Last night's movie was "A Lust to Kill"(1958), a vengeance Western with a Biblical theme from Ecclesiastes: "To everything there is a season". For outlaw "Cheney Holland" (Don Megowan), there's always a time to hate, and as the movie opens, he and his gang, under the leadership of "Isaac Stancil" (Gerald Milton), have just robbed a gun store of 15 Winchesters and 500 dollars worth of ammo. "Marshal Matt Gordon" (Jim Davis) is chasing them down, aided by his deputy. They shoot and hit Cheney's little brother "Luke" (uncredited), who later dies. Cheney, having stopped to help Luke, is arrested and taken back to jail by Marshal Gordon, who, out of respect, offers to see that Luke has a decent Christian burial. The Marshal and the Hollands were childhood friends, but - as Gordon tells Cheney - "you and I went separate ways. You took the wrong path and now you've gotten your brother killed." The Marshal tries talking sense into Cheney, but he's a hard man.
Still, he seems to appreciate Gordon's help with Luke's funeral, that is, until the town preacher succumbs to citizen pressure not to allow Luke to be buried in the local cemetery. "We don't want that killer planted with our relatives!" The mayor (John Holland), a typical finger-to-the-wind politician, backs the preacher and the mortician. Thus, Luke's funeral is set to take place in the desert at a lonesome grave. By now, any remorse or circumspection Cheney felt over his brother's death is gone, replaced by anger at his banishment. He has an ally, a prostitute named "Sherry" (Allison Hayes), who works on the outskirts of town at Millie's Bar. Sherry rides up to the funeral at the last minute, slips Cheney a gun, and he escapes, but not before clobbering Marshal Gordon, who - as his former friend - was the only one to treat him with any decency. Cheney shows him none in return, and he also shoots the grave digger dead. Prior to this, he'd only ever been a robber. Now he's a murderer and will hang, if and when he's caught.
Marshal Gordon swears to Sherry he'll catch Cheney, even though they once were friends, because "once a man kills, it's easier for him to kill again, knowing he can only hang once."
The rest of the movie is a strategic hide-and-seek in and around the Alabama Hills, as Marshal Gordon, with Sherry in tow, tries to lure Cheney back to Millie's so he can arrest him. Cheney, meanwhile, has a different target. He wants to find and kill gang leader Isaac Stancil, the beer-bellied Bacchanalian who laughs his way through his criminal existence. We see him swimming in a pool full of prostitutes, Millie's gals, in a mud pond out back, chomping watermelon like he's at a Roman orgy. Isaac is an animal, plain and simple. He represents Sin with a capital S, hollering for more and laughing when he gets it, until he has to get serious toward the end, when he knows that both Cheney and Marshal Gordon are out to kill him.
But Isaac has an advantage, because he still has those fifteen Winchester repeaters and the 500 bucks worth of shells. and, he has a twelve-man gang at his disposal. All the Marshal has is himself and his braggart of a deputy, who turns out to be a candy-ass when the going gets rough. But then, the mayor, who previously seemed phony baloney, shows up at Millie's on a campaign stop with some Big Important Backers. Once he sees that Gordon is surrounded by Isaac and his men, the mayor "mans up", grabs a gun, and joins the good guys. Now comes the Epic Shootout.
Sherry is caught in the middle of it and doesn't want to see any more killin'. She begs Cheney to give himself up to Isaac, to spare everyone else. The gang has repeater rifles, which were a huge advantage at that time. But Marshal Gordon and the newly emboldened mayor won't give up. Gordon says he's ready to die if need be, because "someone has to do what's right."
The end credits are obscured by a bible, pages turned to Ecclesiastes. Two Big Thumbs Up. You can't go wrong with the Alabammy Hills, taut direction, and The 50 Foot Woman. Good jobs also by Don Megowan and Jim Davis, two very tall, laconic guys, very Western, stoic and philosophical. They don't overplay it. Jim Davis, best known as "Jock Ewing" on "Dallas", died at home in 1981, in Northridge, California, at 17260 Nordhoff Street, near the intersection of Louise, not far from local dental legend Knud Flygenring, and close to Target (which in 1981 might still have been Two Guys). The picture is very good. ////
The previous night, it was Cop against Crooks, and Crooked Cops, in "The Case Against Brooklyn"(1958). The New York City DA thinks Brooklyn cops must be on the take. "Every time we shut down a bookie room it just opens back up the next day, down the street." This wouldn't be possible if the beat cops weren't looking the other way, and they wouldn't do that without getting paid. And if they're getting paid, the DA is sure the higher-ups are too. "If I suspect it, so do their their captains, at least some of them. Those guys aren't dumb. They know who's on the take and who isn't."
To close in on the bookmakers and their joint operation with the crooked cops, the DA sets up patrol officer "Pete Harris" (Darren McGavin), a former Marine, who's from an outside precinct. Nobody knows him, which makes him the perfect choice to go undercover to infiltrate the operation. Harris poses as a California businessman just returned to his home state of New York. His objective: to get close to "Lil Polombo" (Margaret Hayes), the recently-widowed wife of a garage owner who owed big money to one of the chief bookies. Her husband drove off a cliff after being beat up by the bookie's thugs, who were gonna come back and kill him the next day if he didn't pay.
We've already seen a connection to the cops, in a laundry company driver who "drops" the payoffs in a locker room at the Finnish Baths, where the coppers hit the steam room. When they come back to towel off, there's a nice wad of cash between their freshly pressed shirts. The driver, "Rudi Franklin" (Warren Stevens), is a smug bastard who insults the cops to their faces. He's got a lot of nerve, a lowly driver. He's also hitting up widow Polombo, whose double indemnity insurance money (collected from her dead husband), he'd like to get his hands on. Franklin is scum, but how does he have so much clout?
Pete Harris writes him off at first as only a low-level scammer. Pete's after the leader of he operation, and the bad cops, and his partner "Jess Johnson" (Brian G. Hutton) gets a lead after tapping the main bookie's phone. But Jess gets caught doing it a second time, and is shot and killed by one of the "in pocket" detectives, who subsequently jumps out a windum to his death when arrested, to avoid a long sentence in prison.
Once the bookie syndicate finds out Pete's true identity, they use their police connections to set up a communications van outside his apartment, where they turn the tables and tap his phone, then shut it down. When he calls for repair service (where your disbelief must be suspended, because in real life he'd be suspicious of his phone going out), they send a henchman to pose as a telephone repairman (Joe Turkel of "Shining" fame). He installs a bomb phone that goes off and kills not Pete but his trusting, fearful wife, who didn't want him on this assignment in the first place. "You can't beat them all by yourself, Pete." Wanna bet? With his partner and his wife now dead, he doesn't care anymore and quits the force to go rogue. First, he confronts the drunken Lil Polombo, to find out what she's told Rudi Franklin, the laundry driver. Then, when Rudi comes to her apartment, Pete surreptitiously hides in his laundry truck, to be taken, hopefully, to whoever The Big Man is. On the way, Rudi picks up the top crooked cop, a captain at the head of the Brooklyn homicide department. But he's not the shot caller; the owner of the laundry service is! He's really a major Mafioso. We'll have to add Laundry Owner to our list of Criminal Masterminds.
We really liked Darren McGavin in this role as a crusader, because - as much as we also love him as Kolchak - after that role, he tended to resort to Kolchak's "world wearly" persona and his "ha-ha cynicism" in other roles, doing his "talking back to the boss with wry humor" routine. It was a good schtick, but he did it in every TV show he was in thereafter, and it became an archetype for any McGavin character. But here, this is 15 years before all that. so he's Marine Corp sharp.
Two Big Thumbs Up, though the phone-repair stuff is a little far fetched. The picture is razor sharp. ////
And that's all for this Saturday night. My blogging music is once again Deep Purple, their third, eponymously-titled album this time. This is Mark One Deep Purple, of "Hush" fame, featuring Rod Evans on vocals and Nic Simper on bass. Mark One DP is generally seen as a formative version of the band, who were still seeking a cohesive, identifiable sound. Other bands, like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, came out of the gate with debut albums that generally were the template for what was to come. But the Mark One version of Deep Purple sounded very little like what they would become when Ian Gillan and Roger Glover replaced Evans and Simper in 1970, and the new DP made "In Rock." I remember the late, great Mike Bellamy playing me "The Book of Talesyn" (the second album, by Mark One) after I'd already heard "Machine Head." I didn't think much of "Talesyn" in comparison, and I basically never really listened to Mark One again, excepting a song or two, here and there. But this week, I've given all three Mark One albums a full listen, and.........they're really good. I was surprised. Now, it's true that they don't sound like classic, hard rock Deep Purple, with blistering instrumental prowess. They're more psychedelic, and "of the 60s", not yet transitioning into the more focused 70s sound. Still, there's a ton of good stuff on those first three records. My main complaint is that, on "Shades of Deep Purple" (the first album), Ritchie's guitar is pushed so far back in the mix that, on most songs, you strain to hear him. He was playing second fiddle to the older and more experienced Jon Lord at the time, which may be why his guitar got buried, but by the next two Mark One albums, you can hear him loud and clear.
I'd actually rate the first three albums as better than "Fireball" and "Who Do We Think We Are" by Mark Two. The DP classics are, of course, "Machine Head", "In Rock", and "Burn", 10-pluses in anyone's book. I'd give "Stormbringer" (Mark Three, Coverdale and Hughes), about an 8. But the first three merit a re-evaluation. I'd say that if you took the three albums and whittled the material down to two, you might just have two more "10"s on your hands. 9s at the very least. It's always nice to discover something new, even if it's 55 years old. Somebody alert Ritchie that the first three albums are good after all. He might be surprised to hear it. ////
I hope your weekend is going well, and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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