Raw Deal (1948)

Let’s check Raymond Burr’s movie list at IMDB and see when he crossed over from the dark side:

I can’t be sure of the other films past Raw Deal and before this next one, but Burr plays District Attorney R. Frank Marlowe in A Place in the Sun. That’s a Clift/Taylor film. I’m not sure if I’ve seen this one. Taylor and Clift at the same time could be a bit much.

And maybe Burr plays a crooked district attorney in this for all we know. But I’m thinking probably not.

But then Burr reverts to form in 1951’s Bride of the Gorilla where he plays a South American plantation manager (a perhaps dubious distinction already) name Barney Chavez (that name doesn’t sound good either). He “kills his elderly employer in order to get to his beautiful wife.” Okay, we can be sure this is the Bad Burr in this film.

But what’s the part of the gorilla in all this? “However, an old native witch witnesses the crime and puts a curse on Barney, who soon after finds himself turning nightly into a rampaging gorilla. But is his transformation real or is it all in his head?”

If you don’t know whether or not you’re really turning into an NRG (nightly rampaging gorilla), the rest is details. You’re not well either way.

Burr is definitely not the good guy in 1953’s Tarzan and the She-Devil. He’s not the she-devil but he is amongst the ivory poachers who are “headed by Lyra the She-Devil” who “capture a native tribe to carry their loot.” That doesn’t sound much like Ironside.

With this next film, we may enter a gray area. In 1953’s Fort Algiers, Burr plays Amir (presumably a Mohammedan name). The gray area comes via “In northwest Africa, a tribal leader tries to stir up a rebellion against the ruling powers.” I assume with a name like “Amir” that Burr puts on a dark beard and plays one of the rebels. But because he presumably is rebelling against the French, does that make him a good guy or a bad guy?

In 1954 in Rear Window, Burr is still the bad guy playing Lars Thorwald. Will he ever see the light?

Finally, in 1956, he is on the right side of things, playing Steve Martin in Godzilla: King of the Monsters! He’s fighting monsters now, not enslaving African tribes or morphing into a gorilla. That’s a step up, for sure.

Finally, he sticks on the good side when he starts the Perry Mason series in 1957. But there are a lot of his movies I've never seen. He's play a whole lot of characters.

Biblical beautiful

Another Noir I watched the other day on Amazon Prime is Time Table. You can avoid this one. It starts well enough as a heist film. An organized group robs a train. The “Time Table” element relates to how supposedly perfectly this crime was planned.

But the plan, and the movie, soon fall apart. The plan goes astray when in the escape one of the robbers accidentally shoots himself at or near the helicopter that was waiting for them. This is all done off-film thus it shows you the other problem with this film: a lack of budget. Because the gun was never supposed to be used, one wonders why they put bullets in it at all.

Still, there is one surprise left, and it’s a big spoiler. The insurance guy assigned to investigate the robbery is the very guy who masterminded it. This comes completely out of nowhere. One moment he’s a nice-guy insurance investigator. The next he’s being nasty to his wife and uttering such banalities as “The house becomes a prison and the job a trap.” I guess this is why foreshadowing and building up to something are useful in movies because if you just throw this stuff out of left field, it can seem a little odd.

This is basically a “things go wrong after the robbery” film. This is kind of an amateur-hour production that does have the appeal of many old movies in that they are a time capsule. And the basic motivation for the robbery shows the amateur-hour status of the film. One reviewer notes:



He’s right. None of that made sense. There is a “so bad it’s good” element to this movie. So if you do take it on, be forewarned. Might be good for a rainy day, though.

But isn't it a bit late to come back as Robert Mitchum?  I don't think you get to reincarnate decades earlier, unless maybe you're Merlin.

Erase Down Three Dark Streets from your must-see list (also playing on Prime Video). It starts well. This is a Jack-Webb-style just-the-facts-ma’am slightly-propagandist style crime drama starring Broderick Crawford as FBI Agent John ‘Rip” Ripley.

One of the agents is murdered so Ripley takes over the dead man’s three cases that he was working on. One of them, he figures, has to be connected with the murder.

And this all rolls on just fine. One at a time, the cases are solved leaving the murder still unexplained and thus the solution to the last case will also be the solution to the murder.

And this is where (at the very end) things go very very wrong. I’m laughing-out-loud at the end with how stupid the ending was. But up until then, it was actually pretty good.

Spoilers: What got me at the end was that third story. A woman is being extorted for $10,000 she recently received from a life insurance policy on her husband. She does the right thing and calls the FBI. This is all good and well and this story line hangs together well. The FBI begin round-the-clock surveillance, phone monitoring, and all-around hand-holding. (One can only wonder where they get the resources for all this.) Agent Ripley is so attentive that if there was a sequel, it looks as if Broderick Crawford and this chick could become an item.

But she receives yet another threatening phone call (her third or fourth) just like the previous ones: “Pay up or something could happen to your daughter.” Now she suddenly freaks out and heads for the address (under the “W” in the Hollywood sign) to pay the cash.

What happened to the FBI surveillance of her phone? They’re not there. It’s downright comical. The FBI are all sitting around a conference table at the office getting intel from a voice expert on who the caller maybe.

Just the way it plays out at the end is hilarious. When you’re rooting for the bad guys because the good guys have become so stupid, you’ve done something wrong. Maybe you wouldn’t laugh at the ending. But I couldn’t help myself.

Back when I went places, I kept my wallet in my left front pocket, not a rear pocket.  This may have been useful, though that really isn't why I did it.  It occurs to me that an interesting approach might be to put something a bit bulky in a rear pocket (which would then bulge out) while keeping the wallet in a front pocket (where it's harder to notice).  This would be especially useful if you have an old wallet you no longer use.  I didn't go out enough in crowds that this was ever a problem for me.

Continuing the Film Noir marathon on Prime Video, I just finished what I think is an excellent movie, Shield for Murder, from 1954.

Edmond O’Brien plays Detective Barney Nolan. Nolan is a cop who is a bit dodgy. And he just goes bad, badder, baddest as this thing goes on. O’Brien is marvelous in the role. Top-notch Noir acting. Other notable roles for O’Brien are General Barton in The Longest Day, Tom Gaddis in Birdman of Alcatraz, Jim Reardon in The Killers, Hank Jarrett in the riveting Cagney movie White Heat, Dutton Peobody in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and even General Carter in Fantastic Voyage.

He even does a WWII sub movie with James Garner called Up Periscope. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. I’ll have to check it out. I love sub movies. And did you know that Tom Hanks has one coming out about the Wolf Pack? Apparently he wrote it. Artler will definitely want to know about this one.



Back to Shield for Murder. John Agar plays good-cop to O’Brien’s bad cop. But Barney Nolan isn’t all bad. He just has the propensity for it and his nature seems to amplify itself in a feedback loop.

Maria English is very good as Nolan’s girlfriend, Patty Winters. She has a real sort of natural beauty. (Well, as natural as comes out of the makeup department, I suppose.)



Carolyn Jones has a small role as a blond (prostitute?) in a bar. Claude “Ape has killed Ape” Akins plays yet another hired goon and he’s good as usual.

This is classic old-style movie making, for better and for worse. See it if only to catch the unintentionally hilarious high school pool shootout scene. Where else are hoodlums going to meet up for neutral ground but in a locker room?

The next movie in the marathon is 1956’s Run for the Sun which is considered a remake of 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game with Joel McCrea and Fay Wray. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that one.

From what I understand, this 1956 version is similar only in that there are a couple people being hunted down in the jungle. But not for sport. It’s because they’re Nazis and writer Michael Latimer has stumbled into their jungle retreat via a plane crash. Trevor Howard a Nazi? Well, it’s an odd bit of casting, for sure.

Richard Widmark plays this Hemmingway-like author who has ensconced himself in Mexico, apparently trying to drink away both writers’s block and having lost his wife to another man while on a safari in Africa. Jane Greer plays a journalist for Sight Magazine (basically Life Magazine) who has gone looking for him to write the story of why he is no longer writing his popular novels.

From the looks of it, Michael Latimer (the writer) is having the time of his life fishing and just generally hanging out with the natives. Katherine Connors digs deeper and finds out the sadder parts of his story, all the while Latimer not knowing she is a journalist. This brings the usual complications.

In fact, this movie is full of the usual this and the usual that. Greer is fine up until the point they take off in Latimer’s plane to fly her out to Mexico City. From then on, she become The Helpless and Stupid Female McGuffin.

And it’s not that I object to every female on screen not being the ass-kicking kind. But if I was a woman (and I haven’t quite transitioned yet), I would be offended. This journalist becomes annoying. It’s actually funny when Latimer tells her more than once to “Shut up!” Yeah, you tell her, Latimer.

And the only reason they crashed in the jungle is because McGuffin Katherine Connors put her purse (which had something highly magnetic in it) next to the compass on the plane’s dashboard. Latimer doesn’t come off real bright for his navigation skills either.

But then they crash land in the jungle way off course because of the compass being off. Luckily they land in a clearing that is right next to some Nazis on the lamb. But they don’t know they are Nazis at first, but Latimer has an inkling that Trevor Howard’s character is familiar.

And blah blah blah. Latimer can’t keep his mouth shut and lets on that he knows who Trevor Howard is which leads to the inevitable confrontation. Frankly, you can’t blame the Nazis. They weren’t bothering anyone. And Widmark really does play an obnoxious loudmouth. They should have kept the girl, though. Jane Greer is quite the looker.



So, anyway, the “Run for the Sun” occurs only in about the last quarter of the movie. And the run is nothing special.

I generally am not entirely fond of Richard Widmark and for exactly the reason you see in this: He’s a hard, one-note character in this. This works very well in some of his earlier, tough-guy roles such as in The Street with No Name, a military commander in Panic in the Streets, or as a small-time grifter in Night and the City.

The relationship between Latimer and Connors does not involve much screen chemistry. But some of the jungle-chase bits are exciting. And watching Widmark drag Greer through the jungle has plenty of unintentionally funny moments. But it’s hard to recommend this one. Watch it with low expectations and you'll be fine.