Year:  1957
Rating: 7.5

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This edgy off-beat off-kilter crime caper has had a growing reputation over recent years ever since its release was postponed for two years because Columbia Pictures didn't really know what to do with it. Then one of its stars Jayne Mansfield became a thing, a sensation and the film was put into theaters but never went far. The film today has a modernistic feel to it - fatalistic, tragic with a psychological undercurrent running through it that is rough and tormented. All this is accentuated by the black and white photography with its claustrophobic settings, stark close-ups, inventive camera angles and jangly bursts of music. When they finally leave the closed in volatile setting for the open road and Atlantic City, you can feel doom following in their footsteps.


The script was written by David Goodis based on his novel of the same name. Goodis like this film has seen his reputation revived over the years. In the 1940s and 50s he was one of the better known hard-boiled pulp writers but by the early 1960s all of his books were out of print. Even his best received novel Dark Passage, that was made into a film with Bogart and Bacall. He was by all accounts quite an eccentric and never fit in Hollywood when he worked for Warners - he had had a messy marriage that seems to have screwed with his head and led him to often portray women as manipulative bitches which of course is perfect for his genre.



He used to buy the cheapest suits he could find though he was making a good salary and dye them all blue, live in fleabag hotels and turn down requests from actresses like Bacall and Ann Southern to be their escort in order to go out to clubs in the worst part of town and find large women he could pay to abuse him verbally. He had been in love with a married woman who left her husband but only to marry Paul Wendkos, who in fact is the director of this film in his debut. Goodis died in 1967 and years later the French took a liking to him and used his novels for the basis of a number of films. Back in 1960 François Truffaut had directed Shoot the Piano Player from one of Goodis's books. His books are available again and quite good.


It is a crime caper. An expensive necklace is stolen from an old lady's mansion after it was cased by a sweet young thing who came to her door and was shown around. The organization consists of four people - the head Nat (Dan Duryea), two henchmen and a dame - Gladden - as in boy am I gladden to see you, Jayne Mansfield looking like a honey dipped ice cream cone. The theft is simple enough and done by 20 minutes into the film - then it gets all Sartre like. Nat decides it is too hot to sell the necklace and that they need to stay in Philly and wait - and wait - and wait - and the crew begins to claw at one another like cats in a box - needing space. And one of the thugs (Mickey Shaughnessy) can't keep his leering eyes off of Gladden and who can blame him - stuck in a house with no TV, radio, phone or social media - how many of us would not be watching Mansfield walk. And sit. The other thug (Peter Capell) goes stir crazy dreaming of getting on an airplane for Central America once they get their payoff.


Nat is cool on the surface with demons coursing through his body from a promise he made to his foster father to take care of the man's daughter Gladden years ago and that he holds on to obsessively like a religious thorn of trees. Gladden clearly has the hots for him but that feeling is returned like a cold sandwich. Two other characters enter the story - they know of the robbery and are looking to cash in themselves. One is played by Martha Vickers, who was Carmen, the psychotic sister in The Big Sleep. She had been 21 when she made The Big Sleep and as soft as a cozy feather pillow and as desirable as your next breath. Ten years later the baby fat is gone and she is sleek and brittle which reflected her real life - three bad marriages - one of course to Mickey Rooney who seems to have married every starlet in Hollywood - and a fading career.


It all plays out on the boardwalk of Atlantic City with a Lady from Shanghai influenced scene in the Fun House. Duryea is of course good as he always is but he plays his character as basically a tortured but decent man as opposed to how manic he can often get in films but it is Mansfield that surprises here with her vulnerable performance as a woman who can't find love with the right guy.