"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.
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