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"Considered the classic among classic "B" movies, this 1945 film is as noir as
it gets." They tell you that pianist Al Roberts hitchhikes to L.A. to meet up
with his fiancee and that along the way the guy who picks him up accidentally
dies. Al assume's the man's identity, takes the car and picks up a woman
hitchhiker. Her name is Vera, "a beautiful, but vicious vixen." She finds out
about Al's fake identity and blackmails him. The film is a "darker than dark
drama" and "will prove to be a delight for all noir fans." 1945, 68 minutes, VHS
This is the fast and dirty tale of what bad things can happen to a doofus when
he hitchhikes, accidently kills the dude who gave him the ride, takes his car,
picks up a hitchhiker of his own, and then accidently kills her. Now, the story
is obviously a little more involved than that, but you can probably say that if
our "hero"
didn't have bad luck, he wouldn't have any luck at all. The movie was directed
by Edward G. Ulmer who was supposed to be the master of making low-budget
movies. To me, that's kind of like saying you're a master at making butter
sandwiches cause you're too lazy to get a job and make some money so you can
by some honey-glazed ham slices and processed cheese food. Ulmer, who also
made the low-budget sci-fi epic The Man From Planet X (so low budget they could only afford a one letter planet!), made this movie
in six days. I've had benders longer than that, so I know what an
accomplishment
that is. Of course, his movie only runs sixty-eight minutes so that kind of
begs the question: What took so long? In any event, the movie quickly
establishes its credentials as film noir when we see an unshaven fellow at a
diner moping around and hollering whenever somebody plays a certain song on the
jukebox. Some of you may recall that gimmick from William Bendix in The Blue Dahlia. It's not really noir unless someone is tormented by some song, though I
don't believe that being tired of hearing "Who Let The Dogs Out" really counts.
Tom Neal stars as this burnt out, haunted by the past, three days away from
retirement, on suspension, piano player. I told you this was a film noir,
didn't I? Who better to represent the the disillusioned, trapped by fate,
betrayed by women character than a piano player. He's artistic and passionate
and sensitive and generally a wuss, whose own wussiness, if it doesn't exactly
get him into messes, sure doesn't do much to get him out of them. His name is
Al Roberts and you just know he's in that diner so that he can tell us the
sorry tale that landed him in his current state.  As with most problems you will encounter in life, this one begins with a woman.
Al is a piano player at some low-budget night club and his girl is Sue, the
lounge singer. They have this awful song they play and sing together that is
called something like "I Can't Believe You Fell In Love With Me" and I'm
thinking, "I can't believe they are letting you sing." Times are good and they
seem to be happy, so you can expect the woman to start wanting something else.
Al is talking about getting hitched with Sue and that's when Sue decides to
drop this bomb on Al. She's going off to Hollywood to be a star! As soon as
Al heard that, he should have realized that not only was he dating the
vocally-challenged, he was also dating the mentally-challenged. This woman
obviously had no talent, otherwise she wouldn't have been playing a supporting
role in an Edward G. Ulmer (he's the King of Low-Budget Movies, you know!) film.
Al should've taken this as a sign that it was time to move on, but since this
is a noir movie, he took it as a sign that he should hitchhike across this
great land of ours and meet her in Hollywood later. I never understood how she
had the money to go out there by bus or whatever, but our guy only had enough
money to never shave, to sweat and to get entangled in an awful destiny. Al
hits the road and finds that hitching is tough when you don't shave your legs,
let alone your face. Finally a dude name Haskell pulls up in a really sweet
ride and gives Al a lift. Eventually, Haskell opens up about his past and
tells Al a bunch of pointless things about how he and some neighbor kid took
his daddy's Franco-Prussian swords and had a duel where he got slashed on the
arm
and where he put the other kid's eye out. As might be expected, Haskell ran
away from home immediately after his first (and presumably last) swordfight.
That was fifteen or twenty years ago and he grew up to become a bookie in
Miami. But it was not all wine and roses for Hasky, as some horse race went
screwy and wiped out his book, so he was heading out west to see his father to
get another stake and reopen Haskell's Off-Shore Sports Book Emporium. Al kind
of takes all this in and notices some scratches on Haskell's hand. Haskell
says it was made by the most vicious of animals, the woman! Amen, brother,
says Al (and you and I, I'm sure). You can tell this is noir, because women
don't seem to be represented in much of a positive light. But then again, we
know
that Haskell was pretty handy with a sword, and a lady has to take care of
herself, so who knows?  After stopping for a bite to eat, Al and Haskell get back on the road and Al
takes over the driving. It begins to rain (it was a dark and stormy night, you
might say) and Al tries to get Haskell up so that he can put the top up on
their convertible. Haskell doesn't wake up and Al pulls the car over to the
side of the road so that he get the top put up. Al goes around to Haskell's
door and opens it in an effort to wake him up. This turns out be a bit of a
whoopser as Haskell falls out of the car and smacks his melon on a murderous
rock. After screaming the word "fudge!" over and over, Al quickly decides that
no one would believe that such a dumb thing could have happened (don't
they watch film noir movies and understand all that stuff about inescapable
fate and destiny and postwar malaise?) so he decides that the best thing to do
is to hide the body in the desert, assume the dead guy's identity and drive off
in his car. It was a really cherry ride, after all. He does this, but not
before a cop (the five-oh to you MonsterHunter fans in urban areas) rolls up on
him and tells him that he can't just be parking the car of a guy you just
accidentally killed and have now assumed his identity, along the roadway with
its two tires in the road. This is the beginning of the rest of Al's life - a
life of constantly looking over your shoulder and wondering when someone was
going to catch on to your nefarious scheme (After accidently killing this guy,
I'll take the care to El-Lay, ditch it, and live happily ever after! This
dude's an evil genius!) So he hits the road and sweats out a search at the
California border, hoping the Haskell wasn't smuggling oranges in his trunk.
He has discovered that Haskell was going to rook his old man, by trying to sell
him hymnals or something and not even let on that he was his son. I guess that
plot ranks up there with the one in The Music Man where the bilking is going to be done through a bogus marching band. Al
cleans himself up and dresses up like Haskell (in a hideous window pane suit!)
and drives off to meet some more of his awful fate. Al stops at a gas station to get some water for the car and a Big Gulp for
himself when he sees this really ugly chick sticking her leg out alongside of
the street. Al's obviously got more street smarts than me, because he
immediately recognizes her as a person in need of a ride, where I just
recognized someone in need of fifty bucks anyway she could get it. She tells
Al to call her Vera and she's about the most surly dame you're ever liable to
lay your baby blues on, see? What's really nasty is that as she's sitting
there in a sullen silence, Al is giving her the once over and we are subjected
to the profile of this skanky broad. What's really great is that Al is
thinking something along the lines that she wasn't movie-star beautiful (Well,
duh! That's why she's the female lead in Edward G. Ulmer's low-budget movie!),
but she was kind of beautiful in a homely way that showed real beauty. Ahh,
yeah, it's the kind of homely beauty you'll see in the cookie aisle of the
Wal-Mart Supercenter. The absolute best part of all this is that not only is
she surly and ugly, she's also the meanest junkyard dog you've ever tangled
with and her only goal is get as much out of people as possible no matter what
it takes. To that end, she drops this bomb on Al: "What happened to the guy
who owns this car?" Ohh, thanks for playing Al! Fate sticks its boot further
up Al's ass when it turns out that Vera was the woman that gave Haskell the
scratches on his hand. He dumped her out and she apparently (and almost without
explanation) managed to pass Haskell later and luckily was on the
same stretch of road that Al was driving on and even more luckily was picked up
by Al. Al realizes that he's got a problem now, and actually tries to tell
Vera the whole "Magic Rock" theory of Haskell's death. She's not buying it and
decides that they are going to stay together until they can sell the car. She
also announces that if he tries anything, she'll rat him out to the cops. She's
actually pretty stupid, because if she believes that he really killed Haskell,
wouldn't she fear for her own safety? Who could ever put her together with Al
if he killed her? But, she must realize that Al is one of those out-of-luck
piano players that goes along to get along and is able to pretty much emasculate
him the rest of the movie.  Before they can sell the car and go their separate ways, Vera buys a newspaper,
and notices that an old rich guy named Haskell, Sr. is dying. Immediately,
she figures that this is the long lost father of former bookie, now dead guy in
the desert, Haskell, Jr. She announces that she has changed her mind and they
are not going to sell the car, but that Al is going to see the old man,
impersonate the son and get all that money. Al, who still stupid enough to
believe that he is ever going to see his girlfriend again, is outraged and
refuses to go along with the plan, citing many of the problems that you can
probably already see with her scheme. She gets drunk and threatens to call the
fuzz, going to so far as to lock herself in a room with the phone. Al tells
her not to do it and yanks the cord which trailed from one room to the other,
under the locked bedroom door. He yanks and yanks, trying to break it, then
breaks the door to the room down only to discover that Vera had collapsed in a
drunken stupor with the phone cord around her neck and the reason the cord
never gave is because it was strangling her. That's another in a series of
whoopsers, I say. We flash back to the diner (the present) and Al talks about
how fate could put the finger on any one of us. Then he walks outside and gets
picked up by the highway patrol (rather abrupt finish, but the low-budget must
have finally given out). This is one of those movies that manages to rise
above its humble origins to actually to be a memorable contribution to film
noir canon. This one delivers everything. You have the guy, a regular joe, led down the
path of destruction by forces beyond his control (mainly women), he's just
trying to literally find love, but keeps finding only predators. They show
that this postwar world is sick, that the common man is forever screwed by
things he has no say over. Even the predators (especially the predators) are
sick and prey on anyone including one another. Haskell is a guy who would
cheat his own father out of money as well as take advantage of a woman who
needs a ride. Vera, who apparently was victimized to some degree by Haskell
has no compunction about doing the same thing to Al, who's never done a thing to
her, except to try and help her get somewhere. Vera is also sick physically,
dying from Consumption which apparently was a disease you could catch in old
movies (hell, I ain't looking it up!). She still desires to take as much from
the world as she can, even though her time is short and she won't be able to
enjoy it. It's not about having stuff, in this new world, so much as it about
abusing people to get it. It's the swindle just for the pleasure of putting
one over on someone less powerful than you. And isn't that how this country
has evolved? Take advantage of whoever you can, even if you already have more
than enough. Social Darwinism is a great thing, right? Survival now isn't
really about physical survival at all, but economic. You don't have to
discriminate openly against those you don't like, you can erase them through
your fiscal policies. Al is one of those types. Right from the very beginning
you could tell he wasn't long for this world. His big dream in life is to
marry the woman he loves. Her response? I want to be a star! She doesn't
care that someone is willing to commit his life to her, she only wants to
chase after some stupid dream that has been fed to her. That's your postwar
kick in the ass for you. You come back from saving the world, ready to resume
life the way it was (get married, have kids) and find out that while you were
gone, nobody waited for you and the old expectations were replaced with
different ones. How do you come to terms with that? You don't really, I
suppose. You just watch as this new world closes in on you, funnelling you
into different situations until its through with you and swallows you up. This
one is about as bleak as they come. Al has done nothing wrong, he's just a
thing for the world to play with, a world as capricious as the one Zeus used to
rule. And you know the reason the whole thing doesn't
collapse under the weight of its ridiculous series of coincidences is because
you can see in the world we live in now, that good people are chewed up and
cast aside for no good reason and you know that you could be next. (Wasn't
that something from like the last line of one of those body snatcher movies?
Scary!) It's
a Detour de force! (Can I get an "ouch" from the crowd? Thanks!)
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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