Last night we watched a tough little crime caper called "The Cat Burglar"(1961), directed by William Witney and starring Jack Hogan (from "Combat") as a thief who steals a briefcase from a woman's apartment. Remember when cat burglars were all the rage, back in the early sixties? Nowdays they seem to be extinct, but back then they were the hippest of villains. They wore black pants and turtlenecks and clambered up the sides of apartment buildings and highrises, using balconies for hand holds. Then they'd pick a window lock or simply cut a hole in the glass, and voila! - they'd slink into the victim's apartment and steal whatever they came for (or whatever they could find of value). Then they'd vanish into the night the same way they came in, catlike of course. The cat burglar craze culminated with the tv show "It Takes a Thief" starring Robert Wagner as Alexander Mundy. Then it died out, but it's heyday was the 1960s, when everything was mod and hip.
As "The Cat Burglar" opens, Hogan ascends an apartment building accompanied by a Jazzbo score. You know the kind I mean; a soundtrack where only a snare drum is playing, with some echo on it, and the drummer is improvising, like he's kicking a can down the street. Occasionally a sax player will blast a few notes, then it's back to the snare drum, to signify that the action taking place is Super Cool, daddio. And because it's the early '60s, it is. This ain't no retro lookback, where ersatz cool subs for the real thing. In other words, the filmmakers who utilized a jazzy score weren't doing it to be hip or ironic, it was just the type of soundtrack in vogue in those days for certain films. And it works here, to accentuate Hogan's movements. The building has the right look, too. It's one of those Modernist structures that resembles a Holiday Inn. Once Hogan's inside his target's apartment, he prowls around, opening drawers and cabinets until he finds a few trinkets. He also finds an empty briefcase that he uses to carry them out.
When he gets back to his pad - a slummy flophouse in Downtown L.A. - his landlady (Billie Bird) starts hassling him for the rent. "You've got til tomorrow morning", she shouts. So he takes the stolen jewelry to a crooked pawnbroker pal (Gene Roth), and scores enough cash to pay the back rent, with a little left over for his wallet. It ain't much, but it's a living, and Hogan seems okay with it. He's a casual Cat Burglar, a kick-back type guy. He's not trying to get rich, just to stay afloat. And everything's hunky dory, until......
We cut to the woman who got robbed (June Kenny). She's on the phone with her boss (John Baer), and he's pissed about the stolen briefcase. Apparently it wasn't empty after all. There were some papers inside with a printout of a Secret Formula, government stuff, full-on National Security status. Hogan removed the papers without knowing their significance, and folded them up to use as a stopgap for an uneven table leg. He never gave them a second thought after that, but the papers are life and death for Kenny and Baer. She informs him that her jewelry was also stolen, and they're savvy enough to hit the pawnshops, too, knowing that's where a thief might hock it. At one of the shops they question Gene Roth. He's a tough old buzzard but cracks under Baer's pressure. Roth gives them Hogan's address, they go there and confront him, and he admits to the robbery, but he swears he never saw any papers. And he seems to be telling the truth, at least as he knows it, because the papers were just an afterthought for him. Once he folded them and put them under the table leg, he forgot all about them.
When Baer and Kenny leave, they don't entirely believe him. Also, they're in a heap of trouble with two Higher Ups, big thugs in suits who appear to be working for the government. I keep saying "appear" because nothing is clarified, which is one of the big drawbacks of this movie. Hogan does wonder why Baer and Kenny were so interested in some papers, so he wracks his brain until he remembers. "Oh yeah, I used 'em to level the table". He pulls them out and takes a gander. He can see that they're some kind of scientific diagram. "They must be worth some dough", he thinks, and sets out to sell them back to their owners, for a hefty fee. This is a bad idea on Hogan's part, because he doesn't realize who he's messing with. It's not just Baer and Kenny - and they're bad enough - but it's also the shiny-suited Hard Guys, who're huge and square jawed. Okay, so there's your set-up, and we're halfway through the 65 minute movie. Director Witney has a way with the action, and is good with his camera and actors. But again, there's that drawback - nothing is made clear. I'll say right now - and it's a spoiler - that we never find out what was on those papers. Witney never tells us their signifcance, nor how the protagonists came to have them, nor what they plan to do with them. All we see is their effort to recover "the papers" (as they are called) from the Cat Burglar. Normally I'm not big on a lot of expository dialogue, but in this case it would've made the film much more interesting. You're making a big deal out of these papers : so what the hell are they?
Instead, Witney focuses on personalities instead of plot. A fan over at IMDB said that he's one of Tarantino's favorites, and that may be why, because he's got his Cool Tough Guy schtick down pat. You can see a lot of inspiration here for QTs characterizations, but there ain't a lot of substance when you take away the style. I mean, if you're gonna make a movie involving espionage, you've gotta have some Spy vs. Spy. You've gotta tell us something - if only a tidbit - about the all-important "papers" and their couriers, but we never get a single tiny detail.
I'm still gonna give it Two Regular Thumbs Up, because you can enjoy it as a simple thriller, and it does feature some cool Downtown exteriors from before they cleaned it up. You also get Bruno VeSota as a middleman. He was a Roger Corman regular (Corman's brother Gene produced this film), and he always adds a dash of eccentricity to any sketchy story. Billie Bird is good, too, as the landlady named "Mrs. Prattel", who's constantly correcting Hogan's mispronunciation of her name. "It's Pray-Tell, not Prattle"!
Finally, the screenplay was written by our old pal Leo Gordon, he of the prison-muscle physique and stone-carved facade, who appeared in many Westerns as an actor. Gordon was a talented writer as well, and scripted some good episodes of "The Virginian" and "Tombstone Territory", but I wouldn't say "The Cat Burglar" was his best effort. /////
The previous night we watched another crime drama called "Secret of Deep Harbor"(1960). It was one of those "I Cover The Waterfront" deals, where a reporter (Ron Foster) hangs out on the wharf looking for a scoop. One falls into his lap when a body is recovered, hauled up from the deep with an anchor chained to it's ankles. Who the heck was it? Well now that you ask : As the movie opens, a hoodlum boards a fishing boat, after paying to be smuggled to Mexico. Unfortunately for him, a Mob boss is also aboard. He pulls a gun and exposes the crooked hood (there's no honor among thieves, despite the myth) : "You've been extorting money from our take and we know it. This is where you get off". The boat's out to sea so there's no landing pier. The Boss shoots the hoodlum, then prepares to dump him in the ocean. At that moment the captain comes below deck. He sees the dead hood and is shocked. "I only agreed to the smugglin", says he, "I didn't agree to no killin' ". The mobster throws a wad of cash on a table to placate the the old sea dog. It's a hefty chunk of dough. The captain says nothing and waits til the mob boss leaves, then he pockets it. He's now in the boss's pocket, too. Good thing he knows how to keep his mouth shut, but he never signed on for murder and it's buggin' him. To ease his guilt, he gets hammered at the shoreline saloon. As for Ron Foster (our Intrepid Reporter), he's hanging around too and asking questions. "Who is that old man"? "Why is he always drunk"? "Who was that slick looking guy with him"? Foster knows the salvage operator who finds the dead hoodlum, and in fact is on the boat when he's discovered. He notices a young woman (Merry Anders) who waits for the captain every night, and uses her as a wedge to build his story.
We have a similar set of circumstances here as we did with "The Cat Burglar" above. "Deep Harbor" is another early 60s film, directed by another skilled low-budget filmmaker, in this case Edward L. Cahn, who specialised in monster movies like the classic "It! The Terror from Space". And I'm sorry to report that Cahn also takes the same tack with his script as did William Witney. He builds up a tense plot and then drops it to focus on character styles and romance. After discovering that Merry Anders is the boat captain's daughter, who waits for him at the bar to make sure he gets home safely, Foster falls in love with her. Director Cahn discards the murder mystery, and the thread involving smuggling, to concentrate on Foster's courting of Anders. Then he does a 180 with the plot, to make us question whether Foster is a bad guy. Is he romancing this naive young woman only for his news story, or does he truly care about her?
As with the infamous "papers" in William Witney's "Cat Burglar", we never hear from the mob boss again, except for a brief moment where we see him strung out on heroin (didn't know Mafiosos were junkies). We never hear anything more about the hoodlum-smuggling operation, either. Why build it up if you're just going to forget it entirely? Instead, a rivalry develops between Ron Foster and the old boat captain, who resents Foster's relationship with his daughter. He suspects Foster's only using her for bait, and he himself has that secret of the cash payoff, which he's afraid Foster will uncover.
Once again, it's an okay movie that could've been much better if the director and/or the writer would have stuck to the original plot. But like "Cat Burglar", it's technically well- made, and can be enjoyed on that level. So it also gets Two Regular Thumbs Up. If you're a fan of "Highway Patrol", you're familiar with Ron Foster as "Officer Garvey", Broderick Crawford's go-to assistant. He's an interesting actor, because he's plain vanilla on "Highway", and couldn't be more bland, yet he's a super Hep Cat here, an on the ball cynic doing his best Edd "Kookie" Byrnes. He can really spout the lingo through his deeply dimpled mouth and chin. I'm surprised he didn't become a bigger star, cause he's good, and the main reason to watch "Secret of Deep Harbor".
So there you have it, two so-so films. I still recommend them, cause both are short and have the early 60s thing happening. Soon we'll break out some more classics.
That's all for now. I hope you had a nice day. I'm listening to some new cds I ordered, including The Beach Boys' "Holland", "Eli and the 13th Confession" by Laura Nyro, and "Winter Ethereal" by Arch/Matheos.
I send you Tons of Love, as always! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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