From United Artists
Directed by Phil Karlson
Starring
John Payne
Evelyn Keyes
Brad Dexter
Frank Faylen
Peggie Castle
Jay Adler
Jack Lambert
Seeking a little alliteration, I call it beautifully brutal. Hollywood was still making wonderful film noirs in the early fifties and I consider this little B thriller to be one of them. When a washed-up boxer, now a cabbie, beats up the creeps out to frame him for a murder, it is so brutal that it's a bit difficult to watch. But watch I do because this is film noir and I don't want to miss a single delicious moment of a movie that keeps up the pounding pace from start to finish.
Noirs often serve up some confusion but none detected here. It is an intricate, straightforward exercise in betrayal and revenge brought to the screen by experts in the genre... director, writer, the two stars and a distinctive supporting cast.
John Payne plays a hardass who is tired of being pushed around in life. His boxing days are over because some serious blows have put his vision at risk. He goes to work for his pal, Frank Faylen, as a New York City cabbie, which he doesn't like. He also doesn't like his marriage.
It's immediately apparent that both Payne and wife Peggie Castle suffer from woulda/shoulda/coulda. He coulda been a champion and she coulda been a showgirl. (I'd have been a star if I hadn't married you, she snarls.) Instead he's an embittered cabbie and she arranges corsages at a florist. She married him when he was on top in the boxing world but now he feels like an anchor around her and she hates his sour attitude. When we meet her, she's secretly planning to leave him the next day.
I've just killed a man, wannabe actress Evelyn Keyes tells her friend Payne whom she knows from around town. She says while she was auditioning on the stage, the director came on to her and she killed him. She asks Payne to accompany her to the theater. He does so but is infuriated when he finds out it's all a joke. Actually it's her audition and all involved wanted to see if Payne found her believable as it's hoped audiences will. Payne knocks around four men and leaves. They call the police on him. This might have been my favorite scene.
Castle is involved with Brad Dexter, a very bad man and jewelry thief who wants to fence his stolen cache that has been pre-arranged with Jay Adler. Adler backs out because Dexter brings Castle along and Adler doesn't make deals involving women. In perfect film noir fashion, women get the blame for everything. Life goes wrong anytime you get involved with a dame.
Dexter strangles Castle (one assumes to appease Adler) and puts her body in the back of Payne's cab to incriminate him. And it works. The cops are now after him for two crimes. Against his better judgment, when he heads out on the dark, mean streets, Keyes insists on joining him, saying she will be able to help.
There are a couple of great fight scenes between Payne and spooky character actor Jack Lambert that are the stuff of noir and which I dearly love.
All the violence and skullduggery leads all of the living principals to the title location, a bar on the docks with its belching foghorns and sense of danger. A very clever scene ensues inside the bar with Dexter sitting at a booth alone in the corner and Keyes with her cone-shaped bra and tight sweater out to schmooze him to leave the establishment where Payne can get him. What she doesn't know is that Adler and Lambert have him restrained in a car. They want to kill Dexter for forcing the jewelry on them and making off with 50k. Payne wants him alive so he can turn him in for murdering Castle.
The film ends with another terrific fight, this time aboard a freighter. Unusual for a noir, there is a happy ending... maybe a little corny but let's not forget this is 1953... but in no way does it mitigate the well-told story.
I have always loved the swift pace of this story. It is intricate but uncomplicated. Robert Smith adapted it and he added it to his previous noirs such as I Walk Alone (1947), Quicksand (1950) and the wonderful Sudden Fear (1952).
I must do a piece on director Phil Karlson one day. He made a number of good films but it is his work in noir that I have long admired. He had just finished working with Payne in the well-received noir, Kansas City Confidential (1952) and Scandal Sheet the same year, and would go on to make Tight Spot, Hell's Island, 5 Against the House and The Phenix City Story, all 1955, and The Brothers Rico (1957).
Payne, of course, had a long and varied career. After years at 20th Century Fox singing and dancing with Alice Faye, Betty Grable and June Haver, musicals, by and large, were in the deep freeze and Payne could have been out of work had he not had a penchant for tough dramas. As a result it was only sensible he would gravitate to westerns and film noirs in the 1950s.
He perfected the perpetually pissed-off tough guy in a number of noirs: the aforementioned Kansas City Confidential and Hell's Island, along with Slightly Scarlet and The Boss, both 1956. I always thought he was a marvelous late addition to noir.
Keyes had nailed down the fun-loving, sneaky, kooky, highly-sexualized roles she played in and out of noir. She could be a bad girl but oddly she was often the good girl in noir. She was superb in Johnny O'Clock (1947) alongside another strong noir presence, Dick Powell, and also with Van Heflin in The Prowler and The Killer That Stalked New York, both 1950. As it turned out, 99 River Street was her final noir. The role fit her like a glove, particularly the finale's bar scene.
Too bad handsome Brad Dexter didn't graduate from his costarring bad guy roles because he was an actor too good to stay there. In later years he was still in small roles but usually no longer the villain. Too bad. His appearances in the 50's noirs The Asphalt Jungle, Macao and The Las Vegas Story are memorable. History shows him as being far better known as the second husband of singer Peggy Lee.
Gorgeous Peggie Castle rarely made it out of supporting roles either. She started at Universal-International in some of its low-budget fare and gradually worked her way into B and C westerns for cheapie film companies. This role is a good one for her... too bad she got knocked off so early. She would later gain some fame for playing saloon owner Lily Merrill in TV's Lawman.
Red-haired Frank Faylen often played the buddy of the male lead, just as he does here. He was always effective. Adler and Lambert, in their quiet, sinister ways, were spooky as villains. Offhand, I'm not aware of either ever playing anything but bad guys. Both are recognizable to avid moviegoers. With their faces, neither could ever play anything but obvious hoods and damned good ones at that.
Bravo to the filmmakers for drawing such vivid characterizations although all but Faylen are at least a little dirty. For some that may be the fault of the film... virtually no one's very likeable. I wouldn't care for that in a musical or comedy, but it works out gloriously in noir. Here we have those dark, wet streets populated by every night dweller, hoodlum, hustler and insomniac imaginable. Like all good noirs, with all the cinematic wonder they employ, its another
illuminating study of the dark side of human nature.
Here, take a peek:
Next posting:
One from the 60s
No comments:
Post a Comment