The adventures of a professional screenwriter and sometimes film festival jurist, slogging through the trenches of Hollywood, writing movies that you have never heard of, and getting no respect. Voted #10 - Best Blogs For Screenwriters - Bachelor's Degree
The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!
THE TWISTED IMAGE
Season: 1, Episode: 1. Airdate: 9/13/1960
Director: Arthur Hiller Writer: James P. Cavanagh, based on a novel by William O’Farrell. Cast: Leslie Nielsen, George Grizzard, Natalie Trundy, Dianne Foster. Music: Pete Rugolo. Cinematography: Lionel Lindon.
Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “Her eyes. They were often upon him. Candid, admiring, possessive. Her eyes. Her extraordinary eyes. Alan Patterson was aware of her eyes. And used to them. In the lunch counter. In the elevator. He was aware of them for almost a month. And they were to lead him into guilt and terror and murder... as sure as my name is Boris Karloff. Our story is about a watcher, and the watched... and a not so innocent bystander. There’s an outsider, too: Alan’s wife. Four pairs of anxious eyes. But no one could see the shattering effect of... the Twisted Image. Well, I’ll say no more, but I promise you one thing: this is a thriller!”
Synopsis: Successful executive Alan Patterson (Leslie Nielsen) has a pair of stalkers: Lilly (Natalie Trundy), an attractive female employee who has some crazy fatal attraction crush on him... and will do anything to ruin his marriage so that she can become his next wife; and Merl (George Grizzard), an envious mail room employee at the company who wants to take over Alan’s life... once Alan is out of the way, of course. So we have a hybrid of FATAL ATTRACTION and SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, decades before either of those movies were made.
Lilly shows up at Alan’s office at lunchtime, and insists he take her to lunch. His secretary sees them together, and assumes... and when they go to lunch, another business associate sees them together and assumes... But during the lunch, Alan is a bit freaked out by Lilly: she flat out says she’s going to marry him. When he says he is already married and has a kid, she is not deterred at all. She’s crazy! She calls him at home and leaves odd messages with his wife... who thinks he may be cheating.
When Alan has lunch with Lilly to tell her to just leave him alone, she *loudly* professes her love for him in the company lunch room... and is overheard by Merl, who now has some leverage against the boss he love/hates. It’s hinted at that Merl is Gay and also has a strange crush on Alan... he’s very similar to Bruno in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN in some respects. When delivering the mail, Merl steals Alan’s watch from his office.
The more Alan tells Lilly to leave him alone, the more she calls his home and office. His marriage is eroding, his wife (Dianne Foster) is sure that he is cheating on her with Lilly. His life is falling apart!
One night Merl seeks out “Alan’s mistress” Lilly, telling her he has a message from Alan. Merl has a cheap bottle of wine and soon we have *two* drunk mentally unstable people in Lilly’s apartment... both in love with the same man. When Merl puts the moves on Lilly, trying to live out his Alan fantasy, she pushes him away... and he kills her. Oops!
That’s when Alan knocks on the door to demand that Lilly leave him the hell alone. Oops!
But Merl knocks him unconscious, steals his wallet, and wipes away all of his own finger prints... making it appear as if Alan killed Lilly. When wakes up and finds the dead body of the woman who everyone thinks is his mistress, Alan leaves Lilly’s apartment, and he’s seen by the building manager... who then discovers her dead body. Now Alan has to find the real killer before the police catch him.
Merl goes out on the town, using Alan’s money and Alan’s identification.
Alan’s wife goes to have it out with Lilly... arriving just in time to see the police take her out in a body bag. Did Alan murder his mistress?
Alan decides Merl is #1 suspect, goes to his apartment... but Merl isn’t there. When Merl does come back, he sees Alan’s car on the street, and steals it... becoming more like Alan every minute. Wearing his watch, driving his car, dressed to look like him. The transformation is almost complete! But to actually *become* Ala,, Merl goes to Alan’s house and accosts Alan’s wife... *his* wife, now. Then takes Alan’s cute little kid! And holds a gun to her head! Now Alan must race home to save his wife and kid from the maniac pretending to be him.
Review: For the amount of talent involved and the number of great episodes this series would have, not an amazing first episode. Though you might only know Leslie Nielsen from comedies, he began as a serious dramatic actor... and that’s why he was perfect in movies like AIRPLANE! The audience expected him to be serious... as he is in this episode.
You may not be familiar with George Grizzard, but he was a hot actor at the time, cutting his teeth on TV before moving on to films (one of my favorite cop movies you’ve never heard of WARNING SHOT) like ADVISE AND CONSENT... but you would probably recognize the older version of him as the stern father of the bride in BACHELOR PARTY and the old version of Ryan Philippe in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. So we have a great cast.
Director Arthur Hiller was a TV veteran at the time, who would go on to direct huge Hollywood hits like LOVE STORY as well as great films like THE HOSPITAL and MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH... and comedies like the original THE IN LAWS.
Writer James P. Cavanaugh was a writer for Hitchcock Presents, and many other TV crime shows. So we have all of this talent, and the episode is kind of a muddled mess.
Novelist William O'Farrell was probably famous at the time for his novel REPEAT PERFORMANCE, which is kind of GROUNDHOG DAY as a thriller, about a man who must relive the year he commits murder over and over again.
I suspect the reason is that this hour long episode is based on a novel... and what might work over the course of a novel might not work well when condensed into an hour of TV. The two stalkers thing seems unrealistic; this isn’t a movie star, it’s a business executive! In order to flesh out each character we spend some extra screen time on scenes like Merl and his sister having a dispute... which was probably a fine scene in the novel, but here it seems to come out of left field and slow down the story. And compressing all of the things that happen into a couple of days makes it seem like Alan has the worst luck in the world. When the two stalkers come together, that just seems like a huge coincidence. So we have a story that probably worked well in book form condensed into too little time... and all of the things that could be either set up or glossed over in the book now seem abrupt. The story also ends up “too plotty”, so much going on that we don’t get enough time to really see the emotional impact on Alan. Things like Merl transforming himself into Alan are rushed, and often end up more exposition than demonstration. Adding to this is that the thriller aspects don't kick in until the last quarter of the show. Too much going on!
The music for this episode is basically variations on the THRILLER theme, which makes it seem a little cheap. The same composer will do *great* work on later episodes, like PAPA BENJAMIN (about a big band leader, which Rugalo was before doing TV scores) who must deal with a voodoo curse.
Despite all of this, it’s a competent episode... it just probably should have been a two parter or something. The acting and direction is fine, and the idea that an insignificant person in your life could turn your world upside down like this is scary. I almost wish they had split the story into two stories, one with the crazy FATAL ATTRACTION woman at the office and the other with the SINGLE WHITE FEMALE stalker who transforms themself into a clone of you... an unstable, violent, murderous clone. That way each idea could have been fully explored, and more time spent on the suspense of the situation. One of the reason why I loved this show as a kid were the episodes that take a simple situation and ramp up the suspense until it is unbearable. When we come to GUILLOTINE, you’ll see a great example of that: will a poisoned executioner make it to work today? This isn’t a bad episode... but it doesn’t display the brilliance this show will achieve in later episodes.
Screenwriters have to be able to think on their feet. You never know when an opportunity will present itself, or where an idea night be hiding, or when a chance to sell a script might pop up. A novelist has the luxury of time, a screenwriter has to come up with the solution to a story problem in a meeting with the producer right after he points out the problem. One of the things I've learned is that the longer a problem goes without the writer solving it, the more likely someone else will jump in with a solution that just doesn't work... but it's now your job to make it work...
After selling the script that got me to Los Angeles, I made the mistake of locking myself in a Van Nuys apartment for two years writing scripts and NOT networking until my money from the sale was almost gone. I thought that my sale to a company on the Paramount lot would result in my phone ringing off the hook from other producers - didn't happen. Though my sale was announced on the front page of The Hollywood Reporter, the film was never made and the producer went back to TV... leaving me without even the connection that got me to town in the first place! Now I had a mound of scripts and didn't know anybody to sell them to. But I did know about the American Film Market - where independent films are sold to independent distributors. Though the AFM wasn't open to the public, I had connections with my hometown newspaper and managed to get a press pass into the event. I now had nine days to meet a producer and sell a script, or I would have to begin looking for a day job.
Though I have nothing against day jobs, and there's no reason to be embarrassed if you're paying the bills while waiting for your screen writing career to kick in, I'd rather sell a script than do heavy manual labor. So I was REALLY motivated.
I passed out business cards and script synopsis to everyone who seemed likely to buy a script from me. I met a director who was cranking out films for Roger Corman and had a new horror movie premiering at the end of the market, did I want to see it? Sure! Though I didn't know anything about this director, I did know about Roger Corman. He's responsible for giving half of Hollywood their start. Francis Ford Coppola make DEMENTIA 13 for Corman, Jonathan Demme's first film was for Corman, Scorsese made a film for Corman, Ron Howard directed car crash films for Corman, John Millius wrote some biker films for Corman, Jack Nicholson wrote and starred in a bunch of Corman films, and one of my screen writing idols, John Sayles, began his screen writing career with a string of great scripts for Roger Corman films. Corman gives raw talent a way to break into the business - like a film internship. The only drawback - he doesn't pay much (but it's better than working at Kinkos copies or McDonalds). This director had a particularly colorful Corman story - he'd began as a janitor at the company and worked his way up to director. I wondered what kind of movie a janitor might make.
After making some more good connections - even passing out some scripts - the end of the week rolled around, and the screening of the janitor-director's film. I bumped into the director and I got to tell him about my scripts on the way to the screening. He asked to read one - but told me most of the films he did for Corman were shot on existing sets. He was sort of the B Team - after the A Team had finished a film, he would shoot on their sets. Interesting.
We get into the theater and I see what kind of film a janitor makes... It had a funny script that poked fun at the horror genre, but the direction was crude.
Afterwards the director asked what I'd thought... more thinking on my feet! I told him I thought it was funny and mentioned a couple of the places where the direction was okay. I lied a little.
A couple of months later I got a call from the director. The A Team would wrap shooting a film tonight, could I show up at 6am, tour the set, then pitch him the best story I could come up with using that set at 7am? Sure! Why so early? Well, there was still a day left on the construction crew's contract, and if the set couldn't be reused they'd have them use that day to tear it down. Corman loved to save money by getting every last minute of labor out of his crew. I told him I'd tour the set at 6am and see him at 7am.
I'm not a morning guy. The last time I saw 6am was when I stayed up all night. The big challenge was going to be waking up and staying awake.
The next morning I drive out to "The Lumberyard", Roger Corman's studio in Venice. Venice is a beach community with a row of trendy shops and restaurants... and a really ugly industrial section where the city's bus repair yard and a couple of junk yards compete with overgrown vacant lots of "City's Greatest Eyesore" prize. The Lumberyard is a couple of old warehouse-style buildings surrounded by mounds of old sets and props. Parts of plywood rocket ships and sections of fake castle walls and parts from a plastic mini-sub mock-up. It looked like the junkyard at the end of time. I parked in the lot and the head of the construction crew opened the door for me and pointed out the sets: about five rooms.
You've probably never seen a set in natural light. They look fake. I once toured the STAR TREK set on the Paramount lot, and it looks like it's made out of plywood and Styrofoam (it is). When we shot GRID RUNNERS, the cloning lab was the old operating theater at a run-down mental institution. The construction guys painted only the places that would show on camera, and did a slap-dash job. It looked like an abandoned building... but from the right angle with the right lighting looked like a high tech cloning lab. All of the things that looked fake in real life looked real on film.
The set at The Lumberyard was no different. It was a futuristic night club, a spaceship interior, and a high tech office complex of some sort. Most of it was made out of Styrofoam hot dog and hamburger containers - like the kind your Big Mac used to come in. Sheets of these Styrofoam containers covered plywood walls, adding texture. They were painted a metal gray color, and didn't look like hamburger containers at all.
But the Big Mac container walls reminded me of what I'd be doing if I didn't land this job. As I toured the set, drinking coffee and brainstorming, I came up with a fantastic idea. Each section of the set added to that idea. Hey - I had a great lead character, a high concept conflict, some big emotional scenes, and a way to make use that nightclub set for a couple of pivotal action-packed scenes. By 7am, I was fully caffeinated and ready to pitch my great idea to the director.
The director breezed in at 7:05 and I sat him down and pitched him my brilliant idea. The coffee was really kicking in by then, and I gave one of the most passionate pitches of my career. I explained the lead character's emotional conflict, and how he was forced to deal with it when this amazing event happens that thrust the entire world into danger. I told him about the fantastic action scenes that would take place in the night club set, and this chase I'd come up with for this long hallway, and a big romantic scene with the leading lady where the hero professes his undying love for him, then she breaks his heart by betraying him in a major plot twist. I could see him imagining every scene and knew I had him.
After I was finished he sat there for a while, thinking about the pitch. Thinking about the characters. Imagining the scenes. Imagining himself directing the scenes. He nodded a few times, thinking it over. Then he turned to the lurking construction guy, smiled, and said: Strike it!
The crew began tearing down the set.
By the time I left, it was half torn down!
A couple of days later I got a call from another producer I'd met - he wanted to buy my TREACHEROUS script. I wouldn't have to work at McDonald's after all!
This week’s Trailer Tuesday is for an obscure TV show from the 1970s, so it doesn’t really have a trailer... but it’s one of my favorite shows and this is *my* blog, so suck it.
THE DELPHI BUREAU (1972)
Directed by: Paul Wendkos
Written by: Sam Rolfe
Starring: Laurence Luckinbill, Celeste Holm, Dean Jagger, Cameron Mitchell, Bradford Dillman, Bob Crane, Joanna Pettet, Dub Taylor.
THE DELPHI BUREAU is kind of the father, or more likely grandfather, of the TV show CHUCK (also one of my favorites). Probably the father of CHUCK was the movie GOTCHA! which they referenced in the show at least once, and though I don’t remember them ever referencing either DELPHI BUREAU or THE LIQUIDATOR (another grandfather) you can easily see their DNA in that show. CHUCK is about a normal guy who works a crap job at Buy More Electronics who becomes a spy when a specially designed image based computer program called The Intersect “downloads” into his head when he opens an email from an ex friend, and he suddenly knows everything the CIA, NSA, FBI and any other 3 letter spy organization has ever known. Every intelligence file ever is now stored on his brain.
DELPHI BUREAU has the same concept, but without The Intersect, Glenn Garth Gregory is a government researcher with a photographic memory who often ends up in the field tracking down some fact for some probably pointless government report and uncovers a conspiracy... and must fight spies and terrorists. Imagine Chuck in his 40s. Glenn Garth Gregory is *not* a man of action, he’s a bookworm, like Turner in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, who ends up having to become a man of action... which he’s not very good at. Like Chuck and Turner his knowledge helps him out in action scenes. He’s a guy who knows how to fly a helicopter, but has never actually done it. This type of character was also the basis for James Allan Carter in my CRASH DIVE! movie... and a couple of unpublished spy novels I wrote about a guy name Roger Maxwell who also has a photographic memory. This show was a big influence on me.
THE DELPHI BUREAU only lasted one season... and really not even that, as it was part of a “Wheel Show” called THE MEN (sexist!). What the heck is a “Wheel Show” you ask? The 1970s were an innovative time in television: the Made For TV Movie became popular, and networks like ABC had a *new* Made For TV Movie every week! The other creation was the “Wheel Show” and though I really don’t know what the first one was, THE NAME OF THE GAME would be my guess. FAME IS THE NAME OF THE GAME was a TV movie directed by Stuart Rosenberg (COOL HAND LUKE) about a magazine publishing company like Time Life and all of its various magazines.
The movie was a hit and spawned the TV show that removed “Fame Is” from the title and ran from 1968 to 1971. The TV show was 90 minutes long and starred Gene Barry as the publisher, Tony Franciosa as a celebrity journalist for magazine called "People" (before that magazine existed!) and Robert Stack as an investigative reporter for a magazine like Time. Susan Saint James was the executive secretary who really ran the whole operation for Barry and was a regular in every episode. Every week it was like a TV movie, featuring either Barry’s publisher or Franciosa’s celeb & current affairs journalist or Stack’s investigative reporter. And the three stars rotated. So one week might feature a Hollywood behind the scenes soap scandal kind of story and the next week might be investigating a murder and uncovering a conspiracy and the next week we might have publisher Gene Barry on his way to an Environmental Conference where the President and some Senators would be speaking and makes a wrong turn and... well, that episode L.A. 2017 was directed by some kid named Spielberg and completely blew my mind when I was a kid. Part of TV’s innovative period was doing strange things like a science fiction episode in a dramatic TV show... Barry’s car crashes on the way to the Conference and he wakes up in 2017 where *air* is at a premium.
The idea of the “Wheel Show” was that it was 3 or 4 shows in one... and the format really took off, giving us The NBC Mystery Movie with COLUMBO, McCLOUD, McMILLAN & WIFE and several others. The great thing about a “Wheel Show” was that you could try out a potential TV series with an 8 episode season and if it caught on, move it to a weekly 24 episode series. Plus, if a show tanked, you could just throw a new series into the wheel to replace it. On NAME OF THE GAME Tony Franciosa’s character was written out in the third season (some behind the scenes contract conflict - ie: drugs) and replaced by Robert Culp and Robert Wagner and Suzanne Pleshette as journalists from other magazines run by Gene Barry’s character. The NBC Mystery Movie was constantly spinning off shows into their own series and replacing them with other detectives... often interesting experiments that might never get a chance at a series like HEC RAMSAY, a cowboy version of CSI in the old west. Try pitching CSI DEADWOOD today and see where it gets you.
ABC’s “wheel show” THE MEN featured ASSIGNMENT VIENNA (a spy show shot on location in Vienna), JIGSAW (about a missing persons investigator), and DELPHI. The entire wheel show only lasted one season, so there were only 9 episodes of THE DELPHI BUREAU made... and only the pilot episode is available on DVD from Warner Archive.
It’s no wonder that DELPHI BUREAU was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid, it was created by Sam Rolfe who also created HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E which were two of my other favorite shows. He was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay to THE NAKED SPUR, a great Anthony Mann western starring Jimmy Stewart. Rolfe’s last writing credit was on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, so he had a great career in TV.
Though CHUCK has traces of DELPHI BUREAU in its DNA., DELPHI has obvious traces of NORTH BY NORTHWEST (the movie poster of NBNW is on the wall of Chuck’s room!) and this pilot episode was obviously inspired by the Hitchcock classic...
THE DELPHI BUREAU:
MERCHANT OF DEATH ASSIGNMENT
“My job is to do research when the President needs to know some facts, but when the shooting starts? That’s a whole different department.”
The show opens with Glenn Garth Gregory (lanky Laurence Luckinbill) doing field research at an Airforce Base where miles of surplus planes are being stored for the next big war. There was a basic accounting problem: some surplus jet planes are unaccounted for but a later report had them written off after they were destroyed in a fire... and GGG’s job is to write a report on the damaged planes, so he’s flown out to this base in Arizona to take inventory. Booooring! Except there are no damaged pieces of the airplanes and no area at the base which looks as if a fire of that size took place. Suspicious. He takes photos of the supposed burn site and hops a plane back to Washington, DC.
In the airport, an attractive woman (April Thompson played by Joanna Pettet) bumps into him... and secretly places a flower decal on his camera case. When GGG steps onto the escalator at the airport, a uniform cop wearing a motorcycle helmet with tinted visor (Stokely played by Cameron Mitchell) fires a silenced gun at the man holding the camera case... killing him. Too bad it was a pickpocket trying to steal GGG’s camera! The pickpocket dies right *on top* of GGG, knocking him onto the escalator and pinning him down when they reach the end of the escalator. The escalator was a great location for this assassination scene. GGG thinks the man may have had a heart attack, then discovers he was shot. WTF? When a motorcycle policeman arrives to help and asks GGG why he has the dead man’s camera bag, GGG says it’s *his* camera bag... and the motorcycle cop pulls out his gun and starts shooting at GGG and chasing him through the airport! GGG escapes and hails a taxi... That’s how to start a story!
GGG meets his boss Sybil Van Loween (Celeste Holm) in the Congressional Gallery, where he reports that something is fishy with these jet planes. 24 brand new F101 fighter planes supposedly burned at the Airforce Base, yet there is no evidence of this... and the base has used more fuel than usual, enough to fly 24 planes 600 miles. Sybil tells him that coincidentally, an arms dealer in Sudan seems to have 24 new F101 fighter jets for sale to the highest bidder terrorist or 3rd word dictator. The planes don’t seem to be in Sudan, so they must find them before they get there and fall into the wrong hands. GGG spots April from the airport in the gallery... following him? She works for Matthew Keller (Dean Jagger who always plays the villain) who used to be an arms merchant nicknamed “The Merchant Of Death” but is now funding experimental food GMOs to help feed the starving people in 3rd world countries. Though GGG doesn’t “flash” like Chuck, there’s always a moment where we can see the information pop into his head.
Before you can say “Monsanto” GGG is speed reading agricultural books so that he can pass himself off as a Department Of Agriculture guy who will accompany Sybil to a party being thrown by Keller for his War Against Hunger Organization. Everyone in government and politics is at the party, including GGG’s friend Charlie Taggert (Bob Crane) who is comic relief on the pilot episode (but didn’t return for the series). Taggert speaks in limericks and loves to use acronyms for government agencies. The limerick part would also be used as “chapter titles” for subsequent episodes. Taggert is hitting on a beautiful woman when GGG shows up, and we get a great demonstration of GGG’s photographic memory as Taggert zings him with sports statistic questions and GGG instantly answers even the most obscure of them! Hey, this guy knows *everything*. Taggert works for S.N.I.S.W.I.S. (Sniss Wiss) the Strategic Not In Service Weapons Inventory Section and asks GGG about the F101 situation, so that we can get a little more exposition... the main bit being that Keller’s experimental farm is located about 600 miles from the Airforce Base where the planes vanished... is Keller behind the missing planes?
Then GGG meets Keller at the party... and he’s confined to a wheelchair after suffering a major stroke. Or, that’s what everyone claims. With Keller is his male nurse Dobkin (David Sheiner) plus April and prissy grain geneticist Randy Jamison (Bradford Dillman, a frequent COLUMBO villain). GGG says he’d like to stop by their experimental farm and see if the Department of Agriculture can help them in some way...
When he accompanies Keller and his entourage to their limo, he flashes on the limo driver... Stokely, the fake motorcycle cop who tried to kill him at the airport!
Farmland... GGG drives to the small town hotel to check in, but spots Stokely in the lobby. Stokely says Mr. Keller has reserved the best room in the hotel for GGG. (Yeah, probably bugged.) As soon as Stokely leaves, GGG asks a cowboy hanging around outside the hotel if there’s anywhere else to say in this town, and the cowboy sends him to a local boarding house. Twist: that cowboy gets picked up by Stokely and April as soon as GGG is gone...
From here the story is filled with twists and turns, featuring an exploding horse, a scene at the County Fair where GGG is framed for murder just like Roger Thornhill is framed at the United Nations, a great cameo by Dub Taylor as a hick in a pick up truck who gives GGG a ride and tries to polish off a king sized jug of moonshine along the way, and a series of cool scenes where GGG uses his endless knowledge to McGyver his way out of dangerous situations. He knows exactly which tentpole to kick to bring down the whole tent, he knows the heat and speed at which a kerosene fire will spread. He knows the wheel base of cars, trucks, farm equipment, and fighter planes... and knows that the skid marks on a country road are a clue. He knows how to use a cage full of birds as a weapon! Every danger situation he is faced with he finds some intelligent way to escape, based on all of the crazy facts and statistics stored in that brain of his.
The pilot film does a great job of creating that paranoia required in a Thriller, with every single character from that cowboy to townspeople possibly being part of the conspiracy. GGG has no idea who he can trust, and there are some great scenes along the way where bit part townspeople end up really being badguys... and a swell scene where someone who helps him escape ends up turning him over to the police for the murder he was framed for. There is also a great scene where GGG tells the Chief Of Police that he’s a researcher for the Delphi Bureau and the Chief calls GGG’s boss Sybil... who says she’s never heard of him! You see, Delphi Bureau is a secret organization that works directly for the President and there is maximum deniability. They can neither confirm nor deny that GGG is an employee... and when the Chief of Police asks GGG where the Delphi Bureau offices are? GGG doesn’t know, he meets Sybil in various places in D.C.... maybe there is no office? The Chief Of Police thinks GGG is lying, which removes the authorities from the equation. GGG can’t go to the police for the rest of the story, he’s on his own.
Taggert pops up again in the field with information that it’s not just 24 F101 fighter jets that are missing, there are tanks and rocket launchers and all kinds of other weapons! Enough for *someone* to start a war! Somewhere along the line Taggert asks April “Wangly diaplut?” (What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This?) and has a comic relief limerick for everything. And April keeps sending GGG to his doom, much like Eve in NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
There’s a great suspense scene when Stokely, April, and the Cowboy come to the boarding house to kill him... and he uses a 4H group as cover much like Turner used those hippie kids in the apartment building for cover after the elevator ride with Joubert in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR. One of the great scenes has April and GGG in a grain silo, he thinks she’s setting him up to be killed and pulls a gun he’s found someplace along the way... and then drops it in the corn. Um, not what a spy does. Now he’s digging through the corn for the gun and discovers... a jet fighter plane! They are shipping the planes in cargo containers of grain to the starving people of Africa! That’s when the badguys open the silo chute and try to drown them in corn!
There’s a nice conveyor belt escape, we find out who is behind the scheme (by now everyone is a suspect) and it *is* a surprise, and then we get our big action set piece at the end... that NORTH BY NORTHWEST crop duster corn field chase... but with GGG and April being chased by a harvesting machine with giant rotating blades. Can GGG and April outrun the machine?
One of the great things about this pilot episode is that everything is farm related, from those 4H girls to this harvesting machine chasing them through the corn fields. The improvised weapons GGG has to create are often farm related! Much as Jackie Chan uses whatever is at the location as a weapon, DELPHI BUREAU uses everything farm related for it’s story and scenes. This is one of those great screenwriting lessons in action: instead of a typical car chase or action scene, we get a *location specific* action scene like the harvester chasing them through the corn fields with its rotating blades.
This end harvester chase scene is great! As GGG and April run through the corn fields, holding hands, they try to out maneuver the harvester, but Stokely is an expert when it comes to driving farm equipment and turns to chase them... closer and closer and closer! When April trips on a corn stalk and goes down, the harvester is too close for GGG to help her up so he sacrifices himself: luring the harvester away from her and after him... then he stumbles in the corn field with the harvester is heading right at him! As he’s about to be run over, GGG grabs the undercarriage of the tractor and does a Yakima Canutt, hanging on for dear life and getting knocked from his place again and again by corn stalks until his next stop will be the rotating blades of the harvester! Of course, he uses his never ending knowledge to figure out an escape from this certain death.
The show does a great job of finding that line between action spy show and light comedy, much as NORTH BY NORTHWEST and CHUCK did. The cast is amazing for a TV pilot episode, every supporting actor you’ve ever seen pops up... and because there are so many names in the cast you really can’t guess who the villain is... all of these people have played villains before! Laurence Luckinbill is a great Cary Grant substitute for TV, charming and good looking enough to be the lead without being too good looking. There’s a nice rivalry between Luckinbill and Crane’s characters over women, and Crane is better looking and more self confident... making Luckinbill the obvious underdog. It’s like Chuck and Shaw in CHUCK Season 3... but Luckinbill plays his role less nervous and more just not heroic. GGG drives the cool James Bond car (a Jaguar XKE convertible) and drinks martinis and looks good in a suit... but when the shooting starts that a whole other department. Well, he wishes it were.
The cinematography is great: it looks like a big theatrical movie and has some amazing moving camera work. One shot worth noting starts with GGG in an office at the Airforce Base reading fuel consumption reports... and when he closes the ledger the camera pulls back *out a huge picture window* and follows him out a door and then down exterior stairs to a Jeep and he speeds off... all in the same shot! There are many big wide shots which are composed for the big screen rather than the small screen. Many of these MOWs and wheel shows had a theatrical release overseas, so they made them feel like a movie.
I love stories about people who use brains instead of brawn and use their knowledge to take down bad guys. That’s what Roger Thornhill and Turner and Chuck and Glenn Garth Gregory and some of my characters have in common. They are terrible in a fist fight, hate guns, but manage to use all kinds of seemingly pointless facts and stats and knowledge to win the battle. I hope Warner Archives releases the rest of THE DELPHI BUREAU so I have something to watch when I've finished binging on CHUCK! (currently finishing up Season 3...)
Warner Archive: All kinds of great vintage movies and TV shows!
From the capital came a young man…
To uncover some worms in a can…
So they con him – they frame him…
For murder they blame him…
In turn – he eludes them…
Pursues – then eschews them…
'Till he holds all the strings to the plan…
The end – more or less, Delphian!
Thanksgiving is when we get together with people we hardly know and pretend to have a good time...
A FRIEND LIKE HARRY (2000)
Directed by: Dominik Moll. Written by: Dominik Moll and Gilles Marchand. Starring: Laurent Lucas, Sergi López, Mathilde Seigner, Sophie Guillemin. Cinematography by: Matthieu Poirot-Delpech. Music by: David Whitaker.
After seeing THE GUEST I was reminded of this French film, and decided to pop WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY into the machine and watch it again. I had seen it in the cinema, bought the DVD... and it sat on my shelf in the shrink wrap ever since. The odd thing about those silly French folks is that while America seems to shun most thrillers, the French love them. One of my favorite Don Westlake non series novels, THE AX, is about the economic downturn in the USA and a mid level management guy who realizes there are a couple dozen guys applying for the same jobs that he is... everyone is out of work! Then he decides the only way to land a job is to eliminate the competition, and becomes a serial killer of downsized mid level executives. Great *American* story... but no studio in America seemed to want it, so it was made in France by none other than Oscar Winning director Costa Gavras... with French actors speaking French. Hey, things were tough all over. But why do great American thrillers end up being made in France?
HARRY is an original screenplay by Gilles Marchand and the director Dominik Moll, but it’s the kind of story that Patricia Highsmith (STRANGERS ON A TRAIN) might have written.
I'm sure we all have had someone come up to us, call us by name, talk about some shared experience... and we don't know who the hell they are. We have forgotten them, but they have not forgotten us. They were nothing in our lives, but we were everything to them. Okay, that scene happens in a highway rest stop men's room at the opening of HARRY... do you want to be recognized while you are peeing? Do you want to shake some stranger’s hand, or worse: hug them?
Michael* (Laurent Lucas) and his wife Claire (Mathilde Seigner) and their three little girls (one a perpetually crying baby) have been taking a road trip to the ramshackle country house a couple hours past the retirement community where his overbearing parents live. They have a beat up old station wagon without air conditioning... and France is in the middle of a heat wave. The kids are miserable, and so are Michael and Claire. They stop at the gas station to change the baby’s diaper and use the facilities... never thinking that Michael might run into some one he knows.
Or, pretends to remember.
It seems that Michael and Harry (Sergi López) went to high school together years ago, and Harry claims that Michael collided with him on the soccer field once and broke Harry’s front tooth. Michael remembers none of this. Harry claims they were friends way back in high school because they had so much in common, but now one is a struggling teacher with a wife and his three little (always screaming) kids and the other has inherited his father's fortune after he and his mother died in that tragic accident and drives a Mercedes sports car with a hottie named “Plum” (Sophie Guillemin) in the passenger seat. Michael has a life full of problems... and Harry believes in solving problems... permanently. Harry would like to buy dinner for Michael and his family, but Michael says he needs to get to the country house before nightfall so his kids can get to sleep at their bedtimes. Harry says he has some bottles of wine in the trunk, why not follow them to the country house and have a glass or two with them? Have you ever had someone invite themselves into your life and you just didn’t have the balls to tell them “no”?
It just keeps getting worse!
This is a great set up for a thriller because it has happened to all of us, and opens our life to potential peril when we allow some sinister stranger into our home... our lives... our family.
Basically Harry and Plum move in, sleeping in the best bedroom (because Michael wants to impress him). And Harry begins helping the struggling teacher. When the stationwagon breaks down, Harry buys them a brand new SUV. Michael tries to turn down the gift, but Harry explains ever since his parents died he has had more money than he could ever spend, so why not help out an old friend?
Because they missed a planned stop at the retirement community so that Michael’s overbearing parents could see their grand kids, his father calls and *insists* that they drive over. Michael tries to dissuade them, his father really shouldn’t be driving at night, and ends up agreeing to drive out in the new SUV and pick them up, then deliver them back to the retirement community afterwards.
When he gets there, you understand why Michael keeps his distance from his father and mother, and does not accept any gifts from them... those gifts come with *many* strings attached. His father is a manipulative ahole, a retired dentist who *insists* on giving Michael a dental exam and teeth cleaning in the spare room where he has all of his old dental equipment! This is one of those brilliant absurdist thriller scenes which help the audience feel ill at ease as they suppress their laughter at how silly (but creepy) the scene is. One of the great things about this story is that they keep finding odd things that you can relate to... that person who recognizes you but you do not recognize them, this scene where the overbearing father offers something you do not want, but you can’t really decline without hurting his feelings, and later scenes where Michael and hottie Plum meet in the bathroom and have a strangely erotic moment... it’s filled with uncomfortable scenes that just get weirder and weirder!
Michael mentions Harry, and his father remembers him! In fact, his father tells the same story about how Michael *irresponsibly* ran into Harry on the soccer field and broke his tooth and Michael’s father had to repair it for free... always cleaning up after his screw up son...
When Harry meets Michael’s parents, he realizes that they are what is holding his old friend back. They seem to go out of their way to belittle him, they offer him help (but in such a way that Michael would be forever in their debt if he accepted), and they won’t just help him financially without a bunch of strings and lectures and shaming. Harry realizes that Michael would be better off if his parents had the same sort of tragic accident that befell Harry’s parents... and makes it so! He calls Michael’s parents and says it is an emergency, they must drive out to the country house... then Harry steals a delivery van and runs them off the road, killing them.
Eventually things come to the point that Michael realizes all of his recent good fortune is due to Harry’s help... and that he has become an accomplice to Harry’s crimes. Can he let this man continue to kill people... even if it means that Michael gets everything he secretly desires? Or should he stop Harry before it’s too late?
WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY is a great thriller with the genre’s required humorous absurdity. Like STRANGERS ON A TRAIN’s rocky relationship between two men, one who may secretly love the other, HARRY takes us deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole until helping him bury a body just seems normal. An average man’s life suddenly spins out of control and he must step up to set it right... can he do that?
A couple of years ago they announced a US remake which would be directed by Kimberly Peirce with a script by Wentworth Miller, but according to a Variety story, she is no longer attached... which is too bad. After seeing Miller penned STOKER I would have lost Miller and kept Peirce. Though you can't judge a screenplay by its movie, I always worry a little about actors who write. Actors sometimes have a tunnel vision about *their* craft which results in a screenplay with good scenes that often don't add up to a story. STOKER's big problem was the script. We’ll see what happens if they ever make it.
Bill
* I've used the American spelling instead of "Michel" to avoid confusion.
The spider web fills the screen, it's Boris Karloff's THRILLER!
Season: 2, Episode: 16. Airdate: January 8, 1962.
Director: Herschel Daugherty. Writer: Robert Bloch, based on his short story. Cast: Oskar Homolka, Ron Ely, Alan Baxter, Booth Colman, Antoinette Bower. Music: Morton Stevens. Cinematography: Benjamin Kline. Producer: William Frye.
Boris Karloff’s Introduction: “I can not tell a lie. I cut it with my hatchet. A very famous quote from an even more famous gentleman. But his good father had no trouble obtaining the confession - afterall his victim was nothing more than a cherry tree. While ours? Ours was living flesh and blood. I wonder if an admission of guilt can be extracted from a chap who, as we have heard, has already been executed. Not once, not twice, but three times. Yes, my friends, Vardack the mass murderer certainly should be harmless now. Now that he’s merely a cleverly molded figure in the waxworks. Which, as it so happens, is the setting and the title of our story. A moving amidst models of monsters and murderers you will encounter some very real people. Our players. And they are: Pierre Jacquelin, Master sculptor whose wax companions include no less than fifty of the world’s most diabolical murderers, played by Oskar Homolka. His niece, Annette, beautiful, beguiling, a pleasant contrast to her sinister surroundings, played by Antoinette Bower. Colonel Bertroux, a pursuer as relentless as he is mysterious, portrayed by Martin Kosleck. Detective Hudson, a very young man in a very dangerous business, played by Ron Ely. His more seasoned colleague, Sargent Dane, who is to learn that flesh and blood murderers are much easier to capture than the other kind, enacted by Alan Baxter. And Lieutenant Baily, whose not so enviable responsibility it is to solve the mystery of the waxworks, portrayed by Booth Colman. So come, let us go into the chamber of horrors together! I’ll vouch for the fact that you’ll enjoy yourselves, and it’ll be interesting to see if you can find your way out... alone!
Synopsis: Pierre Jacquelin (Homolka) owns a traveling wax museum of killers, and shows a tour around. Each diorama shows the killer in the act. All look very lifelike... and one of the guests thinks one of the statues are moving. A pretty woman (Amy Fields) is sketching one of the killers - Vardack - who has a bloody ax, and Jacquelin notes that her sketch missed the lift in the killer’s right shoe - one leg was shorter than the other. It’s closing time and everyone leaves... except for the woman who lurks behind finishing her sketch, and is now locked in with the 50 wax killers. The wax figure of killer Vardack that she sketched begins walking towards her - great suspense! We see the feet - one shoe with the lift - as they stalk her in the dark housed of wax. Closer and closer and closer and... She gets to the doors and tries to get out...
The City Morgue: Lt. Baily (Booth Coleman) and Sgt Dane (Alan Baxter) ask the Morgue Attendant (J. Pat O’Malley) about cause of death and other clues - she was killed with the ax, and they will have to wait for the Medical Examiner to finish up with another customer before they can get details. There’s a great bit here where the Morgue Attendant opens one of the refrigerated drawers with a dead body and pulls out his lunch - hey, just keeping it cold! Lots of witty lines.
Police Station: The Detectives look over the victim’s persona; effects... and the sketch pad. The drawing of the man with the ax... her killer? Did she know her killer? And why would he *pose* with the murder weapon? They can’t identify the man in the sketch, so Sgt Dane goes to the Waxworks to interview Jacquelin.
Waxworks: Sgt Dane shows the sketch to Jacquelin and ask if he has ever seen this man. He has... and leads the cop to the diorama of the ax murderer. What? Jacquelin expects them to believe that a wax dummy murdered the girl? That’s crazy! There are 50 wax murderers in the waxworks, Jacquelin knows a lot about murder. Dane asks if Jacquelin has an alibi for the time of death, and his niece steps out of the shadows and says they were working on a new exhibit. When Jacqueline goes to show a group around the waxworks, Sgt Dane question his pretty niece Annette (Antoinette Bower)..
Dane asks if he can search the studio - and Annette allows him to poke around. There is a vat of wax, a work bench, all kinds of wax body parts - it’s spooky as heck! Dane wants to open a closed door, Annette tries to stop him... too late! The Detective opens the closet door and there is a *man* inside. An old bearded man! And he falls out - right at the Detective! Who catches him. Annette moves in to help - it’s a wax dummy. The very one that Jacquelin was working on last night. This is a great shock moment.
After he is satisfied that Jacquelin isn’t the killer, Sgt Dane asks if he can buy Jacquelin dinner and they walk down the foggy street at night... when they hear the roar of a car engine. The car zooms right at them - hitting and killing Sgt Dane! Behind the wheel of the car: The wax dummy that was in the closet!
After Jacquelin makes her statement at the police station, handsome young Detective Hudson takes her home. Meanwhile, Detective Baily has a theory - what if the killer is after Annette? He mistook the artist girl for Annette, and then the car was trying to kill her instead of Sgt, Dane.
As Hudson walks her home, a man follows them in the shadows. They stop at a Chinese restaurant for dinner, and afterwards each lies about what their fortune cookie says. Annette says it reads “Don’t stay out to late on the first date” - when it really says “Beware of the dark stranger.”
Just when they may be about to kiss, the man who was following steps out of the shadows with a gun! He is Colonel Bertroux (Martin Kosleck) - and Detective Baily and Jacquelin blast out of the waxworks doors and tackle him... arresting him for both murders.
Except he’s not the killer - he’s a French detective who has been tracking a serial killer. This serial killer seems to strike wherever the waxworks sets up shop. Every city in Europe where the exhibition set up camp was plagued with killings. Bertroux’s investigation has found no evidence against Jacquelin nor Annette... He believes the wax figures may be doing the killings. The M.O.s for all of the killings have matched the 50 wax figure’s killings. Bertroux has the crazy idea that the wax figures can come to life, and rattles off a series of legends and myths about statues coming to life. He’s wacky!
But Sgt, Dane was killed by a car - none of the wax killers used an automobile. Bertroux says there was a killer who murdered with a car... and the name is the same name as the new wax figure that was in the closet!
The spooky waxworks at night. Pounding at the door. Annette opens the door - to Colonel Bertroux, who has a crazy theory that Jacquelin is stealing hairs from the killers when he makes his death masks and is using black magic to bring them to life. Dude be crazy! He wants to confront Jacquelin, breaks down the bedroom door and pulls back the covers... exposing a wax figure in Jacquelin’s bed. What?
Then Bertroux hears footsteps coming closer. The hook handed killer wax figure enters the room, raises his hook... and kills Bertroux! The wax figures ARE alive!
Lt Baily and Detective Hudson pound on the door of the waxworks - they were following Bertroux. They break down the door and enter the dark, spooky waxworks - filled with 50 wax killers! They pass a wax killer with a huge butcher knife poised to stab a woman - he looks so real! Then Baily realizes that Hudson is no longer behind him, and re-traces his steps. This time the wax killer’s hand is empty - no butcher knife. The knife is in dead Hudson’s back!
A door pops open behind Baily, he spins - it’s Jacquelin. With Bertroux’s gun. Bertroux is in the bubbling caldron of wax in the workshop. Baily says he went through Bertroux’s files before coming here - evidence of murders throughout Europe, wherever the traveling Waxworks was. Baily thinks that the murders were not committed by wax figures, but by a man who disguised himself as those wax figures: Jacquelin.
They wrestle for the gun, Baily manages to grab it. Asks where Jacquein’s niece is. “I have no niece... she is my wife.” Baily opens a closet door and there is Annette... except she’s freakin’ ancient! And a wax figure. You see, she was a murderer witch who was executed and Jacquelin used black magic to bring here back - stole her body and molded wax over her dead form - a wax figure that comes alive. He needs fresh blood to keep her alive - hence the victims. Obviously he’s crazy. He takes a candle to illuminate her face... then tries to grab Baily’s gun. In the struggle Jacquelin is killed and the candle lights the wax figure of Annette and she burns - exposing a skull and skeleton underneath!
Jacquelin wasn’t crazy - Annette was really a wax figure come to life!
Review: This is a great creepy episode, with lots of suspense and twists... Daugherty was one of the “staff directors” and sometimes his episodes are great and sometimes they seem rushed for time (it’s TV, and you have to shoot the episode in time for it to air or there will just be a test pattern). But I wonder how much the writer ended up part of that equation? Robert Bloch is one of mt favorite horror writers, and his work was frequently adapted for THRILLER and often - like in this case - by his own hand. I learned a lot about creating dread and terror by reading his stories, and I assume that he carried those techniques over into his teleplays. If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage! How many of the scary episodes are due to suspense scenes being in the screenplay, so that they were scheduled into the shoot? That opening scene where the wax killer stalks the woman trapped in the waxworks after closing could have just been: “Vardack kills her” in the script, and scheduled as a couple of seconds of screen time - with only a few minutes to shoot. But if it had been written out as a suspense scene, they would have scheduled more time to shoot it and there would have been time to get all of those creepy shots. Could that be the reason why the same director has different results?
Oskar Homolka was a silent star in Austria back in 1926 who became one of Hitchcock’s great villains ten years later in SABOTAGE, and spent 50 years in the business playing all kinds of great roles including Russian Colonel Stok in a couple of the Harry Palmer movies. He was one of those dependable character actors who could show up for work and knock it our of the park. He’s so charming, here, that you know why he has evaded the police for so long.
Ron Ely is impossibly young in this episode. A few years later he would play Tarzan, and so far he is the only one to play Doc Savage on film. Antoinette Bower began her career in a TV version of Poe’s TELLTALE HEART and has had a huge TV career including playing Berlin Betty on HOGAN’S HEROES and played the principal’s wife in PROM NIGHT... and is still with us. Martin Kosleck had a career playing Nazis in movies and on TV (HOGAN’S HEROES), but I know him as the homeless guy sleeping in the windmill in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. Alan Baxter was in Hitchcock’s SABOTEUR.
The story is a semi reworking of Bloch’s YOURS TRULY JACK THE RIPPER with a series of murders that fallow the pattern of previous murders and the driven expert from across the pond who aids the police in their investigation... but also is one of the prime suspects. But the whole things gets a fresh coat of paint and a completely different concept. Instead of Jack The Ripper, we get the very creepy idea of house of wax killers coming to life. Instead of the victims being women and that trip to a 60s strip club, most of the victims are men and we focus on the super creepy house of wax at night. So Bloch took the skeleton of the story and jettisoned everything else, creating a completely new story. I find this stuff interesting. If you are making a living writing and selling short stories, you have to keep turning them out! How do you keep that up? One of the way Lester Dent (Doc Savage) managed to write a novel (or two) a month was to have a handful of story patterns - or formulas - that he could use as the skeleton. You can read all of those books back to back and they seem like completely different stories because the details are different. Here, Jack The Ripper being split up into the 50 wax killers in the house of wax - and the completely different resolution - make it a completely new story. All of the scenes are different. The skeleton is similar.
After last week’s crime story disguised as a horror story (the dream sequence opening), we’re back to real horror - and this is a fun, creepy episode! Next week - a period episode about witches!
ARMORED CAR ROBBERY (1950)
Directed by: Richard Fleischer. Written by: Earl Felton and Gerald Drayson Adams. Starring: Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, William Talman, Don McGuire, Steve Brodie, Gene Evans. Produced by: Herman Schlom. Cinematography by: Guy Roe Music by: C. Bakaleinikoff.
A couple of years ago at Noir City Hollywood they showed a restored version of a film called ARMORED CAR ROBBERY which featured the director and star of NARROW MARGIN, plus - to keep my movie connection string at the time going - William Talman from PERRY MASON. Afterwards I watched one of the FALCON movies that co-starred Barbara Hale who played Della Street. The “movie connection string” is a strange thing that I noticed happening by accident - I would see a film starring someone, and the very next film I saw would also star them... or maybe it would be movies that shared the same character actor in a supporting role. But random movies would have connections, and ARMORED CAR ROBBERY seemed to be the link between two other films due to Talman. But the film was amazing, so besides the random connection between films, it’s well worth exploring.
ARMORED CAR is like a 1950s version of Michael Mann’s HEAT, including a big end chase and shootout which takes place at LAX airport... probably before those letters meant anything. It packs a lot of story into a its brief running time and has plenty of twists and turns! One of those “lost” crime films that deserves to be discovered... especially by fans on the Mann movie.
Talman plays master criminal Dave Purvis who has never been caught because he is ultra cautious - he cuts the labels out of all of his clothes and meticulously plans his heists. He has no criminal record, not even a parking ticket. Perfectly clean as far as the police are concerned - almost a ghost. He changes motels every night - harder for the police to find him. He has contingency plans for every possible thing that can go wrong, and is ready to pull off the big one: He's going to knock over an armored truck at a baseball stadium - over half a million bucks.
The movie opens at Los Angeles City Hall’s police dispatch division as someone calls in a robbery in progress at Wrigley Field baseball stadium, and - because director Richard Fliescher’s previous film, TRAPPED, was a procedural about the Treasury Department, here we also get a procedural feel - and go from the emergency operator and follow the information card on a conveyor belt to the dispatchers, who call patrol cars and detectives... Including our lead Lt. Jim Cordell (the always gruff Charles McGraw) and his partner Lt. Philips (James Flavin).
At the baseball stadium, Purvis waits with a stopwatch, timing the police response time. When Cordell and Philips arrive, Purvis studies them - his opponents - and then hops in a cab, headed to a strip club. Cordell tells Philips that this is just another false alarm - the city has been getting a lot of them over the past week... they don’t know that these have all been part of Purvis’ “study” to find the best place to hit the armored truck. Like in HEAT - this film keeps putting these two opponents at the same location - it’s all about this cop and this crook.
At the Strip Club, Yvonne LeDoux (Adele Jergens) is dancing on stage as Benny McBride (Douglas Fowley) watches... and Purvis sits next to him. Yvonne is Benny’s estranged wife, and he wants to get back with her... but she is seeing some other guy.
Benny needs money to win her back, so that makes him perfect for Purvis’ heist team. McBride brings along hot-headed get away driver Al Mapes (Steve Brodie - Mitchum’s double crossing partner in OUT OF THE PAST and the father of the director of my TREACHEROUS film) and another stick up artist Ace Foster (Gene Evens - from Sam Fuller’s STEEL HELMET). Purvis gives McBride his new phone number at his next motel, tells him to memorize it - never write things down. But as soon as Purvis leaves, McBride writes the number down in a matchbook. This is a story about intelligent people who plan ahead - and McBride is a loser.
Twist: That other dude who is sleeping with Yvonne the stripper? McBride’s estranged wife? Purvis. Who plans to kill McBride... maybe during the robbery. He is stealing the cash from an armored truck, and stealing his partner’s wife! And part of that plan involves “accidentally” shooting his partner. We are 7 minutes into the film, and all of this has happened! This movie doesn’t have any slow spots!
The planning scene is cool - the rolling window shade in Purvis old hotel room has the plans and map drawn on it, he pulls it down and the heist team goes over the plan. The reason for taking the armored car at the baseball field is that it’s one of the last stops - it’ll be loaded down with cash - and the police response time was slowest there. They have 3 minutes to pull the heist - if there’s money left on the truck they leave it. The plan comes before the money - what good is an extra thousand bucks if the police catch you... or kill you? You must be able to leave any extra cash behind, the same way that Purvis is willing to leave all of his clothes behind in the room if the cops knock on the door.
(Doesn't DeNiro talk about this in HEAT?)
(12:00 minutes into the movie.) The Robbery: The team is dressed like laborers. Mapes has the getaway car across the street idling. Ace pulls up directly behind the armored truck in an old clunker which stalls. Purvis and McBride go over to see if they can help. The two Armored Guards return from the baseball stadium with bags of money and unlock the back doors of the armored truck...
Wham! Ace sets off a smoke grenade under the hood of the clunker which covers the back of the armored truck in dense fog. The team puts on gas masks, knock out the guards and start transferring bags of money into the getaway car as Purvis starts his stop watch.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Someone calls the police. The card goes down the conveyor belt...
But Cordell and Philips are cruising in their car nearby - another false alarm? They get to the baseball stadium long before the three minutes are up, and there’s a big street shoot out that begins around 14:40 minute mark. (Like the shoot out after the bank robbery in HEAT.)
Purvis shoots Philips, Cordell shoots McBride... saving Purvis the trouble. But McBride is still alive - wounded. The robbers climb into the getaway car and Mapes speeds off. Cordell jumps into his unmarked car and roars after them.
We get a great car chase and moving shoot out through the streets of Los Angeles. Purvis shatters the rear window of their getaway car and shoves his pistol through the hole, firing at Cordell. Mapes pulls around a truck backing up and Cordell isn’t as lucky - crashing his police car. He immediately calls in the make and model and license number and an ambulance for his partner... and we see the inner workings of the police department again as they handle the information.
Hospital: Philips is dead. Cordell talks to the widow (Anne Nagel), and there’s a big emotional scene about how they were both Philips’ partners - day and night.
Then Cordell meets his new partner, rookie detective Danny Ryan (Don McGuire) and he’s no Philips. Just some punk kid who got promoted. Nobody does gruff like McGraw - he has the least sympathetic delivery of any actor in crime films and makes Clint Eastwood seem like a soap opera star. This is what makes him perfect for movies like this and ROADBLOCK because you don’t need to establish that he doesn’t give a damn about his new partner and you don’t need to have a long scene about how much he cared about Philips - he can speak *one* line about how Philips was his partner and it’s so different from his gruff default mode that it’s emotional.
Cordell and Ryan hear a radio report that the robbers dumped the getaway car under a bridge, and they drive out to the scene where a CSI Team is searching for clues. Smudged prints, gas masks and painter’s clothes - no clues. But somebody lost a lot of blood, just not enough to make Cordell happy. They are doing plaster molds of the tire prints of the new car they have switched to. Again, the procedural elements in this movie are great - this was decades before CSI hit CBS, but we get to see how a crime scene is actually processed for clues and information.
Meanwhile, McBride is bleeding like crazy in the new car... and ahead there’s a roadblock. All of the robbers are dressed in hard hats and work clothes - and look like a bunch of guys going to work at the docks. Mapes gets nervous about the road block ahead and tries to turn around, but a motorcycle cop cuts them off - they must go through the police checkpoint. This requires that McBride act as if he isn’t bleeding to death, and that they cover up the blood. All kinds of suspense in this scene as McBride keeps passing out... and a cop searches the interior of the car - around the bleeding McBride, then they can’t get the car to start for a very tense moment.
But they get through the checkpoint and are home free...
When one of the cops notices there’s blood on his leg. Where did that come from?
A motorcycle cop and a pair in a police car chase after the robbers... but the robbers evade them with some great driving by Mapes. One of the great things about this movie is that they probably didn’t have the money for big shoot outs and big car chases - it was a B crime movie, so they focus on suspense (which is basically free) and just when you think that the robbers have gotten away - TWIST - something goes wrong and we get a short piece of (low cost) action. There are no slow spots - it’s densely plotted and manages to uses suspense to keep it exciting without blowing the budget.
Now the police have a new search area - the harbor area - and Cordell and Ryan head to that division’s police station... where the Insurance Guy for the Armored Car Company shows up and wants to help... and Cordell tells him to get the heck out of his sight. He’s such a teddy bear.
Meanwhile the robbers are hiding in a dockside warehouse... where McBride realizes that he is dying. Purvis refuses to get him a doctor, and McBride pulls a gun - so Purvis kills him. Brutal. He shoots a dying man. If you thought Cordell was basically emotionless, Purvis tops him in this scene. What’s cool here is that McBride was supposed to be killed in the robbery, but by keeping him alive (and bleeding) the story uses him to create suspense and this brutal scene.
Ace puts the body in their car and drives it off the edge of the pier while Mapes stays with Purvis - afraid of a double cross. A guy who would kill a dying man would also just take off with the money. Purvis tells Mapes that McBride’s wife gets McBride’s cut... then beats up Mapes. Just for fun. Actually, I don’t think Purvis does anything for fun - this was to show Mapes who is the Alpha Male - so that Mapes doesn’t double cross him later. Everything with Purvis is calculated.
(31:30) Bad luck, as a pair of patrolling cops come upon the sinking car with McBride’s corpse in it moments before it’s about to vanish under water. They call it into dispatch, and Cordell and Ryan overhear it on the radio and ask for the make and model of the sinking car... it matches the basic information they have from the tire prints. What are the odds?
At the pier, Cordell and Ryan check the tire tracks against their plaster cast of the new getaway car - and it’s a perfect match. Ryan drives and Cordell stands on the running board of their unmarked car and they follow the tire tracks through the dark, spooky warehouse area. What makes this great is Cordell hanging onto the outside of the unmarked police car as it creeps through the industrial alleys - keeping his eyes on the tire tracks. It seems dangerous and like an action scene... and is an original way to “follow the trail” to find the badguys.
Another great HEAT type moment as Purvis, Ace and Mapes leave their hide out... and almost bump into Cordell and Ryan! They hide behind some equipment. And there’s a tense scene as Cordell, Ryan and the uniform cops search the area where Purvis and the robbers are hiding - it’s like a game of hide and seek. Purvis and the robbers must be super quiet as they move from spot to spot moments before Cordell and the cops moves to search the spot where they just were. Another great scene that builds suspense on a low budget - lots of close calls!
Purvis gets his gun ready and tells the others that they have to make a run for it - one at a time - to the boat at the next pier that is waiting to take them to Mexico. Mapes goes first and gets to the boat, but Ace loses his footing as he runs and trips - making a sound loud enough to attract Cordell and the cops! They chase after Ace and shoot him... Mapes hears the shots, starts the boat and gets the hell out of there. Cordell and the cops race to the pier and shoot at the boat, but it gets away. While they are shooting at the boat, Purvis sneaks away with the suitcase full of cash from the robbery. Was this his plan all along?
(36:00) A newspaper fills the screen, the robbery is the headline. When the newspaper vendor lowers the paper it exposes the Strip Club... as Yvonne leaves work. Great shot! We follow her into an all night diner, where she spots... Purvis. She heads to a phone booth on one side of the diner, Purvis heads to a phone booth on the other side of the diner. “How does it feel to be a free woman?” he asks her. “Just the same.” They arrange to meet at the new Motel - she has memorized all of the information that her now-dead husband couldn’t remember. She smiles at him through the phone booth window as she leaves - it’s a promise of things to come.
Valley Motor Court Motel. Yvonne and Purvis lock lips, then he pops open the suitcase full of stolen money. He warns her that due to her husband’s untimely death, the police will show up to question her - and coaches her on how to act. Also says that they can not see each other until it’s time for them to split the country.
(40:00) Cordell and Ryan look over McBride’s rap sheet - no shortage of arrests and convictions. Ace’s rap sheet - the same. And both men knew another convicted armed robbery get away driver named Mapes - and they look at his rap sheet. That’s 3 out of the 4 gang members, and Mapes and the unknown suspect are in the wind... and Cordell (being a complete hard ass) tells Ryan that these three are just stupid stick up men and Ryan shouldn’t care about them. It’s the Fourth Man who is important. He was the planner. He is the man they need to get off the street.
At McBride’s Apartment - while waiting for the fingerprint crew to show up - Cordell and Ryan do a search and question the landlady, who says that McBride had three friends over a couple of times during the last week. They find a framed photo of Yvonne and Ryan volunteers to check it out with modeling and talent agencies. She’s hot and Ryan *does* have time for women in his life. Cordell is poking around and notices something - asks the landlady what happened to the window shade? Stolen? That’s odd. Then Cordell finds the matchbook with Purvis’ new phone number. He dials the number... “Valley Motor Court.”
Valley Motor Court Motel. Cordell and Ryan drive up and go into the manager’s office...
As Purvis packs in his room, ready to go to the next place. He looks out the window and sees the unmarked car!
The Manager leads the Detectives to Purvis’ room!
Purvis grabs the suitcase full of money and hops out the back window just as the Manager knocks at the door!
Cordell tells the Manager to use his pass key. They enter the motel room and Cordell sees all of the packed clothes.
Purvis tries to get away, but Ryan is next to the unmarked car... blocking the exit. Purvis is trapped! He pulls out his gun and hides behind a car parked in a carport, just as Cordell and the Manager step out of the room - only a few feel away!
Purvis waits until Cordell goes back inside to continue searching the motel room and then slips away... leaving everything he owns behind, except for the money.
Another very tense suspense scene where Cordell and Purvis are within spitting distance of each other, which makes us focus on the HEAT-like cop vs. robber element of the story. It’s these two men in a chess match using guns - each trying to outsmart the other. Lots of tension in a scene with guns but no gunplay... just the threat of a shoot out erupting if Cordell spots Purvis.
Back at the police station: The CSI Lab Guy tells Cordell the height, weight, and other information about Purvis from the clothes they found in his room - and the hair on his comb that was left behind. There’s also some lipstick on one of the shirts - and it’s analyzed. A theatrical brand not available in retail stores. They now have a good description of the Fourth Man. That’s when Ryan calls with the name of the dame in the picture - Yvonne, a stripper (“You ought to see her in her work clothes”) and she’s McBride’s wife... er, widow. Cordell wonders if the theatrical lipstick may have come from the stripper.
(46:45) The Strip Club. Cordell and Ryan go to question Yvonne... but she’s working. “There she is, with bells on.” “Very few bells.” They decide to watch the show until she’s free... Ryan enjoys watching, Cordell thinks this is just a waste of time.
Outside, a man’s silhouette is looking at the poster of Yvonne. Purvis? No, Mapes! He enters the club... walking right past Cordell and Ryan to find a seat up front.
Cordell and Ryan spot Mapes and split up in order to box him in. Suspense builds as Cordell gets to Mape’s row and sits to his right... and Ryan sits to his left. Mapes knows something is up and tries to split, but Ryan pulls down his coat - binding his arms, and Cordell grabs Mapes’ gun from the shoulder holster.
At the police station: They question Mapes... Cordell wants him to fry for killing Philips. They bring in one of the Armored Truck Guards who I.D.s Mapes as the getaway driver. Oh, and they have his fingerprints from McBride’s apartment (more CSI procedural authenticity - in crime fiction the procedural subgenre is all about the actual procedures used in solving crimes - from CSI’s blood spatter charts to Ed McBain’s novels filled with police reports and crime scene sketches). Mapes says he was the getaway driver, but didn’t kill Philips - that was Dave Purvis. The Fourth Man. Also Yvonne’s boyfriend... why else would he brutally kill McBride but want to give money to the widow? But Mapes has no idea how to find Purvis. He has no convictions, no arrests, nothing. Purvis is a ghost - his name might not even be Purvis, who knows?
Ryan follows Yvonne in hopes that she leads them to Purvis.
They bug her dressing room at the strip club.
They bug her car.
(53:00) The Strip Club. Ryan reports to Cordell: “She comes in, hangs up her coat, puts on her make up, takes off her clothes.”
“How do you know that?”
“The zipper makes a noise.”
Then they overhear her telling the club owner that she is quitting... as of tonight. They are going to lose her! So Cordell sends Ryan undercover as Mapes to press Yvonne to contact Purvis so that he can get his cut. Has she ever met Mapes? What if she knows what he looks like? (This is a great suspense builder - it turns a meeting into a potential for danger.) “What do we got to lose? Only me.” Cordell is worried that the kid might suffer the same fate as his previous partner, who Purvis killed... but he doesn’t show it. What might be a whole scene in some other movie is just a glance from Charles McGraw that tells us he cares about the kid.
(55:30) In that all night diner: Yvonne sits alone at a table... and Ryan sits next to her, says he’s a friend of Dave Purvis... named Mapes. Ryan plays the role - roughing her up a little. Demanding that she get in touch with Purvis so that he can get his cut of the dough. Really convincing.
But guess who walks through the doors?
Purvis.
Like DeNiro’s character in HEAT who lives by: "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner" - and then can’t leave without Amy Brenneman’s bookstore clerk, Purvis leaves all of his clothes in the motel room... but can’t leave Yvonne.
Purvis goes to the phone booth on one side of the diner - as he did before. Yvonne tells Ryan that she will call Purvis so that he can get his money, and goes to the phone booth on the other side of the diner. Ryan insists on standing outside the phone booth and listening in, so that she can’t double cross him. Great suspense because we know that Purvis has seen Ryan and knows that he isn’t Mapes. Purvis says on the phone, “That guy’s not Mapes, it’s a cop.” Will she show it and blow it? She keeps her head. He tells her to stall him until he can get away, then she should run out the back door - there may be cops out front. She keeps talking, even though Purvis has hung up and left the diner.
She hangs up and tells Ryan that Purvis wants to talk to him. When Ryan gets into the phone booth next to her, she slams him, closes the door trapping him inside, and runs out the back door.
There’s a foot chase outside as she runs to her car, but Ryan catches up with her. Catches her. Prevents her from escaping. Good news!
Then Purvis jams a gun in Ryan’s back. Bad news!
Purvis takes Ryan’s gun and tells him to get into the front passenger seat. Yvonne gets behind the wheel, Purvis sits in the backseat behind Ryan - keeping his gun jammed against the cop’s neck.
In front of the diner, Cordell and another cop hear Yvonne’s car start up... and Cordell gets in the unmarked car with the receiver and they follow. They hear Ryan ask Purvis where they are going... and Cordell and the other cop follow after Ryan mentions the traffic on Figeroua Street.
Ryan is doing a great job of slipping in the street names so that Cordell can follow, but Purvis doesn’t trust Ryan - knocks him unconscious - and decides to find another car - the police know what Yvonne’s car looks like.
Cordell has lost them... and maybe gotten Ryan killed.
They pull into a lumber yard and Purvis and Yvonne get out of the car. Purvis tells her to find a cab - they are going to the Los Angeles airport where he has a plane chartered. Ryan hears all of this - he is not really unconscious. He waits until Purvis and Yvonne aren’t looking and then Ryan tries to run... but Purvis shoots him in the back! As Purvis gets ready to shoot Ryan in the head to finish him off... a police car creeps by a street away. Purvis can’t shoot without attracting attention... so he and Yvonne run. Find a cab, and head to the airport.
One of the things I like about how this story works is that things go wrong - which creates suspense and plot twists. Ryan would be dead if it weren’t for that police car creeping past. The police car isn’t some random accident - they are searching for Yvonne’s car in this area. But every time either Cordell or Purvis gets a step ahead, something goes wrong and the balance changes. Nothing ever goes wrong because a character is stupid and makes a mistake, these two men are experts at their jobs. It’s the things that they can’t control that go wrong.
Ryan - dying - crawls back to the car, climbs inside, gets next to the bug and says his name and location - the lumber yard. Cordell hears it and they head to the lumber yard...
They enter the lumber yard with guns drawn - they don’t know if Purvis is waiting for them, if this is a trap. Then they spot Ryan unconscious in the car and Cordell runs to him - and speaks to him softly, gently cradling him. McGraw still sounds as if he was gargling with gravel between takes, but just by not barking orders he sounds more emotional. Ryan tells him that Purvis and the girl have gone to the airport, where they have a chartered plane.
Cordell calls an ambulance for Ryan and then gets in his car and races to the airport. Just like Pacino in HEAT - someone he cares about may be heading to the hospital, but the crook is getting away! He has priorities. He radios in to have all private planes kept on the ground.
Purvis and Yvonne get into the private plane, the engines fire up, and they head to the runway... when the tower radios them to stay put. Purvis pulls his gun and tells the pilot that he only takes order from Purvis. The plane gets back on the runway - ready to take off. But the tower radios that there is another plane *landing* on that runway! The pilot stops the plane at the end of the runway... and then they hear the police sirens.
Cordell has arrived.
Purvis grabs the suitcase full of money and bails out of the plane, running like crazy down the runway.
Cordell rolls out of his police car and fires at him - and Purvis returns fire... then keeps running down the runway.
Where that plane that is landing runs over him and smashes him flat - busting open the suitcase full of money so that all of the cash flutters in the wind.
We end with Cordell visiting Ryan at the hospital, and the two men have become friends and partners.
ARMORED CAR ROBBERY is like a predecessor for Mann’s HEAT, and I wonder if he saw it before he did his TV movie L.A. TAKEDOWN (1989) - which HEAT is almost a remake of. Though the print of ARMORED CAR ROBBERY was a restored version, heck - these are the kinds of movies that I used to watch on the Late Late Movie at 1am, and maybe Michael Mann did, too. These are so many parallels that it seems impossible that he hadn’t seen it.
But even without the HEAT parallels, this film is a great little crime flick with a cat and mouse game between McGraw and Tallman through Los Angeles that brings to the surface how each treats their partners, with lots of great procedural stuff on both sides, from planting bugs and doing tire casts and showing how a 911 call (yeah, it wasn't called that at the time) goes from operator to dispatcher; to methods for crooks to contact each other and how to get past police road blocks. Oh, and there's a stripper! We will probably look at some more films from this director in the future, because he not only mad a bunch of great low budget crime films in the 50s, he directed FANTASTIC VOYAGE and 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and MR. MAJESTYK and SOYLENT GREEN and CONAN THE DESTROYER. The most amazing career for a director you may never have heard of!
