Runtime: 71 minutes
Directed by: Ida Lupino
Starring: Edmond O’Brien, Frank Lovejoy, William Tallman, Jose Torvay, Sam Hayes
From: RKO
About time I saw this movie after having all the opportunities to for years now. Besides it being a public domain title, it is in relatively regular rotation on Turner Classic Movies. I ended up seeing it on the Criterion Channel, although that wasn’t my first choice.
First it was a YouTube video which not only was colorized with AI, but was 4K and 50 frames per second. Most movies converted to a higher frame rate just don’t look quite right to my eyes then there’s the aspect of AI colorized films not always getting it right either… whether it be sometimes causing people to have blue skin as if they had been ingesting colloidal silver or how this in particular didn’t handle the darker lighting all that well… after a few minutes I tapped out and the traditional black & white presentation on the Criterion Channel was much better.
Much of this is just a trio of characters: buddies Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy on a road trip until they had the grave misfortune of picking up dead-eyed serial killer hitchhiker William Tallman. It goes largely as expected-this is predictable-yet director Ida Lupino (it is awesome that a woman directed such a tense noir) wring a lot of intensity out of a scenario which believe it or not was based on a real life A-hole who went on a murdering spree and held two pals hostage, an SOB named Billy Cook who went to the gas chamber at San Quentin for his crimes.
71 minutes seemed like the right length for the story told here, considering much of the focus is on the trio either out in the desert or in the car, featuring both close-ups of faces and scenic views of the California desert standing in for Baja Mexico. All the driving footage manages to look rather convincing given the low budget & while our two heroes are fine, Tallman managed to stand out not just because he had the showiest role, but also because his character was the strongest given his constant badgering & taunts towards his captives. Said captives WERE too frightened most of the time, admittedly.
I did blow it by not checking out some of Lupino’s work back when it was on the Criterion Channel yet I’ll use other sources to try at least one of them. As those are more centered around women, that is one reason why I am intrigued after seeing the good job she did here. This is an incredibly easy movie to legally track down as it’s in the public domain; just avoid the colorized versions…
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