone interactions with the general populous because they provide an added layer of humanity and tension to overlay the ongoing search for the fugitives.

Take for instance, when they call in a roadside visit from a rural doctor who gets pressganged into their little posse to service their injured member before being unceremoniously disposed of. Later, they roll into a dinner lodge like Bogart in Petrified Forest ready to terrorize some folks for clothes and sustenance.

There’s an exquisitely executed overhead shot encapsulating the dramatic tension of the scene when a pair of cops unwittingly pay a visit. They don’t know how close they are to their prey…

Between forcing themselves on a man’s wife and steamrolling a man in a car, there’s a level of ruthlessness that might be unanticipated for the era and yet for the initiated it’s not too surprising between genre markers like Dial 1119, The Hitch-Hiker, and Riot in Cell Block 11. Although Bendix had the earliest association with the genre with Alan Ladd in the 40s, his castmates were more than familiar themselves.

However, there are other more sensitive moments too. Thompson is befriended by a young woman on the train (Gloria Talbott). She’s just recently left her music conservatory, and she’s forthcoming and kind. They share her sandwiches and cups of water to go with the conversation. There is a sense we need this scene to diffuse the film momentarily. Although even this brief hint of relief must be quickly stamped out. It cannot survive in such a picture.

There’s also the addition of Beverly Michaels. She’s featured in a far more angelic role especially if you’ve been conditioned by her eponymous turn in Wicked Woman. She’s not pleased to have her home desecrated by wanted criminals. However, Kennedy is the one man who reasons with her. Because he didn’t murder anyone and he has personality, they build a kind of rapport. Kennedy has his own moments where he feels warm and affectionate, hardly a hardened criminal. It’s like a prelude to his own destruction.

Two of the convicts almost maul each other to death in the living room, but this isn’t what does it. In fact, Gene Evans meets his demise in a manner in which took my breath away. Yet again we’re reminded it’s not a squeamish picture.

Crashout’s snow-powered finale isn’t quite the par de excellence of On Dangerous Ground or Nightfall (1957), but the persistent frankness of the material is something I still can’t quite shake. We often conflate the 1950s with a kind of Leave it to Beaver mentality (whatever that means), and yet watching something like Crashout is to come to terms with something about as unsentimental as they come. The 1950s aren’t always as innocuous as we’re often led to believe. Sometimes the decade seems more than capable of bludgeoning us over the head with a crowbar. Consider this a recommendation.

4/5 Stars

4 Film Noirs for National Classic Movie Day

Posted on May 16, 2022 by 4 Star Films

I would love to get more well-versed in international film noir, and I already have a handful of films on my watchlist once I can get a hold of them. However, being a lover of classic American noir, I wanted to try to dig a little deeper for some recommendations.

Following are four films that I watched over the last few years. They all resonated with me while also exemplifying why film noir remains my favorite style/movement/genre, or whatever you wish to call it. Hopefully, you find them enjoyable!

Happy Classic Movie Day to all and thanks again to the Classic Film and TV Cafe for having us!

The Locket (1946):

This might be the highest-profile film on my list. John Brahm had a noir pedigree worth adulation thanks to period delights like The Lodger and Hangover Square starring Laird Cregar. Although it’s brought into the modern arena, The Locket is little different in terms of thrills giving Laraine Day the most psychologically destructive performance of her career.

Her ebullient femme fatale with a fit of kleptomania effectively upturns the life of every man in her path with an unknowing banefulness. An up-and-coming Robert Mitchum gets tossed out of the picture unceremoniously in an uncharacteristic end while Brian Aherne’s good doctor also falls under her charms most unwittingly.

What’s so delicious about the film is how it leads with this veneer of a drawing-room comedy or a chipper rom-com only to take an unremitting dive into the dark pool of noir psychology as it slices through her shadowy past. True to form, Day leaves a path of destruction in her wake all while maintaining a perfectly scintillating smile over a fractured psyche.

The Well (1951)

Russell Rouse was a recent discovery for me and The Well felt like a quiet revelation of a film. It seems to fit the mold of 50s noir as the era breeds a greater attempt at post-war realism and a concern for the social issues at hand. The Well is one of the few films of the era to court a fairly groundbreaking dialogue on racial unrest and what’s more, it also showcases some fine performances.

When a little girl is lost in the titular well, it triggers the concerns of her parents. Her father is played by Ernest Anderson, who had a groundbreaking role in Bette Davis’s This is Our Life, although he rarely garnered much attention after that. It shows the dearth of space allocated in the industry for talented black actors. The Well feels like some small recompense.

Harry Morgan (a childhood favorite from MASH) also plays a crucial role as a man suspected in the girl’s disappearance. The movie’s core tension feels profoundly relevant over 70 years later, but the miraculous thing is how a powder keg of a noir becomes the foundation for solidarity. It evolves into an anti-Ace in The Hole — more balm than inflammatory indictment.

Crashout (1955)

If you want to survey a plethora of film noir’s finest malcontents, you only have to look over the cast of Crashout. The picture stars Arthur Kennedy and William Bendix with support from William Talman, Gene Evans, Luther Adler, and Marshall Thompson. Each is an escaped convict, and we watch their harrowing path, not simply breaking out of prison (that happens over the credits), but subsequently as they decide how to proceed.

They bide their time in a cave, resolve to recover a load of stolen money, and make their way out in the open as wanted fugitives. Any civilian who comes in contact with them is thrown into immediate danger, and yet it feels like a rather prescient picture because it puts us into the camp of the men who are normally framed as the antagonists.

There’s in-fighting and they have time to fall in love. Beverly Michaels turns up as a pretty hostage who they seek asylum with (It’s the complete antithesis of her image in Wicked Woman). But I was surprised by how merciless and unflinching the movie was for the 1950s. It caught me off guard on multiple occasions, and it feels like a truly unsung prison break noir.

The Burglar (1957)

As one of film noir’s preeminent cronies, it’s always a pleasure to watch Dan Duryea get more time in the limelight front and center. He did star in a bevy of minor classics in the dark genre like Black Angel, The Underworld Story, and Chicago Calling. The Burglar should be added to this list. He’s the leader of a pack of criminals who execute a tense heist on the vault of an opulent mansion in the dead of night. Nothing goes wrong per se, but much of the pervading drama comes with waiting out the aftermath.

There’s something always arresting and off-kilter about the visual geography of the film as conceived by director Paul Wendkos. It feels both grungy and deeply atmospheric with a myriad of human contours leading us all the way to the rickety boardwalks of Atlantic City.

Duryea is a fine protagonist joined by a fairly unadorned Jayne Mansfield still on the precipice of her success as a Hollywood bombshell. However, for noir enthusiasts, one of the most fascinating inclusions might be Martha Vickers playing a cultured more mature femme fatale a decade after The Big Sleep. Since the majority of her work in the 40s feels mostly innocuous, it was a welcomed discovery to see a return to form for her in a sense.

Honorable Mentions: Night Editor, Desperate, 711 Ocean Dr., Wicked Woman, Shield for Murder, The Crimson Kimono

Note: A previous version incorrectly mentioned the boardwalk of Coney Island, not Atlantic City, so I updated it.

Armored Car Robbery (1950): Wrigley Field L.A. Noir

Posted on November 3, 2019 by 4 Star Films

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Armored Car Robbery instantly had my rapt attention in part because of its location shooting and due to one place in particular. We start out at L.A. City Hall and soon a shooting and a robbery are being called in from nearby Wrigley Field, which sends Lt. Cordell (Charles McGraw) and his partner out to respond.

It proves to be a false alarm but the setting alone might throw some contemporary audiences for a loop. After all, Wrigley Field is synonymous with the ivy-laden bricks of Chicago, not Los Angeles.

Except L.A. enthusiasts might know that the area once held a Wrigley Field of its own, formerly the home of the original Los Angeles Angels expansion team in 1961. It also served as the backdrop in many classics including Meet John Doe and Pride of the Yankees. Added to that list is Armored Car Robbery, although it only uses a facade of the stadium, which could just have easily been a studio set.

Aside from always being fascinated by time capsule moments — Wrigley Field was all but demolished in 1963 — I had always heard talk of my Grandma growing up down the street in Los Angeles. She was born in L.A. County and her family ran a grocery store in the area. I don’t have much of a picture of that world and so even a brief image like the one provided here gives me a glimpse into yesteryear. But I digress.

Richard Fleischer’s heist noir is an obvious precursor to The Killing for its stadium locale and the ever necessary complications that begin to present themselves in due time. What good is a heist if it doesn’t go completely haywire?

Because of its limited time, Armored Car Robbery spends minutes on the preparations and the actual execution of the job. But the trick is, it’s all so efficient, we are never allowed time to get bored by the usual rhythms. Still, all the information is there for us to be brought into the crime.

Generally known as defense attorney Hamilton Burger on Perry Mason, William Talman gives a far more insidious turn as a meticulous criminal obsessive about keeping a low profile and tying up every loose end so he can pull off the perfect crime. What’s more, he’s secretly got a bite on his accomplice’s girl, a heartlessly opportunistic blonde bombshell (Adele Jergens).

By night she’s got the entire male populous ogling. By day, she’s looking pretty, hanging around the bar, and getting miffed with her husband (Douglas Fowley), who can’t seem to make any dough. Hence her convenient extramarital operations. Dave Purvis is the man for her, taking charge of two other thugs as they set their sights on $200,000 of cold hard cash.

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But there’s always a slip-up. There can hardly be a heist genre without the wrench that causes everything to hurtle out of control. As it turns out, Lt. Cordell (Charles McGraw) and his partner are on the beat, responding to the subsequent distress call at Wrigley immediately. The culprits aren’t expecting it, and the ensuing shootout leaves one of the officer’s dead in the line of duty and one of the gangsters badly injured. Soon the alarm has been raised with roadblocks set out everywhere and the police force on high alert for the four fugitives.

For the rest of the film, Cordell must live with this galling injustice, stewing day and night in his own distraughtness and copious amounts of lukewarm coffee. First, jaded by the untimely murder of his partner and then saddled with a wet-behind-the-ears replacement (Don McGuire). Although the new recruit nevertheless proves to have a certain amount of gumption when it counts.

The film employs a low-budget airport terminal ending — one of the few times it lets slip its meager means — but the film goes for the narrative jugular. We see precursors to the likes of The Big Combo, The Killing, and even Bullitt. On multiple occasions, it’s not at all squeamish about letting the bullets fly and the death toll rises as a result. And it’s this disregard for the sanctity of life that gives the narrative real heft. No one is protected and there we have grounds for a thrilling drama.

These kinds of stories are awesome pulp classics with a stripped-down punchiness that’s instantly gratifying. RKO was such a wonderful studio in this regard for giving us such raw delights. They don’t make them like this anymore. We waste too much time.

While not completely related, one should note RKO is the only of the major classic studios that completely folded. Those were the good old days. But all good things must come to an end. Wrigley got demolished. Actors die. Studios close down. That’s why cinematic memorials are often so important. They allow us to journey back into the past.

4/5 Stars