... well, you know the rest of the saying.
Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) is a working class guy from Massachusetts looking for work in post war California. Unfortunately, there are lots of working class guys looking for work there too. He has a son who is about ten and there isn't the money for him to do things with his friends, and he's starting to get to an age where he notices these things. His wife is pregnant and he can't afford to send her any place but free clinics. They are renting a spartanly furnished ramshackle house. One night, after leaving his wife crying at the kitchen table because of fifty cents she does not have for groceries, he is trying to cool off and calm down at the local bowling alley. He runs into a slick fast talker, Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges), who says he may have a lead for him for a job. When alone though, it turns out Jerry wants Howard to drive a getaway car for Jerry's planned armed robberies. Howard wants to say no, but he thinks of his struggling family and relents. He tells his wife he got a job on the night shift somewhere to explain his absence.
At first things go OK, as far as crime can go OK. They manage to get away with some money without killing anybody. Howard likes that he is able to buy some things for his wife and son and feel like a provider for a change. But soon Jerry has talked him into doing something that is way over his head - kidnapping the grown son of a wealthy couple. It would mean 25K apiece and no more robberies. That would be about half a million apiece in 2021 dollars. This turns to murder, not because anything went wrong, not because of any accident. It's just that Howard has neglected one little fact - Jerry is a sociopath. And now Howard is chained to him for at least awhile. This film goes to a very bleak depressing place, and I'll let you watch and find out exactly how.
Howard's character is the classic centerpiece of a noir film - a basically decent human being that due to a colliding of unique circumstances gives in to temptation and ends up in a horrible position, and lots of that horrible position is his own conscience eating him alive. Lloyd Bridges excels at playing the big talking sociopath. Katherine Locke stands out in a minor role as a sweet mousy woman looking for love who, from the things she says, must have been in love with a married man at one time and has been trying not to make that same mistake ever since. Richard Carlson plays a reporter who is paid to whip up readers into a frenzy over the crime wave that Howard and Jerry are perpetrating. His role was the one thing that really didn't work for me. Carlson just does not seem like a journalist to me - but maybe I've just seen Creature from the Black Lagoon one too many times.
I'd recommend this one. It is rare to see booming post war California portrayed as anything else than a place where there was a chicken in every pot.
Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) is a working class guy from Massachusetts looking for work in post war California. Unfortunately, there are lots of working class guys looking for work there too. He has a son who is about ten and there isn't the money for him to do things with his friends, and he's starting to get to an age where he notices these things. His wife is pregnant and he can't afford to send her any place but free clinics. They are renting a spartanly furnished ramshackle house. One night, after leaving his wife crying at the kitchen table because of fifty cents she does not have for groceries, he is trying to cool off and calm down at the local bowling alley. He runs into a slick fast talker, Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges), who says he may have a lead for him for a job. When alone though, it turns out Jerry wants Howard to drive a getaway car for Jerry's planned armed robberies. Howard wants to say no, but he thinks of his struggling family and relents. He tells his wife he got a job on the night shift somewhere to explain his absence.
At first things go OK, as far as crime can go OK. They manage to get away with some money without killing anybody. Howard likes that he is able to buy some things for his wife and son and feel like a provider for a change. But soon Jerry has talked him into doing something that is way over his head - kidnapping the grown son of a wealthy couple. It would mean 25K apiece and no more robberies. That would be about half a million apiece in 2021 dollars. This turns to murder, not because anything went wrong, not because of any accident. It's just that Howard has neglected one little fact - Jerry is a sociopath. And now Howard is chained to him for at least awhile. This film goes to a very bleak depressing place, and I'll let you watch and find out exactly how.
Howard's character is the classic centerpiece of a noir film - a basically decent human being that due to a colliding of unique circumstances gives in to temptation and ends up in a horrible position, and lots of that horrible position is his own conscience eating him alive. Lloyd Bridges excels at playing the big talking sociopath. Katherine Locke stands out in a minor role as a sweet mousy woman looking for love who, from the things she says, must have been in love with a married man at one time and has been trying not to make that same mistake ever since. Richard Carlson plays a reporter who is paid to whip up readers into a frenzy over the crime wave that Howard and Jerry are perpetrating. His role was the one thing that really didn't work for me. Carlson just does not seem like a journalist to me - but maybe I've just seen Creature from the Black Lagoon one too many times.
I'd recommend this one. It is rare to see booming post war California portrayed as anything else than a place where there was a chicken in every pot.