NIGHTFALL (1957)

Why anyone would actually want a career in the movies is beyond me. It’s murder. Aspiring actors queue up hoping to be one of the lucky ones, the kind with a forty-year, wrinkle-free fairy tale of a career, financial security, and maybe even an award some magical late-February night. But it ain’t in the cards for most — and I don’t mean those lucky saps who never even get their foot in the door. Hollywood is cruelest to those who actually make it; the ones who achieve a certain level of fame — the kind where you get decent billing in a few pictures and everyone from your hometown, maybe even your whole state, thinks of you as a favorite son. But when the picture business sours on you, gets suddenly fickle, and eventually passes you by, everyone still knows who you are. Only now you can’t go back. You can’t become un-famous. Anonymity is suddenly as elusive as a part in an A-list picture, and a squarejohn’s nine to five is out of the question. What are the options? Most try to hang on, taking lesser and lesser roles until somewhere along the way some vital part of them is lost and they begin to become … cheap. The list of such actors and actresses is endless, and the tremendously gifted Aldo Ray’s name — oh, whatta name — is somewhere on it. Dig his awards page on IMDb for proof: nominated for a 1952 Golden Globe as “Most Promising Male Newcomer” for the Tracy / Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike, his second nomination twenty-five years later from the Adult Film Association of America: a “Best Actor” nod for the 1978 film Sweet Savage — Ray won that one. (And it must be noted he earned it by keeping his clothes on.)

Ray was something else: Big. Blonde. Good looking. Affable. All-American. Naval combat vet. If he punched you he’d knock your block clean off — only he’d never punch you. He was that guy. He had that hulking innocence that made a star out of Merlin Olsen decades later. He could have played Mongo in Blazing Saddles. Quentin Tarantino liked him enough to subtly name Brad Pitt’s character after him in Inglorious Basterds. Ray fell into acting sideways and Hollywood never knew exactly what to do with him. He had an offbeat, scratchy voice that didn’t quite match his looks, and though he could never quite pull it off romantically (he comes awfully close with Rita Hayworth in Miss Sadie Thompson), Ray could certainly act. His resume is a mix of character parts and leads, war films, westerns, and plenty of TV. He made one legit film noir; the subject of this essay, a role that really asked for what Ray had to offer as a performer.

Directed by Jacques Tourneur, Nightfall is thematically reminiscent of the director’s earlier canonical film Out of the Past. Made in that period of the later mid-fifties when film noir had become too damn aware of itself and was beginning to sputter out. It’s to Tourneur and cinematographer Burnett Guffey’s credit that Nightfall doesn’t get bogged down in self-awareness in the same way that, for example, another 1957 film based on Goodis, The Burglar, does. This is a spare, no frills, kiss-my-ass kind of picture that gets straight to the point and makes every one of its 78 minutes pay off. It’s not cheap though; it doesn’t shout B — everything about it is well constructed by an experienced and confident team of professionals. Guffey in particular stands out. The film’s first 20 minutes boast numerous intricate camera setups and a marvelous dolly shot, all handled so deftly you barely notice the craft. Guffey isn’t trying too hard; he lets the narrative guide his camera and the results owe less to his desire to show off than to the need for economy. It’s first-rate, virtuoso stuff.

I’m loath to compare two strikingly similar films such as Out of the Past and Nightfall; doing so is usually boring, the sort of thing best left for term papers. But there’s a parallel between the characters of Jeff Bailey and Nightfall’s Jim Vanning that is far too extra-referential not to pick at: the way both meet the audience, and how setting is used to manipulate our first impression. This notion of the first impression (and how it plays out in the big picture) is one of the more fascinating aspects of noir character development; it never gets the discussion it deserves. In these movies entrances matter; pay attention to them. Here are two movies that play the old noir saw of the unshakeable past. Both feature a male protagonist on the lam from his former self — which gives Tourneau the chance to fiddle with the notion of personal responsibility. It’s in the great outdoors that we first encounter Out of the Past’s Jeff Bailey: trying to lure fish from a cool mountain lake, a stunning girl-next-door waiting for him on the bank. We get to know Bailey even before we first see him, his name is plastered all over the service station he owns, and the town might as well be on a postcard. Bailey smells like  one of the lucky ones in post-war America — he has the looks, the car, the place, the girl.

As for Nightfall, Jim Vanning’s first appearance is handled quite differently: we first see him on the neon splashed streets of Los Angeles, tip-toeing from corner to corner, paranoid, nervous. He lights a cigarette and glances over his shoulder. This is a man who has done something, we think. He must have a reason to be this afraid. Yet Tourneau has fooled us, Vanning’s just an innocent victim of dumb luck. While back at the lake, Bailey has it all and doesn’t really deserve any of it. That's where Tourneau sets us up and knocks us over. First impressions. Expectations. Conditioning. Our response to each hero and each predicament would be different if we knew from the get-go how much each guy had it coming. Here's a director who's at his best when he lets his story tell little white lies — and he recognizes that in masking the truth about his characters he turns the contrasting flashback into a real punch in the gut. In this stuff Tourneau stood by himself.

Nightfall again. In most good crime pictures the quality of the dialog is on par with the story. Not so here. The dialog — witty, sharp, if admittedly not-quite hard-boiled — is just better. There’s a great deal to enjoy in Nightfall, though it takes some suspension of disbelief to get there. The dramatic thrust of the film, not to mention its underpinnings as a noir, revolves around the characters being in the wrong place at the wrong time — and not just Aldo Ray’s Jim Vanning, but all of them: Anne Bancroft’s Marie and even Nightfall’s superb villains, played by Brian Keith and the terrifying Rudy Bond. The story is a mish-mash of circumstance, twist, and chronology that defies summary — so I won’t bother with one. The plot is surely contrived, never has there been a movie that relied so heavily on one of its characters being a physician. It may seem trivial, but it’s a critical plot point and the movie tanks without it — it’s just an awfully hard pill to swallow. But in the end, if you’re a film noir fan you realize that it’s not what happens that makes these movies so great, it’s how our heroes respond, and how the filmmakers choose to share it with us that makes the noir film so endlessly fascinating. In the case of Nightfall, the actors and the filmmakers come through. 


Nightfall (1957)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Produced by Ted Richmond
Story by David Goodis
Screenplay by Sterling Silliphant
Cinematography by Burnett Guffey
Art Direction by Ross Bellah
Starring Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith, and Rudy Bond
Released by Columbia Pictures
Running time: 78 minutes.

THE DELINQUENTS (1957)

Filmed on the cheap in his hometown of Kansas City, Robert Altman’s first full-length feature is Eisenhower-era drive-in fare on the perils drinking, dancing, and “going steady.” The film features a cast of unknowns (and amateurs) balanced with professionals in key parts. The most notable acting presence in The Delinquents is that of Tom Laughlin, Billy Jack of seventies drive-in fame, in his first starring role. Also worth mentioning is Rosemary Howard, who plays Laughlin’s star-crossed girlfriend. I single her out not for her terrible performance (it would be her first and last), but for her uncanny resemblance to later Altman heroines — most notably Shelly Duvall.

I was excited to watch The Delinquents because I wanted to see if I could pin down the “Altman” in it. It’s very curious to look at a film like this knowing that the director (of whom I’m admittedly a little ambivalent) would go on to craft films that couldn’t be philosophically situated further from this one. Would there be any satire? Maybe some tongue-in-cheek? Alas, I was disappointed because the only recognizable characteristic of Altman present here is his promise as a storyteller. Unlike similar independent cheapies, Altman’s story and screenplay are thoughtfully constructed, with the resulting product being surprisingly cohesive and resolved — while remaining bound to conventional narrative construction. While it’s telling to applaud a film for simply making sense from start to finish, that simple accomplishment wasn’t often achieved in the teenage exploitation films of the day. The Delinquents is a ‘teenpix’ genre movie — understandably conventional and derivative, done in earnest, with many of the directorial decisions obviously dictated by such external concerns as budget, location, and talent. That’s not to imply that the film is diminished by the lack of Altman’s mature signature, or that Altman’s later work is betrayed by such a beginning — a mainstream “exploitation” film with conservative underpinnings.

The story features a Romeo and Juliet angle — except instead of doomed young Italians we have a pair so WASPy and all-American that one can practically see the Popsicle sticks shoved up their backsides. Scotty White is a Wally Cleaver-type who is all busted up because cute Janice Wilson’s father won’t let them go steady — she’s only sixteen. Although Scotty is a clean-cut boy from a good family Janice has begun to openly fantasize about someday getting married and starting a family. Both youngsters assure Janice’s parents that their relationship is completely above board and that they haven’t “done anything” yet, but Mr. Wilson nonetheless forbids the two from seeing one another. In a fit of angst, Scotty heads for the drive-in all by himself, where instead of watching the picture he sits behind the wheel with his head in his hands.

As fate would have it, he pulls in beside a gang of kids from the wrong side of Maple. Behind the wheel sits Bill Charters (Peter Miller) with his pal Eddy (Richard Bakalyan) and their bunch of cronies. While Bill’s blonde hair and spot in driver’s seat mark him as the leader of the gang, Eddy is clearly the riff-raff. His pompadour is a smidge more oily and unkempt than the others, and the phallic switchblade that completes his get-up never stays in his pants for long. Bill’s smooth confidence and sense of entitlement makes everyone feel safe and special while Eddy’s frayed and manic presence makes running with this crowd coolly dangerous.

While this bunch appears to have eaten just as many Wonder Bread sandwiches as Scotty, they are bent on drinking, necking, and paying no more attention to the movie than he is. In films like The Delinquents the bad kids can’t sit still for long — they need to have “fun.” The stage is set when Eddy notices some teens in another car parked a few rows away he and Bill recently “beefed” with. Eddy slinks behind their car and pops their back tire before hotfooting it to Bill’s convertible with a crowd giving chase. As he rounds the corner Eddy gets the inspired notion to throw open the door to Scotty’s sedan and crawl through, making it appear as if our boy was the vandal. Scotty is consequently yanked from his car and walloped before Bill, Eddy, and pals make the scene for an all-out rumble. Despite being shell-shocked Scotty comports himself well, which impresses Bill and leads to a quick friendship between the two. Realizing his error, a threatened Eddy begins to mull over the ramifications of this new friendship.

When Bill hears about Scotty’s girl trouble, he offers to pick Janice up for a sham date and deliver her to Scotty. Feeling indebted, Scotty agrees to bring Janice a wild party of Bill’s at an abandoned house. After only a few minutes a shocked Janice begs to leave — the other teens are shaking and shimmying a la Baby and Johnny, and crude Eddy is making her out to be a square — they don’t even have Coca-Cola at this party. She races for the door with Scotty in tow. Shortly afterwards the police crash in, leaving Bill and Eddy thinking Scotty ratted them out.

The next day they waylay Scotty and force him to drink whiskey. Their plan is to get him stinking drunk and then drive him somewhere to be cut up and dumped. At a service station Eddy gets the idea to crack the till while the attendant is busy fueling the car. Things go wrong and Eddy brains the guy with the gasoline nozzle while Scotty staggers away in the confusion. Having let him escape the gang decides to grab Janice to ensure Scotty stays mum on the heist. When Scotty learns of Janice’s abduction he runs wild — and the resulting confrontations are really entertaining. Scotty and Eddy mix it up on the front lawn of Scotty’s house, with Scotty choking out the greaser in a scene that looks a lot like the famous Mel Gibson / Gary Busey pissing contest outside Danny Glover’s place. Scotty finds Bill just before the police do, and its Bill that jerks a knife as they duke it out in a cramped kitchen. Scotty’s one-two outlasts Bill’s switchblade in a surprisingly bloody climax. The picture closes on the steps of the police station, with parents arriving to escort their children home as a narrator cautions against not only the “disease” of delinquency, but also any disobedience to civil and spiritual authority.


The Delinquents (1957)

Writer / Director: Robert Altman

Cinematographer: Charles Paddock

Starring: Tom Laughlin, Rosemary Howard, and Peter Miller.

Released by: Imperial Productions

Running time: 72 minutes

PLUNDER ROAD (1957)

I’ve wanted to write about Plunder Road, a film I hold in high esteem, for quite some time, but have shied away time and again because I’m unsure of how best to approach a movie I have great affection for. As someone who criticizes others’ artwork for a living I loathe back-patting sessions, so the idea of writing about a personal favorite film is daunting. I changed my mind when I looked at the Plunder Road’s IMDB page: 56 votes and a rating of only 6.7 out of 10. Four contributor reviews, all brief, all commenting on the low budget. Too often it seems that (re)viewers interpret the lack of a major star to mean “low budget;” and to them “low budget” is code for “low quality.” And although that sentiment is occasionally true it certainly isn’t here: Plunder Road is an exceptional film that makes a potent noir statement. I feel empowered to write in praise of the film — because it seems to need it. After just one viewing it should be apparent to viewers (even those with a limited film vocabulary) that this is an influential film.

One short digression before continuing to the meat of the film: I mentioned above that I criticize artwork — I’m a college graphic design professor. A great discovery about Plunder Road is that the very effective titles were designed by none other than Bob Gill, who engaged in this kind of work on few occasions, unlike the much more famous and prolific Saul Bass or Maurice Binder. Nevertheless, Bob isn’t exactly unheard of in our world of computers and electronic publishing — Gill Sans, anyone?

Plunder Road is a heist movie. Hard-nosed tough guys bust a train during a midnight rainstorm and make off with millions in bullion. They load the gold into three large trucks and make for the coast, with a fleet prowl cars rallying behind them, and roadblocks on the horizon. There’s very little dialog in the first half of the film, and what is heard seems contrived merely to create atmosphere. The film instead relies on tight visual storytelling; well filmed and edited. Plunder Road is spare and precise; Cornfield and his editors have realized a minimalist vision of the crime film. Every scene, line of dialog, and facial expression contribute to the gestalt, anything superfluous has been pared away. As the reels unwind the cops pick off the heisters one by one as they try to circumnavigate the dragnet. Despite their elaborate plans to steal the gold and get away clean, events unravel as they typically do in film noir: the crooks are tripped up through trivial circumstances, details too seemingly silly to have been accounted for in advance of the robbery. By the final scene only two men and a gun moll remain free, as they head for their destinies in a sedan outfitted with solid gold bumpers and hubcaps.

There’s no real star among the ensemble cast, but Gene Raymond gets top billing. If the name is familiar it likely isn’t for his acting but rather for his longtime marriage to singing superstar Jeanette MacDonald. Raymond had a steady career in film and on television as a third or fourth lead, with his biggest part coming opposite Jeanette in 1941 for their remake of the Norma Shearer Fredric March classic, Smilin’ Through. He leads a cast of somewhat familiar faces with unfamiliar names — the lone exception being film noir safety valve Elisha Cook Jr. This is a guy’s movie through and through — Raymond’s love interest doesn’t appear until the final third of the film, played by soap opera icon Jeanne Cooper (who still appears as Mrs. Chancellor on The Young and the Restless after a run 40 years). Nonetheless, I was left with the impression that Cooper was only included in the cast because on of that old Hollywood adage that every movie has got to have a girl.

The characters, although never fully developed, are far from stereotype. They keep to themselves, burdened by their own thought, and thus keep us at arm’s length. Plunder Road wants to make distinctive the boundaries between their world and ours — we can’t fully know them or theirs and they have long forgotten squares like us. In the final sequence, as the remaining members of the crew seem to be in the home stretch — in broad daylight on the sun-baked L.A. freeway, ex-race car driver Frankie sees traffic stacking up in front of him. He says “It’s gotta be a road block, why else would it be piled up like this?” Raymond’s Eddie Harris responds “The morning rush — the people who work for a living, Frankie.” It’s in this moment, when they break the unseen barrier between the two worlds by attempting to pass in ours — that fate intervenes and seals their doom. At the literal and figurative end of “Plunder Road” the movie reveals itself to be a definitive film noir — in an ending of extraordinary irony, these crooks who have planned and executed a robbery of tremendous daring and complexity are undone by one of the most banal occurrences of the modern freeway: the fender-bender. That they would have survived even this unscathed had they not been too smart for their own good, and simply stashed their loot in the trunk, is shattering. For Harris, death is a welcome alternative to a life in prison after being dealt such a blow.

Throughout the film, viewers hear snippets of radio broadcasts talking up the caper, updating the audience in the theater as well as the robbers on the screen as to the progress of the escape. It clearly brings to mind the radio DJ from Hill’s The Warriors. Also noteworthy is the method the gang uses to camouflage the gold, by casting it in the form of the car bumpers and hubcaps. David Mamet, a student of film noir if ever there was one, lifted the idea for his 2001 Gene Hackman film Heist, though Hackman escapes with his precious metal. The difference between the two films is that Hackman has the audience’s blessing — he’s fleecing a scumbag. Fates exacts a stiff penalty from the thieves in Plunder Road. They’ve knocked over the U.S. Mint — essentially meaning you, me, and everyone else who walks in the light.

Plunder Road (1957)

Director: Hubert Cornfield
Cinematographer: Ernest Haller
Writers: Steven Ritch and Jack Charney
Starring: Gene Raymond and Jeanne Cooper
Distributed by: Republic Pictures
Running time: 76 minutes

RAY DANTON DOUBLE FEATURE: The Night Runner (1957), The Beat Generation (1959)

Ray Danton starred in two pseudo-noirs in the late fifties, The Night Runner and The Beat Generation, both of which I caught recently. Despite the triple play of being tall, dark, and handsome, Danton’s limited skill forever doomed him to a low budget existence in Hollywood — though he did manage the occasional part in a big picture, and had a relatively successful run both behind and in front of the camera in Europe. In both of these films Danton plays a character with a screw loose, in the first a killer and the second a serial rapist, yet his good looks and likable demeanor begged audiences to find external forces to blame for his eroded mental condition.

In the The Night Runner (curiously titled because it takes place mostly in broad daylight), Danton plays Roy Turner, ex-mental patient. Turner is a victim of bureaucracy, cut loose by his doctors and unprepared to cope with the world. As an examination of the merits of the system which set the mentally ill free without any sort of support structure, The Night Runner is a failure, laughably so when compared to a film such as 1961’s The Mark with Stuart Whitman and Rod Steiger. Despite the attempt to be taken seriously, The Night Runner is B-exploitation that plays more like a bedtime story told to frighten children.

We never learn much about Roy Turner, but considering that audiences require a reason for all mental illness, there’s a token effort made to give him a troubled past: young Roy owned a pet seagull, shot and killed by his father, who Roy decries as a “mean old man.” The act of pet-murder causes Roy to flee his home for a new life as a cabin boy on a freighter, a story recounted to a dreamy-eyed girl in a moment of signature Danton deadpan. Somehow life’s winding paths have led Roy to his current profession of draughtsman at an engineering firm.


If The Night Runner doesn’t score points as a social exposé film, it’s hardly more successful as a thriller. Most of the running time is devoted to scenes of Roy trying to assimilate into the idyllic seaside community where he finds himself after wandering off the Greyhound bus. He fits in marvelously well, and we forget his past as he gets frisky with the innkeeper’s daughter and chummy with everyone else. Only the innkeeper is wary, though his suspicion is no more than that of any father with a 22 year-old daughter whom he rightly suspects is in heat. Sure, there are a few moments when Roy stares oddly into the distance as he is questioned about his past, but for the most part he displays a collected, bland exterior. The jump to murder is abrupt and hard to swallow. Roy conks the innkeeper over the head when the old man gets wise to his checkered past, and the film assumes we’ll go along with the idea that murder is Roy’s only option. This might make sense if Danton played Roy as a legitimate psycho, but instead he comes off as completely sane person guilty of a crime of passion. Following the act, Roy cleans up his mess, wipes the room, and tries to make the scene play as a robbery gone wrong.

The rest of the film deals with Roy’s attempt to conceal his crime unraveling, until he finally comes clean to his shocked sweetheart, who then falls from a cliff into the raging surf below. In the one moment in the film that Roy actually appears frightening, he stares vacuously down at her body as it is buffeted about in the cove. When Roy’s sanity finally reasserts itself he plunges in after her, and carries her limp and unconscious body home, where he calls the police. The film closes as Roy calmly waits for the sirens in a front porch rocker.

The Night Runner’s flaw is that it doesn’t depict Roy’s insanity, instead asking us to accept it on faith. Even though Roy commits murder, his motive is a too common to be cuckoo: he’s merely trying to conceal his past. Even after the murder, his attempts at concealment are coolly methodical. The fact that Roy is supposed to be a lunatic is immaterial.

Danton is a much more convincing psychopath in The Beat Generation, a film that in spite of its many flaws and its complete lack of a identity is engrossing. Undoubtedly the credit goes to legend-ary scribe Richard Matheson. It’s one of those pictures that tries to capture lightning in way too many bottles, even though each of the bottles is still interesting. Here Danton plays Stan Belmont, The Aspirin Kid, a psychopathic rapist with an itch for married women. In order to set up his victims, he waits for the husband to leave home, then shows up at the door on the pretense of wanting to repay a small loan. “Is your husband home?” — “No? Well, can I leave him a check?” — “Oops I don’t have a pen, could you get one for me?” — “Thanks, do you mind if I wait inside?” Stan’s nickname comes from the final step in his elaborate ritual: he feigns a migraine, and as his host is fetching a glass of water for his aspirin, he dons a pair of black leather gloves and slips into his criminal identity. Stan’s a rapist, not a killer, so each victim is left to share her story with the police.

The detective assigned to the case is Dave Culloran, played by one of the most underrated actors in all of film noir: Steve Cochran. Dave is a hard-boiled man’s man with his own ideas about the willingness of the Kid’s victims — until his wife becomes one of them. Cochran’s rough-and-tumble exterior and manner demonstrate inspired casting: he’s the spit to Danton’s polish. When his wife turns out to be pregnant, Dave can’t seem to come to grips with the situation, and it shows in his physical presence as much as it does in the dialog. Much of the running time deals with the debate between the Cullorans about the future of their unborn child, though it eventually strays to melodrama as the Mrs., played by Fay Spain, has a front lawn heart-to-heart about abortion with the local priest.

The presence of beat culture is wholly exploitative. Stan chums around with a bland clan of ‘Hollywood-ized’ beatniks, though his best friend is played by Robert Mitchum’s son Jim, who makes for a piss-poor Neal Cassady. The dialog is wonderfully over the top in a few segments, and there are scenes where young people cavort around or simply whine about ‘the man,’ but only when the film feels compelled to give the audience a dose of beat-this or beat-that. In a few of the club scenes we meet a young Vampira and an old Louis Armstrong— though like us Louis seems painfully aware that he’s in the wrong movie. Ostensibly Stan uses the beat crowd as a cover for his half-life as the Aspirin Kid — easy since the film presents his cronies as a bunch of vapid numbskulls. This is fine as a story point, but Stan’s role as a beat is that of willing fraud or con-man, which forces one to reexamine the reason for giving the film this title, and showcasing Mamie Van Doren on the poster, much less in the cast — though to her credit she injects some life into the second half of the picture. That is, before the climactic underwater harpoon gun battle.

The Beat Generation is a smorgasbord that deserves a larger audience. It’s by far the more interesting of the two films discussed here, and certainly provided the juicier part for Ray Danton. There’s no space to cover the bits with Jackie Coogan, Dick Contino, Charles Chaplin, Jr., or Maxie Rosenbloom, not to mention the harpoon guns.

The Night Runner (1957)

Director: Abner Biberman
Cinematographer: George Robinson
Screenplay: Gene Levitt
Starring: Ray Danton and Colleen Miller
Released by: Universal International Pictures
Running time: 79 minutes 

The Beat Generation (1959)

Director: Charles F. Haas
Cinematographer: Walter Castle
Writer: Richard Matheson and Lewis Meltzer
Starring: Ray Danton, Steve Cochran, Mamie Van Doren, Louis Armstrong, Fay Spain, and Jackie Coogan
Distributed by: MGM
Running time: 95 minutes