My Gun is Quick
Director: Victor Saville
Year: 1957
Rating: 6.5
Mike Hammer is back in My Gun is Quick based on Mickey Spillane's second
book (I, the Jury being the first) with the same title and he hasn't mellowed
out. It is again produced by the low budget production house Parkland that
made lots of crime/noir films in the 1950's - the vast majority that you
likely never heard of. Same could be said of the cast of this film - I don't
know any of them. But the great thing about noir which this comfortably falls
into is that you don't need much of a budget to put a decent film together
as long as you have dames, guns, shadows and Hammer. This has plenty of all
of that.
The film begins like the book does for about five minutes and then takes
a swerve into an entirely different plot like it is a lost teenage runaway.
Not sure why unless the original plot was still considered too risqué
in 1957 which is hard to imagine. Hammer finds himself late at night in a
greasy spoon where you have to wait for the cockroaches to let you sit down.
He is beat from a long day of smacking people around when Red, a lady of
the evening, flirts with him - but even Hammer is too tired to pick up on
that. But he does beat up a guy who bothers her and treats her to soup and
money for a bus out of town. The lug is Sir Galahad in disguise. When she
turns up dead the next day he doesn't believe it is an accident and begins
to snoop around.
In the book he finds a large powerful prostitution ring has killed her to
shut her up - but in this one it is some stolen jewels. Everyone in town
seems to be after them and one of them killed Red. He will make them pay
like he always does - in blood. A bunch of women are in the film and they
all make googly eyes with an offering of much more at Hammer - from a rich
dame who keeps knockout drops next to her booze like a Cosby to a stripper
to an itchy Velda. He is wearing protective armor though and swats aside
their come-ons like bomb diving flies.
It is 90 minutes which would have been 80 if they had cut out a scene in
which Hammer follows a car on the highway and follows and follows and follows.
The film suffers from trying to hit that magic 90-minute feature mark - but
is still pretty good with dialogue so hard boiled you expect it to crack
and though Robert Bray who plays Hammer feels awkward in his patter he has
the right look with the broad shoulders that fill a room and a face that
goes well with bruises. He was to star in Lassie for years in the 1960's.
I can't say I am a huge fan of Spillane's writing or his character Hammer
who often is just a shade to the right of being a psycho but I have read
the first two now because his books were so popular and had some influence
on all the tough guys who came after him.
There were two TV series with Hammer - the Darren McGavin series in the late
50's where they subtract much of his meanness but they are tight well scripted
shows and then the Stacy Keach show that ran for four seasons in the 80's
where Hammer is completely defanged and the shows very generic PI stuff.
This film and the I, the Jury (1953) are much closer to the mark.
