Fate Opens The File on Thelma Jordon

Now Playing: The File on Thelma Jordon (1949)

Pros: A good, mid-level effort that represents a sort of watershed in Barbara Stanwyck’s noir career; Features a relatable “everyman” in Wendell Corey
Cons: A head-slapper of an ending that manages to be both brutal and cloyingly sentimental

This post is part of the It’s in the Name of the Title Blogathon, hosted by two big names in movie blogging, Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Rebecca at Taking Up Room. Gill and Rebecca tasked their fellow bloggers with reviewing a movie in which a character’s name (first, last or full) appears in the title; for more contributions, see either or both of the hosts’ blogs.

Speaking of big names, there weren’t many that were bigger in the classic era of screen entertainment than Barbara Stanwyck. From the risque pre-Code talkies in which she played plucky women of questionable virtue, to TV dramas like The Big Valley where she portrayed tough-as-nails matriarchs, Stanwyck blazed her own distinctive cinematic trail, eventually garnering four Best Actress Academy Award nominations, an honorary Oscar, three primetime Emmys and a multitude of lifetime achievement awards, among other honors. 

A rundown of Stanwyck’s title roles alone demonstrates the depth and variety of her career: as Mexicali Rose (1929) she’s a “loose” woman who likes to use men; as Annie Oakley (1935) she can do anything a man can do, and better; as harried, working class Stella Dallas (1937), she would do anything to help her daughter get ahead in life; as The Mad Miss Manton (1938), she’s a fun-loving debutante who proves to be more adept at discovering clues than the police; as Martha Ivers (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946), she’s an intimidating business woman with a dark secret; and as Mrs.Carroll (The Two Mrs. Carrolls, 1947), she’s the new wife of a tortured artist who may or may not be utterly mad.

Stanwyck reached her noir femme-fatale peak as cold-as-ice Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944). But as the war years receded and America settled down into a dull but comfortable suburban existence, Stanwyck’s screen image shifted. The noir roles were still there, but she was just as likely to be on the receiving end of dark designs as not.

Fred was sorry that he wasn't double indemnified against laser death stares.

Only a year after her dicey stint as the second Mrs. Carroll, Stanwyck was again in peril in Sorry, Wrong Number, portraying an invalid, Leona Stevenson, who inadvertently overhears a murder plot from her bedroom phone.

The difference between calculating Phyllis Dietrichson and panicky, bed-ridden Leona couldn’t be more stark, yet when Thelma Jordon rolled around in 1949, Stanwyck’s crime drama roles -- both as the Femme Fatale and the Suffering Woman -- were starting to get on her nerves:

“‘My God, isn’t there a good comedy around?’ [Stanwyck] asked at the time. ‘I’m tired of suffering in films. And I’ve killed so many co-stars lately, I’m getting a power complex!” [Quoted in Dan Callahan’s biography, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, University Press of Mississippi, 2011, p.159]

As if to punctuate the grimness of the roles she was getting, Thelma Jordon is both a femme fatale and a sufferer. Thelma takes a long, circuitous route to get to both states of noir-ness (maybe too long and too circuitous; more on that later), and drags a noir Everyman in the form of Assistant District Attorney Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey) along for the ride.

Fate arranges for a “meet cute” between the duplicitous Thelma and her ostensible patsy, DA Marshall. One night at the District Attorney’s office, Cleve is downing shots and complaining about his depressing marital situation to his boss, Miles Scott (Paul Kelly). After Scott calls it a night and goes home, alluring Thelma shows up at the office asking for Scott, wanting to report an attempted burglary at her aunt’s house, where she is staying.

Now inebriated and not wanting to go home where his wealthy, domineering father-in-law is holding court at a dinner party, Cleve convinces Thelma to go out for drinks. Pretty soon Cleve, disenchanted with his hum-drum middle class life, falls hard for the alluring and mysterious Thelma.

Cleve: "I'm fed up. Ever heard that phrase? No, you wouldn't, you're not married."

It seems that a combination of alcohol and infatuation has painted a big P for Patsy on Cleve's forehead.

First, there’s Thelma's story about attempted burglaries at her aunt’s house that smells to high heaven. When asked why she didn’t just go to the police, Thelma responds with a laugher of an explanation that her aunt is afraid of uniformed cops. Then, having allowed Cleve to think that she was single, Thelma belatedly admits that she herself is married -- to a low-life crook and con man named Tony (Richard Rober).

The noir stuff soon hits the fan when, on the night that the pair are planning to go off together on a romantic trip, Thelma calls Cleve in a panic that her aunt has been shot. Cleve steals over to the house to help clean up the mess. Wanting desperately to believe that it’s Thelma’s no-good hubby Tony who has shown up unannounced and killed the old lady in an attempt to rob her, Cleve, with his extensive DA experience, frenetically barks orders at Thelma to set the scene to look like a garden-variety burglary gone wrong.

If Thelma is truly a cold-blooded murderer she’s an excellent actress, as she seems genuinely panicked, like an innocent bystander who realizes how much the circumstances make her look guilty. And despite the lovers’ best efforts at rearranging the crime scene, she most definitely looks guilty.

Thelma: "I wish so much crime didn't take place after dark. It's so unnerving!"

When Thelma’s sketchy past becomes public, along with the news that Aunt Vera changed her will in Thelma’s favor, means, motive and opportunity line up against her. Combined with Vera’s butler’s testimony about Thelma’s furtive behavior on the night in question, DA Scott decides that a murder charge is a slam dunk.

With the ball in his court, Cleve goes to work, anonymously suggesting to Thelma’s lawyer (Stanley Ridges) that he hire the Chief District Attorney’s lawyer brother to work for the defense, forcing the DA to step down due to conflict of interest. Cleve gets the lead prosecutor assignment, and proceeds to do everything he can to throw the case.

Is he the dupe of a cold-blooded Phyllis Dietrichson type, or is it more complicated than that? And where was the shadowy Tony on that fateful night?

The File on Thelma Jordon invites the viewer to be an alternate juror on the case. We haven't witnessed the actual shooting, but we have seen Cleve’s and Thelma's hurried rearrangement of the crime scene. The circumstantial evidence -- like the convenient change to the will -- is strong, but there are seeds of doubt. Thelma’s distress on the night of the shooting seems genuine, which is uncharacteristic of a shrewd, heartless manipulator -- or was she just acting?

Stanwyck synthesizes Thelma’s contradictions over the course of the film, from wry bemusement at Cleve’s drunken advances, to smoldering passion, to panicked helplessness in the middle of the night, to tight-lipped stoicism after she’s been arrested, to an almost regal dignity as she leads a swarm of reporters and onlookers from the jail to the courtroom to hear the jury’s verdict.

You'd be confident too if you had both the defense and the prosecution on your side.

Thelma’s ultimate fate comes completely out of left field and it’s both shocking and cloyingly sentimental. It's the sort of ending guaranteed to bring a tear to the eye of any blue-haired upholder of public morality. 

Fortunately, Thelma's ending hasn't erased fond memories of the film. Biographer Dan Callahan relates that at the American Film Institute’s fete of Stanwyck, in which she received a Lifetime Achievement Award, Walter Matthau singled out Barbara’s performance in Thelma Jordon:

“[P]articularly the way she sighed, ‘Maybe I am just a dame and didn’t know it.’ Matthau then went on to knock her co-star, Wendell Corey, an unprepossessing actor who was good when he was doing a menacing type in Budd Boetticher’s The Killer is Loose (1956), but who was hard-pressed to hold his own as a leading man opposite Stanwyck.” [Callahan, p. 158]

While I’m hesitant to disagree with the great Walter Matthau, I think “unprepossessing” is just what the film calls for. Cleve is a post-war, suburban “everyman” who is fed up with domestic life and resents being dominated by his overbearing father-in-law. Cleve would be far less believable in the hands of a more charismatic leading man who could “hold his own” with Stanwyck. Men like Cleve don’t often score with sensual mystery women like Thelma, and it makes sense that he’s willing to endanger his family and career for her.

Thelma: "I'm no good for any man for any longer than a kiss!"

In the same year as Thelma Jordon, Corey lost Janet Leigh to Robert Mitchum in Holiday Affair. Corey was the epitome of the reliable but unexciting second male lead who loses out in romance to the charismatic star. At least he had Stanwyck all to himself for most of The File, even if it wasn’t entirely due to his animal magnetism.

The File on Thelma Jordon was directed by Robert Siodmak, who was one of a generation of filmmakers who got their start in Germany during the silent era, but fled to Hollywood as Hitler rose to power. In the 1940s he made a string of crime pictures that years later would come to be seen as some of the very best examples of film noir, including Phantom Lady (1942), Christmas Holiday (1944; with Deana Durbin and Gene Kelly), The Killers (1946; Burt Lancaster’s film debut and Ava Gardner’s first featured role), Cry of the City (1948; Victor Mature and Richard Conte), Criss Cross (1949, Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo), and of course The File on Thelma Jordon to round out the decade.

Besides having such an assured director in her corner, Thelma benefits from George Barnes’ standout cinematography. Many of Cleve’s and Thelma’s scenes together take place at night, with the play of light and shadow serving as a visual metaphor for the lovers' dark sides and conflicting emotions.

Thelma Jordon is not Barbara Stanwyck’s best title role, and it’s not the high point of director Siodmak’s noir career, but it is a solid crime thriller with a relatable everyman in the person of Wendell Corey and enough plot twists and turns to make things interesting. But be forewarned: the slap dash ending might induce cognitive whiplash.

Where to find it: Streaming | DVD

Film Noir's Most Wanted: Raymond Burr

Years before Raymond Burr became a good guy defending the innocent as Perry Mason and fighting crime as Ironside, he gave new meaning to the word heavy in a string of crime pictures and film noirs from the late ‘40s through the mid-’50s.

Canadian by birth, Burr was born in 1917 in New Westminster, British Columbia. When still a young boy, his mother moved the family to Vallejo, California. Raymond was sent to military school, where he was mercilessly teased because of his weight. At 17 he quit school to join Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which gave him the opportunity to work a variety of jobs.

Burr soon gravitated to acting, working summer stock in Toronto, traveling to Europe for a stint at a UK repertory company and a singing gig at a Paris nightclub (!?), then heading back to California for more acting work at the Pasadena Playhouse.

With that experience under his belt, Burr decided to try his luck on Broadway. By 1943, good reviews for his performance in the play The Duke in Darkness attracted the attention of Hollywood, and he soon had a contract with RKO.

After the war, Burr’s film debut was in an RKO comedy, Without Reservations (1946). But the physically imposing, intense-looking actor was quickly destined for villain roles, appearing as the bad guy in three 1947 films: San Quentin (as an escaped convict), Code of the West (as a typical western black hat), and Desperate (as a revenge-seeking mobster). A new (dark) star was born.

The star of Desperate, Steve Brodie, took credit for starting Burr down the villainous path:

“Ray was… testing for a biblical part, so I suggested his name to the producer, Michael Kraike, for our picture.” … Kraike liked the idea, and for the next decade villain roles were about the only parts Raymond Burr played.” [Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, “Raymond Burr,” in Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir, McFarland, 2003, pp. 70-1.]

Those who only know Raymond Burr as the unflappable defense lawyer Perry Mason might be surprised at how flappable and violent he could be in these early roles. If anything, Burr was heftier than in his later Perry Mason days, an intimidating brick wall of a man in a bulky suit and fedora and wearing a permanent scowl for good measure -- the perfect noir antagonist.

Anyone doing villain roles in Hollywood during this period would have been hard pressed to avoid the kinds of crime pictures that came to be known as film noir. In her book Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir, Karen Burroughs Hannsberry counts nine noirs on Burr’s resume. IMDb lists 21 noirs and near-noirs to his credit.

Without further ado, here’s a “rap sheet” of some of Burr’s more notable film noir appearances:

As Walt Radak in Desperate (1947)

Wanted for:
Grand larceny
Transportation of stolen goods
Attempted murder

Case file summary: Steven Randall (Steve Brodie), a hard-up truck driver, needs work fast because his wife is expecting a baby. He signs up for a driving gig with an old childhood acquaintance, Walt Radak, but soon learns that he’ll be transporting stolen goods. Randall is coerced into going through with the job, but at the staging area, he manages to get the attention of a nearby policeman.

In the resulting shoot-out, the policeman is killed, and Walt’s kid brother Al (Larry Nunn) is charged with murder. Al is sentenced to death, and Randall flees town with his pregnant wife to avoid Radak’s wrath. The gang leader relentlessly tracks down the frightened couple, determined to kill Randall at the same time that his brother is executed in prison.

Quote:
Walt Radak [to Randall]: “In fifteen minutes they're going to throw the switch on Al, and you're going with him... both of you at the same time. It's not very much to do for my own brother, but it's something. It's all I can do now, I guess. Guess Al's already had his last dinner. You might as well have yours too.” [IMDb] 

As Rick Coyle in Raw Deal (1948)

Wanted for:
Robbery
Racketeering
Aiding and abetting
Aggravated assault

Case file summary: Joe Sullivan (Dennis O’Keefe), is serving time in prison for a botched robbery masterminded by his boss, Rick Coyle (Burr). Coyle, fearing Sullivan will rat him out, arranges for Joe to escape, but sets him up to be shot during the attempt.

Against the odds, Sullivan makes good on the escape with his girl Pat (Claire Trevor) and his lawyer’s assistant Ann (Marsha Hunt), in tow. Learning of his boss’ attempted double cross, Sullivan decides to go after Coyle for the $50,000 he’s owed.

Quote:
Coyle: “He [Sullivan] was screaming he wanted out. When a man screams, I don’t like it. He might scream loud enough for the D.A. to hear. I don’t want to hurt the D.A.’s ears. He’s sensitive.” [Hannsberry, p. 72]

As J.B. MacDonald in Pitfall (1948)

Wanted for:
Stalking
Harassment
Conspiracy to commit murder

Case file summary: The humdrum middle-class life of married insurance investigator John Forbes (Dick Powell) takes a sharp turn into danger when he meets beautiful and alluring Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott), girlfriend of convicted embezzler Bill Smiley (Byron Barr). Originally intending to retrieve stolen items from Mona for his company, he falls hard for her instead.

Complications ensue when J.B. MacDonald (Burr), an unbalanced private eye working for the insurance company, becomes obsessed with Mona and wants her for himself. He stalks Mona, and plans to set up Smiley, who is soon to be released from prison, to eliminate his competition for Mona’s affections.

Quote:
 MacDonald: “She probably doesn't appeal to you but for me, she's just what I told the doctor to order.” [IMDB]

As Nick Ferraro in His Kind of Woman (1951)

Wanted for:
Kidnapping
Conspiracy to commit murder
Assault with a deadly weapon

Case file summary: Crime boss Nick Ferraro (Burr) has been deported to his native Italy, but plots to return to the States. Ferraro has his henchmen offer down-on-his-luck gambler Dan Milner (Robert Mitchum) $50K to stay at a toney Mexican resort, where he plans to kill Milner and assume his identity.

En route to Mexico, Milner meets wealthy heiress Lenore Brent (Rosalind Russell), who wows him with her beauty and vivaciousness. At the resort, the initially clueless Milner encounters a cast of eccentric characters, including has-been actor Mark Cardigan (Vincent Price), any one of whom may or may not be in on the dastardly plot.

Quote:
Ferraro: “I want him [Milner] to be fully conscious. I don't like to shoot a corpse. I want to see the expression on his face when he knows it's coming.” [IMDb]

As Harry Prebble in The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Wanted for:
Assault

Case file summary: When Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) learns that her fiancé stationed overseas has fallen in love with someone else, she goes on a blind rebound date at the Blue Gardenia nightclub with Harry Prebble (Burr), a cheesecake photographer and professional lounge lizard. Harry gets Norah drunk on multiple cocktails, and takes her back to his apartment with less than honorable intentions.

Norah fends Harry off with a fireplace poker and flees back to her apartment. Waking up the next morning with no clear memory of the previous night’s events, she is shocked to discover that Harry is dead, and the police are looking for a mystery woman who just happens to be her. Norah realizes her only hope is to enlist the aid of a newspaper columnist, Casey Mayo (Richard Conte), who has dubbed the mystery suspect “The Blue Gardenia murderess.”

Quote:
Harry Prebble: “These aren't really drinks. They're trade-winds across cool lagoons. They're the Southern Cross above coral reefs. They're a lovely maiden bathing at the foot of a waterfall.” [IMDb]

Bonus Burr: Two Gorilla-noirs

Bride of the Gorilla (1951)

Written and directed by Curt Siodmak, creator of The Wolf Man, this entertainingly cheesy B features Burr as Barney Chavez, the manager of a remote South American plantation. Barney is in lust with beautiful Dina Van Gelder (Barbara Payton), wife of the plantation’s owner. Barney kills his boss to get to his wife, but his crime is witnessed by a local witch-woman (Gisela Werbisek), who puts the curse of the “Sukara” on him, whereby he turns into a rampaging gorilla by night. Is Barney truly a were-gorilla, or is it all in his head? The local police commissioner (Lon Chaney, Jr.) and doctor (Tom Conway) are on the case.

Quote:
 Police Commissioner Taro (narrating): “This is Jungle - lush, green, alive with incredible growth - as young as day, as old as time. … Isn't it beautiful? But I have also learned that beauty can be venomous, deadly, something terrifying, something of prehistoric ages when monstrous superstitions ruled the minds of men … something that has haunted the world for millions of years rose out of that verdant labyrinth.” [IMDb]

---

Gorilla at Large (1954)

This simian pot-boiler, filmed in 3-D, features Burr as Cy Miller, owner of a carnival called “The Garden of Evil.” The main act features a beautiful trapeze artist, Laverne Miller (Anne Bancroft), who teases Goliath, a killer gorilla, as she swings dangerously close above his head. Cy comes up with the idea of having carnival barker Joey Matthews (Cameron Mitchell) dress up in a gorilla suit and catch Laverne each night as she falls from the trapeze. Soon, various carnies are turning up dead -- could it be Goliath, or someone dressed in the gorilla suit? Detective Sgt. Garrison (Lee J. Cobb) has to sort out the mystery amidst a love quadrangle consisting of Cy, Laverne, Joey and Joey’s fiancée Audrey (Charlotte Austin).

Quote:
Sgt. Garrison: “You've always been this alert, Shaughnessy?”
Shaughnessy: “Always on my toes!”
Sgt. Garrison: “Well, get off 'em. You're a cop, not a ballet dancer.” [IMDb] 

The Dark Before the Dawn of Hammer Horror: Stolen Face and Blackout

It’s blogathon time again! This post is part of the 9th annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by Terence Towles Canote at his A Shroud of Thoughts blog. After you’ve explored the dark world of Hammer film noir here, check out Terence's blog for more thoughts on films from the UK.

Mean streets. Dark alleyways. Conniving crooks. Corrupt cops. Double-dealin’ dames. To the classic film fan, it all seems as American as apple pie. Of course, greed, shady schemes and murder rear their ugly heads everywhere. And successful movie formulas have a tendency to spread far beyond national boundaries.

The term “film noir” originally circulated among French film critics in the late 1940s to describe Hollywood films of a certain dark, cynical type, but eventually grew to encompass a significant slice of world cinema that shared the same themes and style.

After the unprecedented horrors of WWII, the world’s popular culture could be forgiven for turning to the dark side, even in a country like the U.S. that emerged from the war stronger and more prosperous than ever.

Great Britain’s film industry had good reason to explore dark themes, as the war accelerated the decline of the empire and left Britons with shortages and rationing that lasted for years afterward.

Years before Hammer Films became famous for its technicolor Gothic horrors, the studio cranked out low budget programmers in a variety of genres: mysteries, thrillers, comedies, a smattering of science fiction, and, especially in the post-war years, Hollywood-style crime dramas.

The director who was instrumental in helping Hammer usher in its horror renaissance, Terence Fisher, refined his craft on several gritty B crime pictures before unleashing The Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula on the world.

Many of these films were made by Hammer in arrangement with American distributor Robert L. Lippert, and featured at least one American star, backed by a solid British cast, to ensure box office appeal in the states. (The stars were either on their way up in the business, or more often, on the way down, and thus available to work cheaply.)

In many cases the titles were changed for American distribution -- it’s easy to imagine a frenetic, cigar-chomping Lippert dictating the snappy, hard-boiled titles to his gum-chewing, buxom secretary.

In addition to the two films discussed below, Fisher directed such noirish titles as Man Bait (1952), Dead on Course (1952), Man in Hiding (1953), The Black Glove (1954) and Kill Me Tomorrow (1957), among others. Other noir-sounding titles (directed by others) include: Bad Blonde (1953), Paid to Kill (1954), Heat Wave (1954) and The Glass Tomb (1955).

Beginning in 2006, VCI Entertainment, in association with Kit Parker Films, released DVD sets of what they called “Hammer Film Noir,” focusing on the Hammer-Lippert output of the early-mid ‘50s. While noir purists might take issue with the film noir designation for many of the titles, it’s nonetheless a great service to fans, highlighting an interesting period of Hammer film history that otherwise might swirl down the memory hole. Best of all, many of the sets are still available from online sellers.

Now Playing: Stolen Face (1952)

Pros: Presence of veterans Paul Henreid and Lizbeth Scott lends a veneer of A picture class
Cons: Character motivations and actions are contrived and unbelievable, as is the ending, which is also abrupt and unsatisfying

Despite the presence of once-superstars Paul Henreid and Lizabeth Scott that shouts FILM NOIR in all caps, Stolen Face is barely even a crime drama, instead shading into romantic melodrama territory, albeit with occasional glimpses into a somewhat tame British criminal underworld.

The film wastes no time in establishing its main character, Dr. Philip Ritter (Henreid), a renowned plastic surgeon, as someone too good to be true. In the opening scene, Ritter is playfully bantering with a young boy whose hand mobility he has saved, and reassures the mother who tells him she can’t pay him immediately. Then, after turning down £1000 to perform unneeded cosmetic surgery on a rich, vain dowager, he’s off to the local women’s prison to perform free plastic surgeries on deformed and disfigured inmates.

Ritter believes that correcting the women’s physical deformities can help them reintegrate into society. (A noble aspiration, but one wonders where the money for his practice is coming from, or if he’s just so rich that he doesn’t need it.) The warden has a new case for him -- Lily Conover (Mary Mackenzie) an habitual thief whose face was severely scarred in the London blitz.

Ritter interviews the coarse young woman and is intrigued. But on the drive back from the prison, the exhausted doctor nearly wrecks the car he’s driving, and is given marching orders by his associate to take a needed vacation.

Next thing he knows, Ritter is having a meet cute at an out of the way country inn with a glamorous American concert pianist, Alice Brent (Scott), who is similarly decompressing due to career stresses.

Ritter hears someone in the next room coughing and sneezing, and in reflexive doctor-mode he scribbles out a whimsical prescription for “two aspirin and a shot of whiskey,” which he slips under the door. The prospective patient turns out to be the beautiful and classy pianist. Fortunately, Alice has the aspirin and Ritter has the whiskey, (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

The doctor prescribes rest and relaxation in front of the fireplace.

They both decide to stay on a couple of extra days, she supposedly to recover from her bad cold and he to take care of his new patient, but of course it’s all about the mutual attraction. They conduct a whirlwind romance via a montage sequence, saving some wear and tear on the viewer’s patience.

Just as Ritter is falling head over heels in love, Alice packs up and leaves with no notice. Later, back at his surgery, Alice calls, explaining that she is engaged to be married (to her manager, David, played by Andre Morrell).

Devastated, Ritter distracts himself with work, remembering his promise to Lily to make her into a new woman. In 1950s Britain, there’s no give and take between doctor and patient, especially for a patient who is a female convict. Lily is grateful for Ritter’s magnanimous attention, but she has no say in the ultimate outcome. She asks him twice what she will look like, and he tells her he doesn’t know. It’s just assumed she will look completely different, and presumably far more beautiful than she was prior to her injuries.

Ritter is set to go all-out Pygmalion on Lily. His surgical office looks more like an artist’s studio, with sketch pads lying about and a large clay bust representing the idealized Lily -- covered, so as not to spoil the surprise -- situated prominently in the center of the room. Lily’s face is just so much clay in the “artist’s” hands.

While outwardly solicitous and professional, inwardly Ritter is roiling with disappointment, so we know what’s coming. In yet another montage sequence, we see Alice playing the great concert halls of Europe, while Ritter uses his surgical skills to recreate his lost love. While I think montage sequences tend to be a bit tacky, in this case the intercutting between Alice and and the new “Alice”-in-the-making effectively serves to foreshadow the clash of doppelgangers at the climax.

As Lily/New Alice is recovering from her surgery, there is a shot, where Ritter is tenderly holding her bandaged arm, that reminded me of Colin Clive in the original Frankenstein hovering over the monster on the lab table like a proud new dad, or for that matter, the monster trying to take Elsa Lanchester’s hand in Bride of Frankenstein. Unfortunately from that point, instead of a horror-tinged noir, we get a rather staid British lesson in manners and class distinctions.

An updated mad scientist's lab, circa 1952.

Of course Ritter’s work is a complete success, and Lily emerges from the bandages an absolutely fabulous duplicate of Alice, at least physically. When Dr. Frankenstein’s Ritter’s associate learns of the doctor’s plans to marry his creation, all the do-gooder pretenses go out the window and upper crust revulsion at the lower classes takes over -- he protests that Lily is a recidivist criminal and psychopath (so much for salvaging the the not-so-good, the bad and the ugly through plastic surgery).

If this had been an American noir, there would have been a body count and hell to pay for the sheer hubris for trying to make a vulnerable, not-too-bright prisoner into the spitting image of a lost love. But instead, Stolen Face fritters away its potential with scene after scene of Ritter the dyspeptic elitist disapproving of his new wife’s lifestyle choices.

Lily’s/new Alice’s worst misdeeds in this ostensible crime drama are preferring jazz clubs to the opera, shoplifting a gaudy brooch and fur coat that her wealthy husband won’t buy for her (he uses his influence to make the charges go away), drinking too much and having raucous parties at their mansion.

The worst crime of all is that the film seems to side with the arrogant and selfish doctor, making him out to be the victim, and figuratively tsk-tsking at Lily’s antics like some blue-haired grand dame complaining about the help.

The court of stiff-upper-lip opinion brings the Hammer down on Lily at the climax. When Alice's fiancé David realizes who she is really in love with, he does the civilized thing and releases her from the engagement. Alice, unaware of the existence of Lily and the marriage, rushes to Ritter. Let’s just say there is hell to pay, and I’ll leave it to you to guess who pays it.

Despite the lost opportunities and the sour ending (your results may differ), the film is saved by the presence of ‘40s icons Lizabeth Scott and Paul Henreid (kind of like good plastic surgery that smooths over sagging spots and wrinkles).

Both were on the downslopes of their careers: Scott was still under contract to Paramount at this point and kept getting loaned out to indifferent film projects by a studio that didn’t know what to do with her; Henreid had been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a “communist sympathizer” and was in no position to be choosy.

Scott is as beautiful and glamorous as ever in her dual role, believable as someone who could drive an esteemed physician batty with love/lust. Henreid, with his usual urbane sophistication and calm, assured manner, almost makes you believe that surgically altering a poor, hapless stranger and marrying her is a reasonable thing to do.

It suddenly dawns on Lily that she's wearing someone else's face.

Although crime dramas were numerous for Terence Fisher leading up to Hammer’s horror renaissance, they weren’t the only pictures he worked on. Just a year after Stolen Face, Fisher both wrote the screenplay for and directed Four Sided Triangle (1953), a low-budget, oddball sci-fi picture with an eerily similar premise.

Young, slightly mad scientists Bill and Robin (Stephen Murray and John Van Eyssen) have invented a matter duplicator. Both are in love with their childhood sweetheart Lena, who is back in England from an extended stay in the U.S. (Lena is played by blonde bombshell Barbara Payton, who -- yep, you guessed it -- was on the downside of her career due to scandals arising from her off-camera love life, including a fraught love triangle.)

When Robin successfully woos Lena and marries her, Bill decides to use the invention to make a duplicate of Lena for himself. Except that he didn’t figure that Lena 2 would be an exact replica in every detail, including her love choices.

In his book on Terence Fisher, film critic Peter Hutchings found at least one common thread in the director’s work from the early - mid ‘50s:

“As in the case with those other pre-1956 Fisher films that are distinctive in some way or other, there appears to be a conservative tone to the proceedings here. A comment made by the old doctor in Four Sided Triangle might well stand for this aspect of the work generally: ‘There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire.’ Desire is threatening, sexuality is dangerous, and anyone ‘infected’ with desire -- whether it be Bill in Four Sided Triangle, Ritter in Stolen Face, Duncan Reid in Portrait from Life or Chris in The Astonished Heart -- will suffer because of it. Yet at the same time this fearful emotion of desire is also an object of considerable fascination for the films. One outcome of this is that both Stolen Face and Four Sided Triangle reveal and dwell upon some of the more disturbing aspects of male desire, and their conservative but also somewhat contrived conclusions do little to resolve issues raised elsewhere in the films.” [Peter Hutchings, Terence Fisher, Manchester University Press, 2001, p. 67]

Lily rips off the bandages to reveal her new face... Oops, wrong movie!

Bonus Review:

Now Playing: Blackout (1954)

Pros: Dane Clark’s energetic performance; Belinda Lee is the coolest of cucumbers
Cons: One too many plot twists make it hard to keep up without a scorecard

Unlike Stolen Face, Blackout is the real noir deal. It asserts its credentials in the opening scene, where a down and out American, Casey Morrow (Dane Clark), is getting stinking drunk at a London jazz club, with only an ashtray full of cigarette butts to keep him company.

Enter a luminously beautiful and classy mystery woman (Belinda Lee) who, before Morrow passes out, offers the broke American £500 to marry her that night! In the morning, he wakes up with a huge hangover in a strange artist’s studio/apartment, with no memory of the night's events, and bizarrely, sitting in the middle of the room, a portrait on an easel of the very same mystery woman. 

The artist/apartment tenant, Maggie Doone (Eleanor Summerfield), tells Morrow that he showed up in the middle of night banging on her door. Neither Maggie or Morrow know how he got there.

Things start to get interesting when Morrow finds out from the morning newspaper that the mystery woman is wealthy heiress Phyllis Brunner, her father has been murdered, and Phyllis is missing.

When Morrow goes to pay the newspaper vendor, he discovers a wad of pound notes in his pocket. It wasn’t a dream after all, and now he’s a person of interest in the murder. Morrow is going to have to become his own private investigator if he’s to clear his name, and there are a lot of possible guilty parties: was it Phyllis herself in a bid to inherit the family fortune and pin the murder on Morrow; or the sketchy solicitor Lance Gordon (Andrew Osborn), Phyllis’ supposed fiancé and the family business manager; or even Mrs. Brunner (Betty Ann Davies), who may have suspected that her husband was stepping out on her?

If a beautiful blonde who is way out of your league takes a sudden interest in you, watch out!

Blackout is another in a long line of noirs featuring protagonists suffering from memory lapses or amnesia who have stumbled into a world of trouble, and must race against time to clear their names -- Two O’Clock Courage (1945), Fear in the Night (1946), High Wall (1947), The Crooked Way (1949) and Man in the Dark (1953) are just a handful of examples.

The film checks off a bunch of noir elements, including apparent double-crosses, real double-crosses, red-herrings, corrupt wealthy families and their equally corrupt lawyers, psychopathic henchmen, and best of all, the patented icy blonde femme fatale who can turn on the charm when she needs something from a man.

Leading man Dane Clark owns the film from beginning to end. Clark is a man apart in a world of pursed-lip Britishness, rattling off screenwriter Richard Landau’s hard-boiled dialog and borderline non-sequiturs like a Brooklyn-accented dervish:

Morrow: “The last time Miss Opportunity knocked at my door, I let her in.”
Phyllis: “Oh, what happened?”
Morrow: “Now I haven’t even got a door.”

And,

“Because when he turns up, if he turns up, he’s going to be the deadest man ever killed!”

After some work on Broadway, Clark jumped into movies in the early ‘40s. His first credited role was in the war picture Action in the Atlantic (1943) with Humphrey Bogart. He spent the war years playing average Joe, All-American soldiers, sailors and airmen in such pictures as Destination Tokyo (1943), God is My Co-Pilot (1945), and Pride of the Marines (1945).

By the late ‘40s he was “decommissioned” as a Hollywood soldier and joined the ranks of noir protagonists, appearing in Whiplash (1948), Backfire (1950), and two other Hammer near-noirs, The Gambler and the Lady (1952) and Paid to Kill (1954).

Clark is one of the Hammer-Lippert partnership’s better leading men, and his spirited, wryly humorous performance is ample reason to check out Blackout.

"Where have I seen that face before?"

Not so Good Cop, Very Bad Cop: Shield for Murder

Now Playing: Shield for Murder (1954)

Pros: Fine performances by Edmond O’Brien and Carolyn Jones; Memorable dialog.
Cons: O’Brien as an older, cynical cop is an unlikely boyfriend for the young and beautiful Marla English.

Barney Nolan (Edmond O’Brien) has been a cop for too long. As a former beat patrolman and now a detective, he’s seen it all, every nook and cranny of the seamy underside of life, and he wants out. Or is it that some rotten part of his soul has always been attracted to the city’s underbelly, and he’s finally had it seeing his own ugliness reflected back at him day after day? Whatever the reason, he’s so desperate to chuck it all, he’s willing to commit cold blooded murder and hide behind his detective’s shield to get away with it.

Nolan finds out through the grapevine that a bookie will be delivering a particularly rich payout -- $25,000 worth -- to his bosses on a certain evening. Nolan ambushes the man in a dark alley, shoots him in the back, relieves the body of the cash, then fires two shots in the air to attract attention. When Nolan’s colleagues arrive, including his partner on the detective squad, Mark Brewster (John Agar), he tells them that the bookie ran when he tried to arrest him, and he accidentally hit the man when he fired warning shots.

"Whoa Barney, take it easy, that tickles!"

Brewster’s expression betrays his skepticism at Nolan’s sketchy story, but Nolan is his mentor, responsible for bringing him on the force, and Brewster wants to believe. Nolan’s boss, Captain Gunnarson (Emile Meyer), is exasperated -- the man has a history of shooting first and asking questions later -- but in the absence of any witnesses, he has no choice but to back his problematic detective.

It looks at first like Nolan is in the clear, but his problems have only started. The loot’s owner, mob boss Packy Reed (Hugh Sanders) has hired two goons to track down the money, and they’ve zeroed in on the obvious suspect, the last man to see the bookie alive. To add to the crooked cop’s troubles, there was a witness -- an elderly deaf mute who saw everything from his tenement apartment window. But worst of all, Nolan’s dogged partner can’t shake his doubts over Nolan’s account of the shooting.

Even as the web of reckoning draws tighter around the beleaguered cop, he has dreams for his blood money -- to buy a tract house in the suburbs and escape with his girlfriend Patty (Marla English) from the corruption and grime of the big city.

At first, Patty isn’t sure what to think as Nolan drags her from the sleazy lounge where she’s working to show her the new home that’s to be their picket-fenced salvation. He’s got it all figured out for the two of them, and no crime boss or suspicious police colleagues are going to stand in his way. There’s a very subtle shot of the couple standing at the entrance of the model home as Nolan fishes out the front door key from its hiding place. A wooden trellis is in the foreground, the slats making it seem as if the two are trapped behind the bars of a jail cell.

Patty is swept away at the prospect of living in a brand-spanking new home with all the modern conveniences. But before long she will come to realize the heavy price of that suburban dream.

Patty and Barney dream of life in the suburbs with a Frigidaire and a console TV.

One of the film’s implausibilities is the odd couple of Barney and Patty. Even taking into account the tendency of people with low self-esteem to make bad dating choices, they are a particularly mismatched pair. She is young and attractive, with her whole life ahead of her. He is middle-aged, overweight, cynical and controlling. The disparity is all the more striking when later in the film, Patty is being interviewed by the handsome and upright Detective Brewster -- you can’t help but think “she picked Barney over this guy?!”

But Shield for Murder does reveal a hint of goodness in Nolan that hasn’t quite rotted away. In a telling scene, a uniformed cop brings a juvenile delinquent into the precinct. Nolan brusquely waves the cop off, telling him to “go home and beat your wife.”

Faced with a brash, sneering teenager who seems determined to ruin his life, Barney sentimentally tries to bond with him and scare him straight at the same time:

“See that detective over there? [Pointing to Brewster]. “You know what I told him? … I told him the next time he wants to rob a store, to come here and talk to me, cops know how it’s done. I also told him that if he got caught again, I’d personally see that he was locked up until he was old and grey. I’ll make you the same bargain. [Reaching into his wallet and giving the kid some cash] “Here, pay for those things [the stolen items] and take them home.”

As Nolan’s plans for a new life in suburbia start to go up in smoke, he struggles to maintain his facade of rough-edged goodness, and he retreats to a bar to nurse his anxieties. As he’s glowering over his drink, a lonely alcoholic woman (played to perfection by Carolyn Jones) sidles up to him with a unique pick-up angle:

“Do you know what’s wrong with mirrors in bars? Men always make hard eyes at themselves. [Pauses] Do you know there’s a people in the jungle that believes a mirror steals your spirit away? [Looking in the bar mirror] Maybe it’d do me some good, my mother always said I had too much spirit.”

She has it only half right. Barney freely sold his soul for the price of a tract home, and now he can’t look at himself in the mirror. She has the misfortune of seeing the real man beneath the smirk when Packy’s goons show up at the bar. Nolan loses it and furiously pistol whips the men to the horror of the patrons. (In another subtle but neat touch, after Nolan has beaten the goons and he gives one last look at Jones’ character, grinning comic theater masks are visible on the wall behind him, as if they've been watching the performance and are smiling in approval.)

"Have you heard this one? A cop, a priest and Morticia Addams walk into a bar..."

When the jig is finally, irretrievably up and Nolan’s fellow cops are looking to arrest him for murder, he crashes into Patty’s apartment and desperately tries to get her to drop everything and run away with him. Self-pity and denial pour out:

“For sixteen years I’ve been a cop, Patty. For sixteen years I’ve been living in dirt, and take it from me, some of it’s bound to rub off on you. You get to hate people, everyone you meet. I’m sick of them, the racket boys, the strong arms, the stoolies, the hooligans… I’m through with them all! Maybe this jam will turn out for the best after all. Patty, you and I will go away, get a fresh start somewhere. I’ve got the money… [Pauses, realizing he’s admitting to having stolen the money] … I had some saved… hurry Patty, will ya?!”

Having dug a grave-sized hole for himself, Nolan figures there’s nothing to do but keep digging. Spiraling from a rough-edged cop who’s been at it too long to the poster’s tagline of “a dame-hungry killer-cop” running “berserk” is fascinating to watch, and Edmond O’Brien gives it his sweaty, scowling all.

Over the course of a 40+ year career, Edmond O’Brien made the most of his doughy, “everyman” image, earning a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as Oscar Muldoon in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), and appearing in such diverse films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939; his film debut), 1984 (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Seven Days in May (1964) and The Wild Bunch (1969).

O’Brien was Mr. Film Noir in the decade between the mid ‘40s and mid ‘50s, appearing in several of the most highly regarded films in the genre including The Killers (1946; with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner), White Heat (1949; with James Cagney), and D.O.A. (1950; playing a nondescript accountant who solves his own murder). In Between Midnight and Dawn (1950), he also plays a cynical cop, but unlike Shield, his character gets to redeem himself.

Barney realizes too late that there's more to life than guns and money.

Although Shield for Murder was the last of O’Brien’s noirs, it was also a first for him  -- his first directing gig. O’Brien had become interested in behind-the-scenes work, and after Shield he formed a production company with his brother Liam, a playwright.

He explained in an interview, “Some [actors] don’t care about producing. All they’re interested in is acting, and that’s fine. But others, like [John] Wayne and [Burt] Lancaster have picked up enough technical knowledge and ideas on writing, directing and camera techniques to do a great job. They went out of their way to learn. So have I. My intention, eventually is to work myself out of acting.” [Karen Burroughs Hannsberry, Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir, McFarland, 2003, p. 500]

Despite his intentions (and thankfully for film posterity), O’Brien went on acting, and found only time to direct a couple of TV episodes in the late ‘50s, and one feature, Man-Trap, in the early ‘60s.

John Agar (Brewster) made his film debut in a minor role in John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948), then quickly graduated to second leads opposite John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). Shortly after Shield for Murder, Agar’s career took a turn into B sci-fi movie territory starting with Universal-International’s Revenge of the Creature in 1955, followed by Tarantula and The Mole People for the same studio in 1957. Even cheesier and cheaper movies quickly followed after that -- The Brain from Planet Planet Arous (‘57), Attack of the Puppet People (‘58) and Invisible Invaders (‘59) -- and the die was cast.

Shield for Murder was Marla English’s first credited film role. She made only a relative handful of movies, but ‘50s sci-fi aficionados affectionately remember her from the strange and surreal The She-Creature (1956).

"Come on Patty, I've got something Barney hasn't got -- a contract with Universal-International."

And then there’s Carolyn Jones. Ms. Jones is in only one scene, but it’s such a poignant one that she stands out among all the other cast members as the sad, lonely alcoholic who distracts Nolan, if only for a moment, from his descent into hell. Actors often overdo the word slurring and awkward gestures when trying to portray alcoholics. Jones hits all the right notes of a long-time drinker who has acclimated to the stuff and puts on a pretty good show, but ultimately can’t hide her quiet desperation. The two of them are trying to run away from themselves, but in different ways. 

Jones had a very active career in TV and movies from the early ‘50s through the early ‘80s, but she is best remembered as Morticia in The Addams Family (1964-66).

Shield for Murder is a solid, sometimes brutal noir, enhanced by fine performances from O’Brien and Jones, and featuring more than a few memorable lines of dialog courtesy of screenwriters Richard Alan Simmons and John C. Higgins.

Where to find it: YouTube | Amazon Prime  

There's No Such Thing as a Free Ride

Now Playing: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Pros: Gritty, suspenseful low-budget masterpiece; Great performances, especially by William Talman
Cons: Requires some suspension of disbelief

You don't see too many hitchhikers on American roads these days. We've heard or read too many horror stories to be picking up strangers on the side of the road, no matter how normal they might look (or on the flip side, hitching a ride with someone you don't know -- "Is that a normal, friendly grin on the driver's face, or is he enjoying the thought of serving me up to his cannibal family?") Even if you could still find some trusting souls out there, a plethora of laws, ordinances and regulations have pretty much done in the practice. Yep, the hitchhiker is a near-extinct species.

It was one thing for dear old Mom to wag her finger and warn about the hazards of hitching, but it took Hollywood to really put the fear of God into hitchhikers and would-be Good Samaritan drivers alike. Ever since the innocent, "carefree" days of the Great Depression and the amusing hitchhiking scene in It Happened One Night (1934), it's all been downhill. Just like going down in the cellar or out in the woods alone, thumbing a ride on the silver screen always ends badly. The protagonists of such varied and sundry films as Detour (1945), The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Hitcher (1986) will all tell you: there's no such thing as a free lunch, and often there's a great price to pay for a free ride.

Gil (Frank Lovejoy) and Roy (Edmond O'Brien) should have listened
to dear old Mom when she warned them not to pick up hitchhikers.

And then there's The Hitch-Hiker. If none of those other films put you off hitchhiking, Ida Lupino's grim noir classic might just do the trick. Today marks the 60th anniversary of the movie's premiere in Boston, MA. Shot on a lean budget with just three principal actors, the film has held up remarkably well over the years. It deftly manages to be edgy, suspenseful, and at times gut-wrenching, while managing to show very little actual violence on the screen, and no blood whatsoever. (Note to today's filmmakers and audiences: it may seem counter-intuitive, but excessive violence, blood and gore are not always necessary ingredients for a successful suspense-thriller.)

The Hitch-Hiker is a hard-boiled variation on the archetypal Man vs. Nature story, wherein two men, off on a camping and fishing weekend, unwisely pick up what they think is a stranded motorist, and end up battling the desert heat and a force-of-nature all to himself in the form of an armed sociopath.

The film begins with a title card explaining that what is about to transpire is a "[T]rue story of a man and a gun and a car. The gun belonged to the man. The car might have been yours -- or that young couple's across the aisle. What you will see in the next seventy minutes could have happened to you. For the facts are actual." (More on the true story a bit later.) Then the main titles display over a montage-like sequence where we see nothing but the hitchhiker's legs and worn-out shoes on the hard asphalt as he tries thumbing down cars. In long shot -- we only momentarily see the back of his head -- he hops into a fancy convertible in broad daylight. Cut to night, where the car rolls to a stop, the hitchhiker (again, only his legs) jumps out, off camera a woman screams, and a white purse falls at the hitcher's feet. He goes through the contents, then nonchalantly walks off into the night. (Even the aftermath of the crime is hidden in night shadows, as the beam from a deputy's flashlight reveals a corner of the dead woman's dress, and just the hand of her male companion on the steering wheel.)

We finally get to the see the maniac's face, but only as a washed-out photograph under a huge newspaper headline: "Ex-Convict Myers Suspect in Hitch-Hike Atrocities." It's a face only a mother could love. Meanwhile, Myers is at it again, climbing into yet another poor soul's car and roaring off toward a desert mountain range. We don't get to meet the sociopath "up close and personal" until the protagonists of the film do -- and it's a hair-raising meeting at that.

Good friends Gilbert Bowen (Frank Lovejoy) and Roy Collins (Edmond O'Brien) are into the first leg of a relaxing fishing weekend when they impulsively decide to head south of the border instead of continuing on to their usual stateside fishing spot. As they drive through Mexicali in Baja California, Roy is ready to hit the honky-tonks, but his friend is asleep, so Roy reluctantly heads out of town toward San Felipe, their alternate destination. Cut to those legs again, standing in the dead of night next to the car of his latest victim. The headlights of Roy's car illuminate Myers' outstretched thumb, and before you know it, the unsuspecting men are picking up what they think is a stranded motorist.

In classic movie monster style, the murderous Emmett
Myers (William Talman) emerges from the shadows.

In a very effective scene, Roy and Gil, lit up by the dashboard like two disembodied heads, try to make small talk with the stranger cloaked in darkness in the backseat. Gil offers the stranger a cigarette, and gets a revolver pointed at him for his troubles. As the two shocked men look at each other, the camera zooms into the blackness of the backseat just as the sociopathic Emmett Myers (William Talman) darts his head forward into the light, his dead eyes sizing up each man in turn as he barks orders at them. It's not unlike a classic horror scene where the monster emerges from the dark of the closet or cellar into the light. 

Gil and Roy should have listened to Mom, but now they're stuck on the wrong end of the gun wielded by a homicidal maniac who is ordering them to drive off into the godforsaken Mexican desert using dirt back roads. The desperate Myers is now improvising, using the two fishing buddies as cover and their car as a taxi to take him to the Baja California town of Santa Rosalia, where, he coldly informs the pair, he intends to dispatch them and catch a ferry across the Gulf of California to freedom. Gil and Roy engage in a deadly game with the sociopath to convince him that they're more valuable to him alive than dead…

While this suspenseful, low-budget noir has never received the accolades of the genre's greats, since its initial mixed critical reception 60 years ago, The Hitch-Hiker has steadily accrued a devoted cult following and belated respect from critics who have reassessed the career of its main author, actress/producer/writer/director Ida Lupino. The Hitch-Hiker is also a significant milestone. According to Judith M. Redding and Victoria Brownworth (Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors, Seal Press, 1997), it was the first mainstream film noir to be directed by a woman. In fact, between the 1930s and the 1960s, only one other woman, Dorothy Arzner, managed to direct films in the Hollywood system.

Ida Lupino was born into a successful English theatrical family, joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts at the age of 13, and shortly after that started steadily appearing in films (she would appear in over 100 films and television shows spanning 5 decades, from the early '30s right up to the late '70s). Although her acting career never quite hit the high mark of a Joan Crawford or Bette Davis, she appeared in some of the great dramas and film-noirs of the '40s and '50s with such leading men as Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, Robert Ryan and Dana Andrews: They Drive by Night (1940), High Sierra (1941), On Dangerous Ground (1952), and While the City Sleeps (1956), among others.

According to Redding and Brownworth, from the get-go Ida was a reluctant actress, preferring music and screenwriting to being in front of the camera. At the point where many actress' careers stalled due to waning youth (or perhaps worse yet, they were cast as mothers of males who were only a few years younger), Ida decided that it wasn't enough being an actress, "sitting around on the set waiting for something to do." (Ibid.) She and her husband, Collier Young, founded the independent company Filmakers to shoot hard-hitting issue-oriented movies that mainstream Hollywood studios wouldn't touch. Finally she was producing, writing and directing, as well as standing in front of the camera.

Ida's first directing gig (uncredited) came when she filled in for an ailing director, Elmer Clifton, on the set of Not Wanted (1949), a pioneering movie about an unwed mother that she also co-produced and wrote. As if daring prudish, self-satisfied America to get its collective head out of the sand, she directed, co-wrote and co-produced Outrage (1951), a film about a young woman dealing with the trauma of rape in the midst of a seemingly uncaring and judgmental society (of course, standards of the time prevented the word from being used at all in the film).

While on the surface The Hitch-Hiker is a straight thriller with no pretensions to social relevance, Lupino still adds touches that further humanize the characters -- even the detestable Emmett Myers. In one touching scene, the kidnapper and his two victims enter a dusty Mexican store to buy food. As Gil and Roy fill a box with provisions, the store owner's little pigtailed daughter decides to make friends with Emmet and introduce him to her doll. As she tugs at his sleeve and he glares down at her, Gil (who we earlier learned is a good family man), rushes over to get the girl away from Myers. He hugs her tightly, as if he's just saved his own daughter's life.

Is he awake or asleep? Only Emmett knows for sure.

A short while later, over a campfire, Myers turns reflective, telling the fishermen exactly what's wrong with their soft, middle-class lifestyles (and suggesting that perhaps murderous maniacs are made, not born):

"You guys are soft. You know what makes you than way? You're up to your necks in IOUs… you're suckers, you're scared to get out on your own. You've always had it good, so you're soft. Well not me. Nobody ever gave me anything, so I don't owe nobody. My folks were tough. When I was born, they took one look at this puss of mine and told me to get lost."

But perhaps the most effective (and chilling) scene is when Myers calmly informs the fishing buddies not to get their hopes up about rushing him when he's asleep:  "You know you make pretty good targets from where I sit. Anyway, you couldn't tell if I was awake or asleep. Got one bum eye -- won't stay closed. Pretty good, huh?" (Sure enough, the men spend the night nervously glancing over at Myers, who's sitting up, gun in hand, one eye trained on them and the other closed. They decide not to chance it.)

The casting of the three principals in The Hitch-Hiker is pure noir nirvana. By the time of this film, both Edmond O'Brien (Ray) and Frank Lovejoy (Gil) were film noir veterans, appearing in such landmark titles as The Killers (O'Brien; 1946), White Heat (O'Brien; 1949), In a Lonely Place (Lovejoy; 1950), The Sound of Fury (Lovejoy; 1950), and D.O.A. (O'Brien; 1950). They are both excellent. But the film really belongs to William Talman as the reptilian Emmett Myers. With his gaunt face, half-paralyzed eyelid, and quiet menace, Talman's Myers is one of the creepiest noir villains ever. It is an acting tour-de-force. (Ironically, Talman would go on to fame portraying a character on the other side of the law: the smarmy, arrogant prosecutor -- and perpetual loser -- Hamilton Burger in the Perry Mason TV series.)

If The Hitch-Hiker has a weakness, it's a plot device that asks the audience to believe that a desperate murderer -- after quickly dispatching his earlier victims and stealing their cars -- suddenly is willing to take the chance of kidnapping two big, strapping men and using them for several days as cover to make his way over to the Mexican port city. It also seems a stretch that he could keep them at bay at night with just a "trick" eyelid. However, the plot is more or less based on the real notorious case of Billy Cook, who went on a murder and kidnapping spree after getting out of prison. He was ultimately captured by Mexican police with two kidnapped hunters in tow. So maybe it's not such a stretch after all!

Director Ida Lupino and Frank Lovejoy discuss a scene.

The Hitch-Hiker was Ida's favorite of the seven films she directed, but unfortunately it was not a triumph for her at the time. In his introduction to VCI's special VHS edition of the film, actor Robert Clarke (who appeared in two Lupino-directed films, Outrage, 1950 and Hard, Fast and Beautiful, 1951) details the director's abiding disappointment with how sloppily and carelessly the distributor, RKO, handled her film's release:

"The Hitch-Hiker was released with little fanfare through RKO Studios, which at that time was a pale shadow of the studio it had been in the glory days of the 1930s and 40s. To make matters worse, the release prints were very badly made, printed on cheap stock to save a few pennies on each foot of film. Visually, they lacked all the subtle tones and mood which Ida and veteran cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca had worked so hard to achieve. Desert scenes shot in daylight were supposed to have been overexposed, giving the audience a feeling of oppression and unbearable heat. Night scenes were to be a velvet black, with pools of light and shadow, trapping the characters in their fate. But instead, everything was printed a dull grey, and the prints were hastily released. The Hitch-Hiker played the bottom half of double bills."

However, time and an appreciative, discerning community of critics and film buffs have resurrected Ida's B masterpiece and restored its reputation. The Hitch-Hiker is 60 years young today. Happy birthday!

---

Where to find it:

Kino Lorber (includes the Robert Clarke introduction)

Amazon Instant Video

Sociopath Emmett Myers (William Talman) seems pleased with himself as he listens to a report of his murderous exploits on the car radio: