Panic in the Streets (1950)

I'm unrolling something I've wanted to do for some time now: Noirvember. I've loved film noir ever since I discovered the Maltese Falcon (the book) in high school, and have wanted to do a month specifically dedicated to it for a while, especially as an excuse to discuss lesser-known noir. So here we are.

Does an outbreak of plague belong in film noir? Offhand, I'd say no, but Elia Kazan proved me wrong with 1950's Panic in the Streets.

Dockside New Orleans. A poker game turns sour when one of the players, a recently arrived illegal immigrant, starts acting sick and leaves suddenly. His cousin tries to calm him down, but Blackie (Jack Palance in his first movie role) and his toadie Raymond Fitch (Zero Mostel in his second movie role) take issue with that and try to get their money back. One dead john doe later, they do, and dump his body into the harbor, where it washes up the next day for the police to find.

Except the autopsy reveals he was carrying pneumonic plague (a real version of the plague that infects the lungs rather than the lymph nodes). With no identity, no leads and a big port city to incubate it, Lt. Commander Clint Reed of the US Public Health Service (Richard Widmark), has three days to prevent an outbreak that could ravage the country. Along the way he butts heads with Police Captain Tom Warren (Paul Douglas) and strains his relationship with his wife, Nancy (Barbara Bel Geddes).

This was Kazan's last film noir before moving onto bigger pictures (his next movie would be A Streetcar Named Desire) and it shows a confident, technically adept hand behind the camera. The action sequences are few, but the ones that are there are excellently executed in prime noir style.

The middle bogs down a little bit, but there's a constant tension as the stress takes its toll on Dr. Reed as he tries to convince both government officials and simple dockworkers of the seriousness of the threat.

Panic in the Streets is a good film well executed. I'm not sure I'd put it in my film noir top ten, but I definitely enjoyed it more than Streetcar.

Recommended.

“You misjudged our men. Don't misjudge our women.”

The Crimson Pirate is a 1952 swashbuckler from director Robert Siodmak and starring Burt Lancaster. Siodmak was one of many German directors who fled the Nazis in the 1930s and made a name for himself as an excellent thriller director. Lancaster had come up from a circus acrobat background and only started acting after WWII.

The plot revolves around pirate captain Vallo (Lancaster) a freewheeling corsair with a fondness for red clothing who cleverly captures a ship carrying Baron José Gruda (Leslie Bradley), a highly placed member of the King's court (The king is never named, nor is the kingdom, but most of the named characters imply Spanish descent, even if everybody speaks with English or Transatlantic accents.) Gruda cuts a deal with Vallo. The pirate will be handsomely paid if he can capture rebel leader El Libre.

Naturally, things don't go as planned and Vallo and his First Mate Ojo (Nick Cravat) get caught up in mutiny, chase sequences, a beautiful rebel woman named Consuelo (Eva Bartok) whom Vallo falls in love with, and an eccentric professor, Elihu Prudence (James Hayter). All of that adds up the ADVENTURE. Its also got a young Christopher Lee in a minor role as one of the King's officers.

There's a lot to recommend about this movie. The Mediterranean locations standing in for the Caribbean look great in Technicolor and the action moves at an incredible clip that is sadly missing from most modern action films. There aren't a lot of swordfights in the film and the stunt choreography goes for physical running, jumping, climbing, tumbling and so on. More people get hit with belaying pins (size: S, type: Bludgeoning, 1d3 damage) than swords.* For an example of the kind of gags in this, there's a pirate with a peg leg who gets stuck during a fight, gets one of the King's men to help get it free, clobbers the guy, and in his glee, he immediately gets stuck again. Its an old gag, but damn if it isn't executed well.

It helps that even pushing 40, Lancaster was in phenomenal physical shape and his best friend and fellow circus veteran Nick Cravat had an incredible sense of timing for physical comedy and was equally as fit. Cravat is great in this, and doesn't speak a single line. Apparently his Brooklyn accent was too strong to make sense in a 17^th Century Pirate Adventure, so he acts as a kind of Teller for Lancaster's commanding Penn. The two made nine films together.

Looking up the film, the original screenplay was a serious pirate movie by Waldo Salt, who was on the Hollywood blacklist for, well, being an actual member of the American Communist Party. Robert Siodmak (who was the brother of The Wolf Man screenwriter Curt Siodmak. Robert was the better director of the two.) apparently turned it into an all-ages comedy adventure. Though there's a bit more going on under the hood. Lancaster, a proud leftist, included anti-authoritarian themes and even the “Crimson Pirate” himself is a kind of nod to the Red Scare of the era.

So technically, yes, it IS liberal message fiction, but it happens to well handled because none of those little nods get in the way of the universal themes of heroism, freedom, honor and love that the movie is filled to the brim with.

Its remarkable how amenable audiences can be to your ideas when you don't ram them down their throats.

The Crimson Pirate is unabashedly light, airy fun. Its a bit sillier than, say, Errol Flynn's pirate masterpieces, and a bit more simplistic, but its a straightforward tale of love and redemption and freedom. What's not to like about that?

Absolutely recommended.

*I always wondered what the hell belaying pins were in my old AD&D Arms & Equipment Guide and why they merited inclusion among legitimate weapons. Now I'm pretty sure it was movies like this. 

“And if you were a man, baby, I’d knock your teeth out.”

So movies have taught me that your average 1950s teenagers were all in their 30s and as a course of habit always getting into every kind of convoluted predicament imaginable. Case in point: Daddy-O from 1958.

Plot

It starts with Phil (Dick Contino) driving a truck and being cut off by a curvy blonde in a Thunderbird, and he runs her off the road. Her name’s Jana “Jan” Ryan (Sandra Giles), and they argue so much that its obvious they end up together. They meet again at a restaurant/bar where Phil, “Daddy-O” to his friends, sings to the crowd on occasion. One of Phil’s friends, Sonny, is in a sullen and rather creepy mood (see, its ironic because his disposition doesn’t match his name, which...eh, you get the idea). Sonny’s in bad with a fat man named Sidney Chillis, sort of a cross between Orson Wells wand Sidney Greenstreet (played by Bruno VeSota). Chillis is obviously evil, and even has a slack-jawed henchman wearing coke bottle glasses. His name’s Bruce Green (Jack McClure) and he runs a gym and he’s incredibly unintimidating.

Whoo, things are getting complicated. Jan meets Phil again at the restaurant and challenges him to a race. Loser has to buy pizza. They get separated during the race and independently, Sonny was run off the road by Chillis and Bruce and died. The police think Phil did it through reckless driving, but his car doesn’t show any damage from a hit & run. Still, Phil’s license is revoked for other traffic violations because reasons. Phil suspects Jan, but she didn’t do it. Together they go into junior detective mode and track Sonny’s trail to Chillis and Bruce. Chillis offers Phil a job as a singer and errand-boy for his new club the Hi-Note, and Phil accepts, getting a fake ID and a new car. Phil also takes a codename (which is just his performing nickname) for his shady deliveries. Complicated story simplified, Chillis is using Phil to run dope for him while Phil tries to figure out the cause of Sonny’s death. Basically it leads to a goofy climactic fight scene in a basement filled with wine racks.

Characters

Contino is affable enough as Phil, though in a somewhat bland way. Phil gives the impression of being a decent guy who doesn’t think things through before acting. His song, “Rock Candy Baby” is kind of bad, but also just catchy enough for the refrain to worm its way into your head and remind you how bad it is every now and then.

Jan is spunky and shoots her mouth off a lot in the beginning. She’s also a reckless driver. Then she morphs into a love interest/sidekick for Phil and the two have a brief falling out when Phil starts palling around with Chillis’s secretary for a little bit.

Bruce Green is, again, not an imposing henchman. The absurdly thick glasses lead to that perpetual squinty-look. You know, the kind where the nose scrunches up and the mouth hangs open a bit. Bruce’s face is like that the ENTIRE MOVIE.

Sidney Chillis is, oddly enough, the most interesting character. He’s smug and clearly crooked, but he’s also a really classy and erudite guy. He gives Phil two jobs doing what he likes (singing and driving), provides him a car, sets him up with a fake ID, and even gets him some nicer clothes. If it wasn’t for the whole “dope smuggling racket” he had going, he’d be a fantastic boss.

Conclusion

Wait, before the end, I have to note that a young John Williams did the musical score for this movie. Its jazzy and better than a lot of contemporary music, but also not quite the level of awesomeness that Williams would eventually reach. Still, the music’s pleasant.

Daddy-O is ultimately another inoffensive, forgettable teensploitation movie from the 50s. A few interesting elements/characters and a listenable soundtrack don’t do anything to lift it above its contemporaries. But I can’t say that its downright terrible. Its merely forgettable.  

No trailer for this, but here's Rock Candy Baby from the movie, because if I had to listen to it, you can too.