Back on Track

Johnny Cool - Where has this film been all my life? Henry Silva, Elizabeth Montgomery, Telly Savalas, Sammy Davis Jr. and many more star in this gangster film. Silva gets a rare starring role as Johnny Cool, the adopted son of ex-pat American mobster John Colini (the venerable Marc Lawrence) who fakes Johnny's death and recruits him to be his enforcer. It all plays with a Donald Westlake-esque precision as we meet the various members of The Syndicate, headed by the ruthless Vince Santangelo (Telly Savalas with hair!). Other Syndicate members included Mort Sahl and Jim Backus in non-comedy roles. Sammy Davis Jr. shows up and blows everyone else off the screen as a craps player who Johnny goes up against in a backroom casino. But the pressure is on when the other mobsters start betting on him to beat Johnny. Joey Bishop makes a cameo too as a car salesman to round out the Rat Pack connection.

Elizabeth Montgomery (pre-Bewitched) plays Dare Guinness, a woman who hooks up Johnny only to be beaten and raped by mobsters looking for him. It's actually quite astonishing that the subject of rape is brought up and not entirely obfuscated in a film from 1962. Montgomery is a great dramatic actress and it shows here.

The biggest surprise is that this is all directed by William Asher who is more known for directing 60's sitcoms, Beach Movies, and comedies like It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. He's great as a suspense/thriller director here. Who knew?

Born to Kill - Classic if flawed Film Noir starring Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor. Having only known Tierney for his roles in Reservoir Dogs and Prizzi's Honor, it's amazing to see him young, fit, and with a full head of hair. He was good looking guy! His look reminds me of Phil Hartman, which I was not expecting.

But this is Claire Trevor's show just as much as it is Tierney's. She plays Helen Brent, a divorcee who is tied by fate to Tierney's brooding and violent Sam Wild. And Sam is drawn to her too. They're both damaged goods and they can't help it. But Helen is engaged to a nice and normal young lawyer named Fred, so Sam decides to marry her sister. Meanwhile, Sam is being trailed by a detective on the case of a double murder he committed in Reno. Needless to say, things do not turn out for the best as Sam and Helen keep attracting each other and more danger.

This is great even though one of its main flaws is that every female character remarks on Sam's debonair and irresistible charm like he's Cary Grant instead of Lawrence Tierney. Tierney just isn't cut out for "ladies man charm" but is perfect as a killer kept in check only by his ego and belief that no one is "making a monkey" out of him. Tierney was a genuinely strange dude. A real loose cannon and Hollywood legend for his hard living and short temper. So I can forgive the whole "suave" angle to the character and anyways, Claire Trevor saves it all by playing Helen Brent as someone crazy enough to fall for a psycho like Sam. She's drawn like a moth to a flame and knows it's bad for her but can't help it.

Rounding out the cast are Elisha Cook Jr. as Marty, Sam's enabling pal who is willing to kill for Sam. Esther Howard plays the drunken and slatternly Mrs. Kraft, renter of a woman that Sam kills in the first reel, and she's great in this. She's an actress on that Susan Tyrrell level; she's all too real at playing a desperate woman that it doesn't feel like an act. At all. Walter Slezak plays a sleezy but erudite private detective named Arnett hired by Mrs. Kraft to find Sa.

He Walked By Night - Film Noir that turns out to be the template for Dragnet. It even has Jack Webb in a small role as a police lab technician. And like Dragnet, this is a story based on actual events where only the names have been changed to protect the innocent and all that. They actually say it in the narration. But don't let that stop you or start you. 

This is a pretty cool thriller about a thief named Roy Martin (played by Richard Basehart) who is stopped by an off-duty police officer demanding to see some ID, so of course Martin shoots the cop and runs away. It happens that Martin is also an electronics expert and can monitor police radio frequencies. Which I imagine was ingenuitive in 1948. Basehart gives a great performance that really draws you in and root for this desperate criminal. I'm sure the producer's intent was for us to side with the police, since so much of the film focuses on them, but Basehart makes an irresistible anti-hero.

It all ends with a thrilling chase through the then-new Los Angeles storm drainage tunnels and even predates the production of The Third Man. John Alton is the cinematographer, so we're in good hands there. It's all chiaroscuro and sculpted shadows, even in the interior scenes, which in some Film Noirs can tend to be the more mundane and "straight-up" shots.

The Domino Principle - By 1977 the Paranoid Thriller was perhaps a bit too familiar. The Domino Principle certainly thinks it can get by with bad cinematography, bad acting, and a paper thin story to still reel in the Parallax View crowd. It's directed by Stanley Kramer and stars Gene Hackman, Richard Widmark, and Eli Wallach. It should have been so much better!

It begins with a few minutes of opening narration (who was doing opening narration in dramatic films in 1977? No one.) about how crazy the world has become and how one man can be turned into an assassin if his life has gone horribly wrong. And with that we're introduce to Vietnam war vet Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman) who got caught with a murder rap when he killed his lover (Candace Bergen) Ellie's abusive husband. One day Tucker is visited by Mr. Tagge (Widmark) who offers him a deal; he'll be released from prison if he will assassinate someone for the government. Tucker will do it on one condition, that his cell mate Spiventa (a surprisingly pervy Mickey Rooney) is released too. I've no idea how long Tucker has been in jail at this point of the story but he must have a fondness for Spiventa's fascination with talking about pussy, because Mickey Rooney sure mentions it enough.

So they get released but the government agents kill Spiventa once they're out of San Quentin. This makes Tucker sulk and moan for about 45 minutes and drags the film down into the doldrums. Even when he's reunited with Ellie, Tucker is a moaning bastard and the audience has to sit through Vaseline smeared shots of Popeye Doyle fucking Murphy Brown and it isn't pretty. Not by a long shot. Candace Bergin has a horrific hair-do that has to be a wig. I'm surprised to see Bergin play the thankless "girlfriend" role who cries and whines about how much she's scared for her man.

Eli Wallach shows up as a mysterious General and Eddie Albert (Junior) plays an arrogant young agent who antagonizes Tucker; sometimes just to be a prick for being a prick's sake.

Oh yeah. Lots of shit gets blown up. For no reason at all. For a clandestine government agency you'd think they'd be more adept at covering their tracks. Oh wait, this is a movie so they people producing the film might just be blowing shit up for kicks.

Which is too bad because the film starts well. The recruitment of Tucker is not as cut & dry as I mention above. There are a number of scenes of Tagge psychoanalyzing Tucker that are actually intersting and well acted by Widmark and Hackman. But try as they might, they can't keep this turkey afloat. The film really fails at never establishing why they need Tucker to work for them and who he's supposed to kill and why that would be important. As it stands, it's hard to care about any of this. Seems like they made this film so the crew could visit San Francisco and Mexico and have a good time.