Noir-vember: Shockproof (1949)

I decided to finally make time for Shockproof because it was yet another noir with a credit on it for Samuel Fuller (he helped to co-write the screenplay with Helen Deutsch). I'll admit that when I saw it was directed by Douglas "King of the melodrama" Sirk I was wondering just what the end result would be. It turns out . . . this is exactly what you might think, considering the people behind the camera.

Cornel Wilde is a parole officer named Griff Marat, struggling to help a young woman, Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight), stay on the straight and narrow. Jenny seems like she could benefit from a second chance, but that might be completely scuppered if she keeps meeting up with her bad influence of an ex, Harry Wesson (John Baragrey). Griff not only wants the best for Jenny, he may well end up falling in love with her. Which would make him much easier to manipulate if Jenny keeps wanting to plan a future with Harry.

Not the best example of noir, and certainly not the grittiest, this is a melodrama that makes use of some familiar tropes to liven things up on the way to a decidedly safe and comfortable finale. Despite the runtime only clocking in at 79 minutes, it's a bit of a slog at times, especially as the leads often engage in some circular conversations and arguments while figuring out just how much they can trust one another. 

The leads help though, and Knight is a particularly enjoyable potential femme fatale. She gets to have more fun, and gets to be very believable as someone who could steal the heart of a good man. Wilde has to be much more straight-laced, but he does well enough to avoid being completely overshadowed by the entertainingly dastardly Baragrey, who does such a good job that his shadow looms large over the proceedings even in the many scenes that don't have him onscreen. Esther Minciotti also does well as Mrs. Marat, the blind mother of Wilde's character, perhaps pivotal in helping Jenny to see that she doesn't have to keep making the same mistakes that haven't helped her improve her life so far.

Many may view this as being a bit too soft, considering the premise and the potential, but I thought it was nice to actually have some sweetness working against the usual bitterness. Sirk may not be the best person to helm this, but he's very capable when it comes to presenting a seemingly ill-fated romance complicated by circumstances and pressures. It's a shame that all of the sharp edges are removed, leaving the end result as one of the weaker films to feature major input from Fuller, but there's still fun to be had, particularly in a third act that turns up the heat before, sadly, turning it right down again just before the end credits.

6/10

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Noirvember: Underworld U. S. A. (1961)

Few onscreen words reassure me more than “written, produced, and directed by Samuel Fuller”. I love Fuller’s work, and consider everything that he was involved with to be worth your time. Not every one of his films is truly great, but he has an impressively high hit rate, especially when it comes to his film noirs.

Underworld U. S. A. is a tale of crime, murder, and revenge. It introduces us to a young Tolly Devlin, a kid who is set on a dark and dangerous path through life after witnessing his father being murdered by gangsters. Tolly is in and out of trouble, and as an adult (played by Cliff Robertson) he is determined to deal with those responsible for the death of his father. He does that by getting information that allows him to gain the trust of criminals he then aims to manipulate and trick into their destruction.

As well as Robertson in the lead role, who does well as a tough anti-hero, there are enjoyable performances here from Beatrice Kay, Dolores Dorn, Robert Emhardt, and Paul Dubov, respectively portraying two women who care about our leading man and two tough gangster boss types who could be near the top of a tree that is long overdue being chopped down. Richard Rust is also enjoyably threatening as Gus, the main assassin used by the gangsters.

While not top-tier Fuller, this is a typically entertaining and sharp noir from a master. About as dark and bitter as can be, with the signs all there early on that things may not end well, this somehow manages to feel well-balanced and narratively cohesive, despite being influenced by a couple of different sources (a magazine article of the same name by Joseph F. Dinneen, and a book, “Here Is To Crime”, by Riley Cooper).

In case it wasn’t obvious from my opening words, I am primed to enjoy any Samuel Fuller movie. This is a solid crime flick, even if the 99-minute runtime makes it feel a bit saggy in places, and any fan of the sub-genre should find enough to enjoy here. There are better Fuller films to check out first though, but this is one that deserves to be somewhere on your watchlist.

7/10

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Pickup On South Street (1953)

Every time I see a Samuel Fuller movie I am reminded of the fact that I want to see ALL the Samuel Fuller movies. Having started my journey through his work with two titles that are arguably his most well-known, I keep forgetting how many more I have to experience. I’ve yet to find a bad one, and I encourage everyone to explore his brilliant filmography.

Pickup On South Street is the tale of a pickpocket (Skip McCoy, played by Richard Widmark) who inadvertently dips the wrong purse. Little does he realise that he has ended up with some film that was being handed over to communist villains by a blissfully ignorant young woman (Candy, played by Jean Peters). The police want to get their hands on the film before it can be passed on, and they enlist the help of a wise informant named Moe Williams (Thelma Ritter). While Skip is used to staying one step ahead of the police, he has rarely been in such demand. Candy wants to negotiate with him, while others start planning a less pleasant way to retrieve the valuable stolen item.

Zipping along for the entire 80-minute runtime, and anchored by two fantastic lead performances, this is arguably one of the very best film noirs from writer-director Fuller. And if you remember all of the praise I JUST wrote at the start of this review (and how could you forget it already, unless you are a goldfish, and if you are a goldfish . . . how the hell are you even reading this review?) then you will know that it must be working hard to reach a very high bar. It’s a fun film, thanks to the characters and the dialogue, but it also builds the tension on the way to a brilliant and satisfying third act.

Widmark is a great actor, and was used especially well in a number of film noirs, so I expected to enjoy his portrayal of Skip. What I didn’t expect was for it to easily rank up there as one of his best ever performances. Mixing in just the right amounts of cheek, charm, selfishness, and a wobbly moral compass needle, Skip is one of the great anti-heroes, with strong emphasis on the “anti” part. Although it is hard to equal him, Peter acquits herself very well in the role of Candy, a woman who shows some real mettle when she discovers that she has been used as a mule for something she wouldn’t willingly want any part of. Very easy to like, and working well with Widmark, Peters does well to keep the film from being stolen away completely by her leading man. Ritter is a lot of fun in her role, and she uses her few scenes to cast a long shadow over the whole film, and there are various “cops and robbers” played by the likes of Murvyn Vye, Milburn Stone, Willis Bouchey, and Richard Kiley, who all do well enough in their roles.

Fuller yet again manages to mix the drama and thrills with little details that lend an authenticity to everything, as was his greatest strength, but the fluctuating relationship between Skip and Candy is the strong heart of the movie. Everyone involved does very good work, whether in front of the camera or behind it, and the end result is guaranteed entertainment for fans of film noir.

9/10

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A Return To Salem's Lot (1987)

A sequel to the classic Stephen King vampire tale, made into a memorable TV movie by Tobe Hooper (and remade a few decades later), I had avoided A Return To Salem’s Lot for many years, having heard it was a real stinker. It isn’t. As imperfect as it is, and it seriously lacks actual scares, director Larry Cohen (who also co-wrote the script with James Dixon) used a tale of vampirism to explore some very interesting ideas.

Michael Moriarty plays Joe Weber, an anthropologist always willing to go that one step further to document tribal behaviour without interfering. Unexpectedly having his teenage son returned to his care, Joe heads back to Salem’s Lot, a small town he grew up in. Salem’s Lot is full of vampires though, which is bad news. The good news is that the vampires want Joe to tell their story to the world. The bad news is that Joe doesn’t want to tell their story, but he may be forced to do so if he wants to stop his son being offered eternal life as a teenager.

Although it is never subtle at any point, things are really hammered home here when the lead character ends up planning his fight back alongside an elderly Nazi hunter (played by Samuel Fuller). The script is pointedly showing how evil needs complicit helpers to thrive, whether they are people “just following orders” or human vampire helpers who work during the daylight hours while their masters sleep safely.

Cohen directs in a rather perfunctory manner, seemingly assuming that it would also just end up on TV, but that still cannot completely outweigh the quality of the ideas at the heart of the script.

Moriarty is a decent lead, as ever, and it’s a delight to see Fuller join in for most of the second half of the film. Ricky Addison Reed is just fine as the moody teen son, Andrew Duggan is a decent patriarch of the vampire community, although he never feels as menacing as he should, and there’s a small role for a very young Tara Reid, if you keep your eyes peeled.

Perhaps even more deserving of your time now than when it was first released, A Return To Salem’s Lot is one of the more interesting vampire movies I have seen from the crowded subgenre. It is weakest when trying to deliver standard horror moments, but you will get more from it if you don’t go seeking genre thrills. It’s striving more to be a study of the insidious and seductive nature of darkness, and the people who will do anything to assist those that they view as being able to help them maintain a comfortable life.

6/10

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Noir November: The Naked Kiss (1964)

Samuel Fuller seemed to make a career out of diving into experiences that others may have desperately tried to avoid, be it his time as a journalist, the action he saw during wartime, or just the topics that he chose to cover in his movies. From the potentially infectious nature of insanity (Shock Corridor) to the different types of damage caused by racism (White Dog), Fuller didn't peek at anything from any class-constructed hiding place. He ran straight up to them and looked, long and hard. His unflinching view has left us a selection of fantastic movies, even if they weren't all necessarily appreciated during his lifetime.

The Naked Kiss is a film that nestles in comfortably amongst the others just mentioned. It starts off in quite a strange, unsettling way and then takes the viewer on a journey that leads to somewhere much, much darker. Constance Towers plays Kelly, a woman trying to escape her past. She settles in a new town, having one last dalliance with the local police chief (Anthony Eisley) before deciding that she wants to treat herself a bit better than that. Instead of trying to make money from sales, with her main commodity being her body, she instead gains employment at a local hospital for sick children. Eventually finding love with the wealthy J. L. Grant (Michael Dante), it starts to look as if her past can well and truly be left behind. But she's not the only one with . . . . . . . . . . . . baggage, to put it mildly.

From the opening scenes that show her attacking a man who owes her money to moments in which she feels resigned to be ensnared in a web of judgments made by people around her, Towers is pretty great in the leading role. She could be better, a lot of moments require her to skirt too close to insanity, but I think the problems lie in the material, as opposed to the performance. Eisley and Dante are both very good, with the former casting a constant shadow over the first half of the movie as the one man who could upset the position of precarious safety/cosiness that Towers has managed to get earn. And solid support comes from Marie Devereux, Karen Conrad, Patsy Kelly, Virginia Grey, and others.

Fuller shows his usual tactfulness while hinting at some very disturbing content, yet The Naked Kiss falls down when compared to his other works in a couple of key ways. First of all, a few of the character turnarounds in the third act just don't feel right. I won't go in to detail (trying to keep things as spoiler-free as possible) but there's at least one character who does such a sudden about-face that you start to wonder if something happened that was left on the cutting-room floor. The actions ARE justifiable, but still unexpected. The other big criticism I have with the film is the moment in which everything stops to show a bunch of children singing a song. Oh, it's lovely, it's adorable, many children get a chance to look directly into the camera and sing a line or two. It's also really clumsy and unnecessary, despite the developments in the third act.

Other minor niggles conspire to stop this being one of Fuller's best. It still comes highly recommended, however, as does pretty much any movie that has his name attached to it. Worth your time. Just not the writer-director at his very best.

8/10

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