Movie Review: Johnny Guitar (1954)

Genre: Western

Director: Nicholas Ray

Starring: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Ward Bond, Ernest Borgnine

Running Time: 110 minutes

Synopsis: Tough saloon owner Vienna (Joan Crawford) stands to make a good profit by selling her property to the rail company. The mysterious Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) arrives in town just in time to find Vienna locked in a feud with Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) and cattle baron McIvers (Ward Bond). Emma is also Vienna's rival for the affections of the slick Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady), who leads an outlaw gang. Johnny has to decide where to park his loyalties as Vienna is given a deadline to leave town or face the consequences.

What Works Well: This is cerebral western with acidic dialogue exchanges oscillating between icy and steamy, and only rarely interrupted by bursts of action and violence. All the drama is propelled by the ambitions and passions of two headstrong women. Director Nicholas Ray uses patient sequences to delve behind character facades and uncover simmering secrets and psychological hang-ups. Scene staging and framing are often superb, with clever character placements enhanced by vivid colours to underline emotional turmoil. An exuberant Joan Crawford delivers a domineering, larger-than-life performance, which Sterling Hayden counterbalances with a perfectly lackadaisical attitude. John Carradine and Ernest Borgnine further enrich the supporting cast.

What Does Not Work As Well: Even at just 110 minutes, a trim would have sharpened the pacing. The lack of an escape route out of town, presumably due to rock blasting, is far-fetched.

Conclusion: A uniquely compelling western, riveting in both style and content.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: 5 Steps To Danger (1956)

A Cold War noir thriller, 5 Steps To Danger borrows from other, better movies, but cannot overcome limitations on budget, talent, and imagination.

After his car breaks down on a California highway, John Emmett (Sterling Hayden) is invited by traveler Ann Nicholson (Ruth Roman) to share the driving to speed up her trip to Santa Fe. At a gas stop John is warned by nurse Helen Bethke (Jeanne Cooper) that Ann is unstable but harmless and under the care of Dr. Simmons (Werner Klemperer).

Ann and John continue their journey, and are soon stopped by highway patrolmen claiming Ann is wanted for questioning about a murder in California. After they escape, Ann confides in John that she is originally German and is trying to deliver secret missile design transcripts smuggled out of East Germany to a Dr. Kissel at a Santa Fe research university. The dean of the university (Richard Gaines), the CIA, the FBI, and a murderous henchman are all soon involved.

Written, produced, and directed by Henry S. Kesler, 5 Steps To Danger has grand ambitions well exceeding the capacity to deliver. Nods and winks to Hitchcock and Wilder pepper the script, but the homage elements are undone by a basic cheapness that leaps off the the screen. The sets are rudimentary, and many essential plot points (the California murder, the real Kissel, Ann's brother, the entire CIA investigation) are talked about but never seen. Stars Hayden and Roman are adequate, but the supporting cast members are stiff, not helped by some inept scene blocking.

The plot starts with a promise of intrigue and mystery, but unravels quickly into an incomprehensible mess. The character motivations and movements are almost impossible to understand or follow, leaving the impression that every action serves the script rather than logic. Hayden's John Emmett, in particular, seems happy to just go along and wade into an increasingly dangerous spy world he knows nothing about. 

Kesler does better on the open road, the highway scenes offering an expanse of freedom to capture large cars roaring down the highway, and the rest-stops are suitably grungy. A few shadow-on-the-wall noir elements leave an impression, and Ann's complicated story carries femme fatale potential. But despite the few decent elements, 5 Steps To Danger is about three steps short.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Killing (1956)

A high-tension heist movie, The Killing counts down the hours towards an audacious robbery from the perspective of the gang members. Attention to detail collides with a strained domestic relationship, yielding exquisite drama.

Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) was only recently released from prison. He promises his devoted girlfriend Fay (Coleen Gray) that his next heist will be a big one, allowing them to start a new life together: he plans to rob $2 million from the racetrack on the day of a high-stakes race.

Johnny's assembled gang includes veteran con man Marvin (Jay C. Flippen) and two racetrack insiders: cashier George (Elisha Cook Jr.) is desperate to buy nice things for his demanding wife Sherry (Marie Windsor), and bartender Mike (Joe Sawyer) needs money to help care for his sick wife. Police officer Randy (Ted DeCorsia) is also involved, and he plans to use his cut to pay-off debts to ruthless mobsters.

Johnny also hires brawler Maurice (wrestler Kola Kwariani) and sharp-shooter Nikki (Tim Carey) to cause distractions on the day of the robbery. The plans appears solid, but Sherry is ambitious, deeply unsatisfied in her marriage, and having an affair. She extracts information from George and provides it to her boyfriend Val (Vince Edwards), jeopardising all of Johnny's plotting.

An adaptation of the book Clean Break by Lionel White, The Killing is written and directed by Stanley Kubrick as a tight and crisp exposition of heist planning. Using documentary-style narration and subtle jumps in time to sharply define the characters and cover their actions leading up to the all-important seventh race at the track, Kubrick weaves a gripping tale of crooks coming together to execute the perfect robbery, except that the criminals themselves are far from perfect.

Cramped sets, stark light sources, dark shadows, sweaty, crumpled close-ups and remarkably fluid camera movements define a visual style coiled with tension and a sense of doom. For all the meticulous planning leading up to the robbery, this group of men is simply too flawed to pull off a heist of this magnitude, and their character weaknesses create an undercurrent of pending calamity. Johnny is going for a much larger haul than any of his previous jobs, now with the understanding that prison is prison so he might as well aim big. Marvin is small time, cashier George is meek and insecure, police officer Randy is dense enough to get into debt with the mob, and bartender Mike is no criminal.

Notwithstanding exceptions like Fay, men like this tend to attract the wrong kind of woman, and sure enough Sherry instigates the rot. George is too stupid to notice that contempt is the only emotion his wife feels for him, and she senses an irresistible opportunity to get rid of him and get rich doing it. As the pathetic George, Elisha Cook Jr. is a doleful presence, emerging from behind his cashier window to create a black hole of creeping ruin.

The 85 minutes of running time are perfectly paced. On several occasions Kubrick stops the clock just as the seventh race is about to start, and rewinds to fill in more preparation details and further increase expectations. By the time the gang swings into action and every man plays his role, all the groundwork appears to pay off, with the added bonus of one racist meeting quick justice. 

But the final act is the anarchy of the universe descending upon Johnny, mundane rules and an agitated small dog having never factored into his planning. The beauty of a plan coming together is only surpassed by the potency of unanticipated randomness.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Long Goodbye (1973)

A private detective neo-noir crime drama, The Long Goodbye dives into a sordid mess of murder and deceit among the rich and decadent.

Los Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) helps his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) cross the border into Tijuana. Terry is soon revealed as the prime suspect in the murder of his rich wife Sylvia, but the case is closed when he apparently commits suicide in a small Mexican town.

Marlowe is next hired by Terry's neighbour Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt) to find her missing husband Roger (Sterling Hayden), a celebrated but frequently drunk author. Marlowe locates Roger in the dubious care of a Doctor Verringer (Henry Gibson). Eileen is curiously interested in the Lennox case, while her marriage to Roger is clearly disintegrating.

Vicious criminal Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell) and his goons accuse Philip of hiding money Terry allegedly stole from Marty. Marlowe also learns the Wade marriage is perforated with accusations of infidelity and Roger owes money to both Doctor Verringer and Marty. Untangling all the crooked motives will require sleuthing on both sides of the border.

An adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel with a script by Leigh Brackett, The Long Goodbye takes liberties with the source material but successfully updates the famously cynical detective into the early 1970s. With director Robert Altman maximizing the use of windows, mirrors, and reflections, in this Los Angeles peeking into the lives of others is easy, but everyone is too self-obsessed to care. From the gaggle of frequently topless yoga-practicing nubile neighbours to the one-way mirror at the police station and the Wades' glass-enclosed beach house, the visual barriers are for show, and flaunting is now the vogue.

As Marlowe delves deeper into the trouble swirling around his supposedly dead friend Terry Lennox, the emerging themes are edacity and narcissism, the privileged succumbing to the pursuit of lust, wealth, and reclamation of fading glory, eradicating anything and anyone standing in the way. Lennox, the Wades, Verringer, and Rydell all reside on the same side of the coin, without a single sympathetic character among them, and if nothing else, all deserving of their propagating miseries.

Altman maintains good pacing and combines the investigative elements with plenty of character definition, ambience and acidic humour. Memorable context-setting scenes include the opening adventures with Marlowe's cat (representing all that is uppity about Los Angeles) and a couple of chilling encounters with the borderline unhinged Augustine involving a Coke bottle and a parade of shirtlessness (with a brief uncredited appearance by unknown actor Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Elliott Gould dissolves into an endearingly wisecracking Marlowe, the only person still smoking in Los Angeles but always ready with a quip for every predicament and enough inner steel to keep fending off lies until the truth comes out. Sterling Hayden chews the scenery in a Hemingwayesque turn, while Henry Gibson as Doctor Verringer and Mark Rydell as Augustine inject large doses of nauseating menace.

Nina van Pallandt does not quite register the requisite mystery, and not unexpectedly with a Chandler story, a few ends may be either loose or simply scattered into an impossible puzzle. But with Marlowe growing increasingly annoyed with the rampant egotism, the The Long Goodbye emerges as an expedient cure for those who seek it.



All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Winter Kills (1979)

A conspiracy thriller with satirical elements, Winter Kills boasts a superlative cast but fails on all other counts.

Nick Kegan (Jeff Bridges) is the half-brother of Tim Kegan, the ex-president of the United States who was assassinated 19 years prior in Philadelphia, supposedly by lone gunman Willie Arnold. Tim's rise to power was engineered by his wealthy industrialist father Pa (John Huston), who resents Nick's lack of interest in politics. The Kegan empire is managed by a technology and information hub under the watchful eye of the mysterious Cerruti (Anthony Perkins).

Now Nick witnesses the deathbed confession of assassin Fletcher (Joe Spinell), who reveals he was part of the multi-rifle hit squad that killed Tim. Nick retrieves Fletcher's rifle as evidence, and immediately his life is endangered. He seeks the help of his girlfriend and journalist Yvette (Belinda Bauer) to delve into the case, while Pa arranges for Nick to meet with a variety of shadowy characters including eccentric power broker Z.K. Dawson (Sterling Hayden) and mob boss Frank Mayo (Tomas Milian).

Nick learns about the history and Cuban connections of small-time hood Joe Diamond (Eli Wallach), who was hired to kill Arnold. But the more Nick investigates Tim's death, the less sense the entire case makes.

Having overcome a bizarre three-year production history involving drug and soft-core porn money, a murdered producer, and multiple shutdowns due to financial problems, Winter Kills is still a lavish production with a gorgeously rich aesthetic. Director William Richert and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond create grand sets suitable for the unconstrained wealth of the Kegan family, including mansions and private hospital and hotel rooms consistent with the rewards of infinite income backed by hidden corruption.

And the luxury surrounds a cast brimming with talent. Almost every role is occupied by a recognizable name, with none other than an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor making a silent appearance in a couple of key scenes late on. Toshiro Mifune, Dorothy Malone, Richard Boone and Ralph Meeker are among the other performers adding depth and interest in every corner.

But unfortunately, the adaptation of Richard Condon's book falls short where it matters. Winter Kills is intended as a satirical jab at Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories with an added layer of thrills and shocking moments, but never gets the balance right. Too often Richert's script plays straight, dour, and dumb, people dying all around Nick, his life endangered at every turn, and every revelation erasing what went before it. What may have been intended as dry humour contracts into emotionless crustiness.

The self-defeating foolishness of various overlapping and contradictory conspiracy scenarios is the point, but Richert never pauses long enough to properly celebrate the moment. The film blurs into a succession of irrelevant names from the past and present pointing the finger at each other, then dying, with no consequence or impact.

Meanwhile John Huston as Pa is given free rein to munch the scenery with an exhibition of absolute power filled with absurdist winks. Huston appears to be in a movie all his own, none of the other characters sharing the twinkle in his eye.

With Nick maintaining a fast investigative pace and Jeff Bridges shirtless about 50 percent of the time (and sometimes altogether nude), Winter Kills maintains a wacky watchability, but only as witness to the curiously constructed narrative carnage.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Flat Top (1952)

A low-budget US Navy propaganda film intended to drum up recruitment during the Korean War, Flat Top (also known as Eagles Of The Fleet) is a stock story peppered with plenty of grainy stock combat footage.

On board an aircraft carrier during the Korean War, Commander Dan Collier (Sterling Hayden) reminisces about his experiences during World War Two. The rest of the film is one long flashback. In the Pacific theatre, Collier, a strict disciplinarian, takes command of a group of newly trained pilots. Young and exuberant Barney Smith (Keith Larsen) is immediately grounded by Collier for disobeying orders during a landing. Executive Officer Lieutenant Joe Rodgers (Richard Carlson) tries to reconcile the inexperienced men with the expectations of their new commander.

The pilots have to fight long days of boredom at sea. Finally they get into the action and gain experience through raids on the enemy fleet, dogfights with enemy aircraft and finally supporting the Philippines invasion. Throughout, Collier is stingy with his praise, but gradually earns the respect of the men.

Directed by Lesley Selander, Flat Top is approximately 45 minutes of original film supplemented by about 40 minutes of footage from World War Two, or at least it feels that way. The actors are edited into the action but it's often painfully evident where the plastic sets stop and the backscreen projections start. Nevertheless, Flat Top was nominated for an editing Academy Award.

The film was produced with the full support of the Navy by low-budget specialists Monogram Pictures, and by the standards of that studio this is a top rate production. The USS Princeton was the main on-location set, the colour cinematography is courtesy of Cinecolor, and Sterling Hayden and Richard Carlson provide decent name recognition.

But for viewers interested in all the hardware, Selander takes frequent inexcusable shortcuts in cobbling together the action scenes. Characters frequently take off in one aircraft, dogfight in another and land in yet a third type of machine. When a film has to make do with whatever stock footage is available, continuity is an early victim.

The plot is the most standard of military dramas, the stern commander whipping green recruits into shape and his second in command having to bridge the gap between experience and enthusiasm. Hayden and Carlson bring the requisite military stiffness and little else to their roles. Selander tries to give some of the other pilots a bit of personality. But other than the grounded Ensign Smith it's a losing battle, and all the young flyers meld into irrelevance, united by the common thread of contriving to disobey Collier's every instruction.

Flat Top is certainly flat, and not just at the top.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Suddenly (1954)

A low budget B-movie juiced with better than expected performances, Suddenly is a short and sharp assassination and hostage drama.

The small and sleepy town of Suddenly receives the exciting news that an unscheduled train carrying the President of the United States is due to make a quick stop in town. Sheriff Tod Shaw (Sterling Hayden) is the local law, and he pauses his romantic pursuit of war widow Ellen (Nancy Gates) to coordinate security with Secret Service agents led by Dan Carney (Willis Bouchey). Meanwhile, the still-grieving Ellen is trying to shield her young son Pidge (Kim Charney) from any symbols of violence.

Pop Benson (James Gleason) is Ellen's dad and a retired Secret Service agent himself. Pop's house provides a strategic vantage point over the train station. Hitman John Baron (Frank Sinatra) and two accomplices arrive in Suddenly pretending to be FBI agents. They forcefully occupy Pop's house, and hold Tod, Pop, Ellen and Pidge as hostages while they set-up a high powered sniper rifle and await the arrival of the President's train.

In the vein of movies about killers holding innocents hostage including landmarks like The Petrified Forest, Key Largo and The Desperate Hours, Suddenly occupies a curious place for a variety of reasons. After the big budget From Here To Eternity, Sinatra takes quite a left-turn to land in this tiny movie as his next project. Later, he would appear in 1962's The Manchurian Candidate, which again features a slow-burning assassination plot. After the 1963 Kennedy assassination, Sinatra attempted to have Suddenly withdrawn from circulation upon hearing that Lee Harvey Oswald had watched the film before the killing.

In itself this is an intriguing film that builds and maintains a good head of steam. Director Lewis Allen demonstrates a penchant for edgy and noirish perspectives and punches the clock at a no-nonsense 77 minutes. Once the premise is established and Baron's intentions are revealed, most of the action takes place in Pop's house, the setting confined to a couple of rooms as Baron awaits the train and Shaw, nursing a bullet wound in his arm, attempts to figure out a way to gain the upper hand.

The set-up opens the door to a decent psychological duel between the sheriff and the hitman. Shaw realizes that Baron is emotionally troubled and gets him talking, allowing Suddenly to venture into interesting territory related to the upbringing and training of an assassin. Frank Sinatra's intense performance as an unhinged cold-hearted killer who feels the world owes him plenty elevates the film well past its humble intentions. Hayden is adequate but quite stiff.

Given the modest budget and B-movie status, there are plot holes and inconsistencies aplenty in the Richard Sale screenplay, and of course the characters behave as the script requires to keep the drama simmering, rather than in accordance with any logic. Nancy Gates and James Gleason provide decent support behind Hayden and Sinatra, but the rest of the cast members read their lines with the awkward intensity of first rehearsal at the local high school play.

A taut countdown thriller peppered with masculine and threat-laden dialogue, Suddenly does not set any new standards in filmmaking, but it's much better than it needed to be.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Sterling Hayden

All movies starring Sterling Hayden and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Flat Top (1952)

Johnny Guitar (1954)

Suddenly (1954)

The Killing (1956)

5 Steps To Danger (1956)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

The Godfather (1972)

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Winter Kills (1979)

Nine To Five (1980)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

A gritty crime drama, The Asphalt Jungle is a brilliant story of greed and deception among a group of desperate men. Director John Huston elicits sympathy for deeply-flawed criminals, and finds the subtle shades of grey that separate the bad from the evil.

Scholarly criminal mastermind "Doc" Erwin Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) is released from prison, and immediately sets about meticulously planning a daring heist, which involves breaking into a jewelry store through a sewer tunnel wall. Doc approaches small-time criminal financier Cobby (Marc Lawrence), who in turn brings into the plot respected lawyer Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) to help provide financing and fencing services. Doc hires Louie (Anthony Caruso) as the safecracker, Gus (James Whitmore), the owner of a local diner, as the getaway driver, and Gus' friend Dix (Sterling Hayden) as the muscle. Dix is a down-on-his-luck dreamer with a gambling addiction, although he is trying to reassemble his life with the help of somewhat girlfriend Doll (Jean Hagen).

Unbeknown to the others, Emmerich is actually in deep financial trouble. He is living beyond his means, partly because he maintains an apartment for his expensive mistress Angela (Marilyn Monroe). With the help of private detective Bob Brannom (Brad Dexter), Emmerich plots to double-cross the others and keep the jewels for himself. The robbery is mostly successful, although one of the men is shot and the police are in pursuit sooner than expected. When Doc and Dix meet with Emmerich to give him the jewels and collect their money, they realize that Emmerich and Brannom have other plans, and the band of thieves turn on each other. With Police Commissioner Hardy (John McIntire) on their tail, imperfect execution and Emmerich's deceit turn a slick plan into a debacle.

Grim and unforgiving, The Asphalt Jungle is a hard-hitting criminals' view of the world. Working from a script he co-wrote with Ben Maddow (an adaptation of the W.R. Burnett novel), Huston delves in the grimy world where gangsters have to simultaneously cooperate with and guard against each other in a perpetual dance of mistrust. Huston places Doc, Dix and Emmerich and Cobby in the middle of the story, and unapologetically makes them real people striving to score big.

Cobby is trying to keep his money-lending business afloat despite the unwelcome attention of corrupt cop Ditrich (Barry Kelley) and customers like Dix who don't pay back their debts. Dix's family was victimized by the Great Depression, and he dreams of making enough money to buy back the horse farm his dad had to sell. But his uncontrollable appetite for betting on horses means he is unlikely to ever get close to fulfilling his fantasy.

Doc and Emmerich are both elder statesmen of the underworld, but polar opposites. Doc takes pride in his detail-oriented work, is smart, careful and thoughtful, and within the context of the crime world, exceedingly open and honest. Emmerich is deceitful and greedy, a man who has over-stretched his resources to buy the company of women like Angela. Emmerich seemingly has everything that Doc, Dix and Cobby strive for, and yet is in the most amount of trouble.

The absence of any stars in the cast allows each of the four to step forward and reveal their personalities and flaws. Jaffe, Lawrence, Calhern and Hayden exude strained confidence undermined by a deep well of apprehension, contributing to the sense of impending doom that electrifies the film.

The jungle is the domain of male survivors, and the two women in the cast are used primarily to sharpen the definition of Dix and Emmerich. Jean Hagen's Doll is a sounding board for Dix, providing a sympathetic ear as he outlines a future that could revive his past. Marilyn Monroe, in her first major movie role as Angela, goes a long way towards justifying Emmerich's excessive spending habits.

Stylistically The Asphalt Jungle is awash in worry, Huston's black and white images filled with harsh contrasts as the men contemplate futures that are either much better or significantly worse than the present. Huston's cameras are restless, always shifting towards edgy angles as in less than two hours the characters are introduced, the heist planned, the crime committed and the aftermath spirals towards disaster. And in The Asphalt Jungle, there are no soft landing spots.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.