"Decoy" (1946) on Warner Archive Instant

"People who use pretty face's like you use yours don't live very long, anyway."

     Guy's brought back a lot of stuff from WWII. B-movie director Jack Bernhard brought himself back a wife and leading lady named Jean Gillie. Together they made a late night pulp noir so menacing it makes the cynical romance of "Gun Crazy" look like a Harlequin novel. "Decoy" sucker punched me when I first saw it. Being blindsided by a film is the greatest feeling in the world, and one that happens all too seldom. It takes the right combination of low expectation followed by high reward. Such was the case with "Decoy", a picture I initially only watched because it was on the same disc as "Crime Wave". I gave the disc a half hearted spin and soon became entranced by this hopeless low budget litany of betrayal, murder and avarice.

     We open on a man's dirty hand's in a sink, his reflection in a broken mirror. I don't know of a more definitive opening image in film noir, a genre populated by men whittled down and parceled out by fate. The man, Dr. Lloyd Craig (Herbert Rudley), has a gaze somehow both zombie like and imbued with singular focused purpose. He hitches a ride into town, walks into an apartment and shoots Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) before being killed himself.

     Sheldon Leonard is Police Sgt. Joe Portugal, a tough, no nonsense streetwise cop. I always loved Leonard in his brief appearance in "It's a Wonderful Life" as the bartender, and it's great to see him here in a larger role. He possessed the kind of voice people had in the 1940's, but don't anymore. Margot's hard boiled deathbed confession to Portugal takes us into the story.

     It's the most far out of crime plots- a plan to dodge a death sentence by using a chemical antidote to gas chamber toxin. Margot's guy, Frankie (Robert Armstrong), is scheduled to meet his maker, and she plans on raising the guy from the dead so she can get her hand's on the resurrected sucker's stash of cash. Dr. Craig is the idealistic, altruistic doctor Margot seduces and manipulates; eroding his beneficent nature until he becomes her tool.

     The reanimation of Frankie is the poverty row crime story version of the creation scene from "Frankenstein", right down to Frankie's proclamation "I'm alive." Even if the picture wasn't any good, it would still be notable for the gonzo prison break scenario. It's one of the rare noir's infused with horror and sci-fi element's. Considering many noir's mutual low budget pedigree with the more fantastic genre's, it's disappointing more filmmakers didn't exploit the potential for cross pollination (one personal favorite is Robert Siodmak's "Son of Dracula", a heartbreaking tragic horror noir gothic).

     To reveal what happens from this point forward would be to take the dark joy away from experiencing some of the most wonderfully sinister plotting in all film noir. Suffice it to say, what happens to the men Margot has lined up is what inevitably happens to all dominoes meticulously arranged in a row. When the good doctor tries to pull out of his association with her, Margot says something that could be said to a million different guy's in a million different noir's, "You're in the middle. Deep. Over your head. No matter what you do now, you're still part of everything that's happened." He's yet another schlub who sold himself out for a pretty face, only to discover he'd been played, and now he's stuck with not only the dame, but her kill crazy soulless gangster boyfriend (Edward Norris), as well.

     Dr. Craig is interesting as a character because it is the act of giving life that sends him spiralling into this nightmare; through helping to cheat death, he finds himself in a world of it. He again becomes Margot's instrument of resurrection, but this time he's bringing a box of cash from it's grave in a fog shrouded forest. By this time, the doctor has been reduced to a drunken, mindless Igor, digging in the dirt under his mistresses order's. The film ends with a cold, nihilistic finish, it's minor key harmonious with all that preceded it.

    Women in film noir are a tough breed and Jean Gillie in "Decoy" may be the world heavyweight champion; an unholy arch femme fatale who uses her spiderweb of manipulation to try and snare a whole load of cash. Only thirty-three when "Decoy" was made, she returned to England afterwards, where a long career should have awaited her. Fate had other plan's. She died of pneumonia less than three year's later, having made only one more picture. Life just ain't fair sometimes.

     

   

"Gun Crazy" (1950) on Warner Archive Instant

"Some guy's are born smart about women. And some guy's are born dumb."

     I first saw "Gun Crazy" at some point in my early to mid twenties and it didn't make a lasting impression, This isn't a reflection of the quality of the picture, so much as it is another piece of evidence proving I was an idiot for much of that decade. In a way, though, that's appropriate, as it's a picture about being young and stupid, specifically when it comes to love and the choices it forces us to make before we've lived and learned to know better.

     We open on a rainy corner and young Rusty Tamblyn, as Bart, breaking the front window of a store so that he can steal a gun. See, this kid is crazy obsessed with gun's, to the point he's unable to function without one in his life. If this were today, the kid would certainly be on some kind of watch list and be going to therapy five day's a week. At the court hearing for his crime we flashback to Bart bringing his gun to school and the kid's gathering around to ogle it. It's a jarring scene to view through a modern filter and all the intervening year's of tragedy and caution. Bart's sister pleads his case, saying that although her brother might be gun crazy, the one thing he won't do is harm anything. In order to illustrate this we flashback to young Bart shooting a baby chick and becoming overwhelmed with grief when it dies. It's a simple, yet profound document of the moment in one boy's life when he learned he has the power to kill and how awful it makes him feel, anticipating Peckinpah's penchant for intertwining death imagery with childhood.

     Bart's story picks up year's later after he has graduated reform school and done a tour in the army. He celebrates his new freedom by- what else- shooting gun's with his buddies and then heading to a carnival where they take in a performance by sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins). Bart is captivated by this hot blonde who shares his affection for ballistic machinery, and, after winning a shooting contest against her, he joins the show as a performer.

     The two gunslinger's fall for each other, but the carnival owner, Packett (Barry Kroeger), tries to get in Laurie's way. Seems he thinks he's got a claim to her, something about a dead guy in St. Louis. Laurie thinks otherwise, and soon there's two unemployed sharpshooter's on the road. "I've got a funny feeling I want to be good. I don't know, maybe I can't", Laurie says to Bart before their late night wedding chapel marriage. Being young, dumb and horny, Bart pins his hopes on this pretty dame, naively assuming he's the one with the shameful past.

     But, Laurie is a hardened survivor who's been around. Cummins is perfect as a woman who is ice cold, materialistic and makes no bone's about it. She begins wearing away at Bart's moral code, and the two set off on a stick-up spree. John Dall ,as Bart, perfectly exudes the right combo of boyish innocence and romantic hopefulness of a schmuck in love with a morally absent femme fatale, who's too stupid to leave.

     The scenes of the couple running from their various job's contain some of the most iconic "Bonnie and Clyde" type imagery ever captured on film. There's a modest grit to Joseph Lewis' shot compositions; he has a gift for expressive close-up's and simple camera move's . The film's centerpiece, an extended one-take scene of a bank job shot from the backseat, with realistic, banal improvised dialogue, is a thrilling marvel of simple, efficient technique and staging. Just as de Toth does at the start of "Crime Wave", Lewis forces the audience into the role of voyeuristic co-conspirator.

    If you're going to make a robbery picture, you gotta have cool outfit's. It's a time honored tradition as exemplified by film's like "The Killing", "Reservoir Dogs", "Point Break" and countless others. Lewis understands that the aesthetics of wardrobe are important to the genre and dresses his leads in various disguises, most memorably their carny cowboy outfit's and their sunglasses and trench coat get up's. He uses wardrobe to illustrate the moral compromise that has overtaken Bart when he shows him wearing a stolen military outfit, when he once honestly wore his own uniform. Conversely, the couple's costume western attire takes on a new meaning when they become real life outlaws right out of the Old West. "Sometimes it doesn't feel like me", says Bart about his new life.

     "You're the only thing that is [real], Laurie. The rest is a nightmare.", he says to his vicious, cut-throat blonde bride. She's a tough broad who's decided to survive on her own term's, and who presents herself as the only reward Bart should need for the felonious quicksand she has led him neck deep into. At it's heart this is a film about that first relationship with someone who was wrong for you, but you didn't care and instead you did stupid shit even though you knew better; it's a film about how love can corrupt.

     As a final job they decide to knock off the Armour factory payroll. Laurie ice's a couple people during their getaway- a teeth grindingly intense sequence. I don't know that I've ever heard the selfish inanity of crime so succinctly described as when Bart says, "Two people died, just so we can live without working." It's a hell of a line, in a hell of a script, written by Dalton Trumbo, a hell of a writer, who at the time was on the blacklist because he wasn't a rat.

     With all bad relationship's, eventually they have have to meet the family, and that never goes well, and it certainly doesn't when Bart and Laurie hide at his sister's in an attempt to duck the law on their tails. Neither does Bart listen when his friend's try and talk some sense into him. The picture ends with the couple's flight from inevitability into the mountains. Winded and dirty they try and stay ahead of the siren's and dog's. Even nature conspires against them as the high altitude robs them of their breath, They become immersed in the disorienting fog of their marriage as the the ending approaches.

     "Gun Crazy" is a story of unhealthy romance, perfect for a cynic's Valentine's Day. It's a story of how blind affection can change us for the worse and where incautious devotion can lead. And it's about the time in your life when you couldn't give a damn about any of that jazz.

   

   

"Crime Wave" (1954) on Warner Archive Instant

      I romanticize Los Angeles- particularly LA of the mid 20th century- the way only someone who grew up in New England in the late 20th century is able to do. The ever tarnishing glamour. The crime. The sadness. It's a world that captivates me. The world of Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and, of course, James Ellroy. A list of Ellroy's favorite crime picture's is how I first heard of Andre De Toth's "Crime Wave", where it sits between Losey's "The Prowler" (a masterpiece) and Wise's "Odds Against Tomorrow" (still need to see it). Ellroy says of the film, "Any time I can go back and live in the actual physical presence of Los Angeles in the 1950's I am very happy, and this movie takes you there."

     "Crime Wave" does indeed literally take you there. De Toth puts the audience in the backseat of a car full of escaped convict's on a crime spree as they pull into the location of their latest job: a gas station. Right from the get go the film displays numerous essential noir element's: great character actor's (Ted de Corsia, Charles Bronson, Dub Taylor), blunt violence and a constant uneasy tension. The use of source music adds to the naturalism of the scene, as the radio plays a Doris Day record the gas station attendant requested. De Toth makes us party to the ensuing crime. The hood's slug the attendant, but before they can snatch the dough and scram, a motorcycle cop sticks his nose in their affair's. Three gunshot's later, there's a dead cop on the ground and a wounded cop killer on the run.

     De Toth captures what follows with a stylish verite; the streetscape of 1950's LA unfolds before us as cop's canvas the city, searching for those who killed one of their own. We are taken on the run with Gat Morgan (Ned Young) as he dodges through the shadow's in an attempt to evade the black and white shark's that hunt the street's. We are immersed in the world of the law, as well, most impressively in a sequence where De Toth's camera follows Sterling Hayden's Det. Lt. Sims as he walks the interrogation room, taking in the chaos of a late night at LAPD headquarters.

     De Toth's mixture of documentary rawness and poetic stylization gives the film a tension and power that most noir's don't reach. His economic storytelling is effortlessly perfect. With only the simplest of dialogue and a couple of short, beautifully composed scenes in which Lacey- the ex-con trying to go straight- is called by Morgan and then the cop's, we are given a full picture of this sympathetic character and the stigma he is living with. "Once you've done a bit, nobody leaves you alone. Somebody's always on your back."

     In true film noir tradition a man's past and the Fate's conspire to jam a guy up. Morgan shows up at Steve Lacey's (Gene Nelson) door and promptly dies in his living room. The ever dependable Jay Novello is fantastic as Dr. Otto Hessler, the drunk, disgraced doctor- now a veterinarian- who arrives too late and cleans his dead patient's pocket's clean. In one moment, Lacey finds himself all of a sudden in the cross hairs of Det. Sims' investigation; a supposedly reformed hood with a dead, jail breaking cop killer in his living room. Sims as played by Hayden is an intense, snarling, sadistic dick, obsessed with the truth as he sees it- not willing to give an inch to doubt.

     Lacey refuses to turn snitch and is released from jail through the effort's of his kindly parole officer O'Keefe (James Bell). His freedom is short lived as he and his wife (Phyllis Kirk) soon become the unwilling host's to the two remaining escapee's Doc Penny (Ted de Corsia) and Ben Hastings (Charles Bronson, who previously worked with De Toth in "House of Wax"). In a scene of brutal cinematic restraint, De Toth's camera takes us away from the scene of Hastings murdering Hessler at his vet clinic, instead following a newspaper man as he goes to alert a couple of officer's at a diner. The cacophonous barking chaos of the murder scene gives way to the jazz of the evening only to eventually return. He films Hastings' escape down an alley as if he was a monster running into the shadow's of the LA night.

     De Toth uses deft storytelling touches to populate his film with fully realized character's. Whether it's Hayden always wearing a poorly tied necktie and smoking a crumpled cigarette at the end or Novello's doctor using his free time to try and save a dog that was brought to him to be euthanized, this is a film concerned with real people, not stock cliche's. Gene Nelson gives a beautifully natural, understated performance as Lacey, a man who's marriage is being sucked into the undertow of his past.

     The hood's force Lacey to be their wheel-man for a bank robbery, intending for him to fly them out of the country afterwards. Johnny, a psycho perv played by Timothy Carey, watches over his wife. With his hypnotic gaze and unhealthy grin, Carey possessed one of the most uncomfortable screen presences in cinema history. When he's on screen you can't take your eye's off him- he courses with a sick, unpredictable energy.

     There's more violence and menace to this picture than your average noir. It's there in the blood flowing down Dub Taylor's face as he calls the cop's, it's in the lecherous gaze Bronson gives to Mrs. Lacey and it's in every second of Carey's screen time. "Crime Wave" is a raw, uncompromising street level noir with a dangerous vitality undiminished by the intervening 60 years. Indeed, it's tougher than any picture you'll likely see come out of Hollywood in 2015.