Cry Danger (1951)

[cigar joe]

Cry Danger (1951) Dir by Robert Parrish. This film I liked, The opening title sequence with the Sunset Limited is cool, the quirky trailer park setting along with its resident trailer trash is unique,  and the story keeps you interested great performances by Dick Powell, Rhonda Fleming, Nancy Morgan, Richard Erdman, William Conrad, Regis Toomey, Jean Porter,  and Jay Adler. 7/10 initially

Saw this quite a while ago on TCM but re-watched it on Netflix last night. I almost forgot how good, in a non-conventional way this one is.

Cry Danger was directed by Robert Parrish, and stars Dick Powell as just released con Rocky, Rhonda Flemming as Nancy, Richard Erdman as Delong, William Conrad as mob bookie Castro, Regis Toomey as Regis Toomey as lawman Cobb, and Jean Porter as blond dish Darlene.



Nice opening title sequence of passenger train making its journey to the City of Angles. At Union Station, Rocky (Powell) is met by cop Cobb (Toomey) and the man who provided his alibi (five years late) that got him released from the pen, an alcoholic  marine with a wooden leg named Delong (Erdman). Cobb buys the drinks and asks Rocky about the missing $100,000 loot from the robbery that got him incarcerated along with his best friend. Rocky sticks to his story that he was framed and that he knows nothing about the money.

After cop leaves the bar Rocky confronts Delong and he admits that he made up Rocky's alibi and that a greatfull Rocky should part with some of the hidden loot. Rocky tells him that he really doesn't know anything about the robbery but he knows who might and that is Castro (Conrad) a local mob bookie, headquartered upstairs at the Amigo Club, but he is greatfull for the alibi and befriends Delong. Before confronting Castro, Rocky first wants to visit his best friends wife Nancy (Flemming) who was a former girlfriend of Rocky's.

Delong & Rocky driving a decadent looking Nash Ambassador (that bobs up and down like a boat on an easy-glide suspension) go to find Nancy.



Nancy lives in a seedy run down trailer court near downtown LA. Rocky and Delong go to the court and rent a decaying trailer from a crusty ukulele playing manager while waiting for Nancy to return from work. While passing the time they befriend a cute blond sunbather named Darlene. Delong, Darlene, Rocky and Nancy start hanging out together while Rocky begins to unravel the frame that got him set to prison.

What's to like?

This is a great little noir all set in a rundown low rent neighborhood of LA replete with fleabag hotels, sleazy bars, and corner deli's.

The trailer park location is great, it provides a nice contrast to conventional all dark Noirs and it gives that creepy "just flipped over rock and bugs scurrying from the sun" feeling to the film. The park and its denizens provide a lot of amusing laughs interspersed with seriousness of the confrontations between Rocky, Castro, and Castro's henchmen.

The Nash Ambassador is a hoot, you can't help but chuckle everytime you see tough guy Rocky driving around in what looks like a ridiculous upside down bathtub.

Rocky's memorable confrontation with Castro, after Castro tries to frame him the second time.



Cutie Darlene who shows lots of skin while almost constantly sunbathing on a lounger in the trailer park.

A nice twist.

I'll give this one a 10/10. This needs a DVD release, please!

[drinkanddestroy]

Just saw it for the first time, on TCM. The Film Noir Foundation recently restored this one,along with UCLA Film Archive. The print looked great, they did a nice job with the restoration but  they haven't gotten around to releasing a dvd yet.

I didn't love this one all that much. I'd give it a 6/10.

There's just something missing with Rhonda Fleming in black and white, you can't see her red hair and green eyes  

[dave jenkins]

Image quality is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF5N5QdFLw0

[titoli]

CJ gives it 10\10 and I can't see why. To me it makes a generous 6/10 only because of Powell (and Conrad, especially the russian roulette scene), the rest is cheap and seen before.

[cigar joe]

CJ gives it 10\10 and I can't see why. To me it makes a generous 6/10 only because of Powell (and Conrad, especially the russian roulette scene), the rest is cheap and seen before.

"It's perfect, trailer parks, trashy dames, Bunker Hill, bathtub cars, you have lousy noir taste, "one man's crap is another man's cannoli". The Professor below talking about Highway Dragnet puts it beautifully, emphasis on the last line.

"The movie’s “man on the run” premise is a cliché, but it’s the sort of cliché that got that way because it’s such great film fodder. It goes something like this: Conte’s character has just drummed out of the Marine Corps after a rough stint slogging a flamethrower up and down hills in Korea. With a few bucks in his pocket and plenty of time on his hands he heads for the Vegas strip. He plans to connect with an old pal (he never makes it) and do the strip before heading west to renovate his dilapidated fixer-upper on California’s Salton Sea. While waiting on his buddy, Conte gets bored with the penny slots and wanders into the casino bar — wood-paneled like a basement rec-room and chock-full of lounge lizards and greasy pompadours. He settles into an unmanned stool right beside a peroxide blonde, Mary Beth Hughes, dolled up but cheap-looking, two sheets to the wind and working on three. The stage is set for the best sequence in Highway Dragnet — a scene so authentic that it only makes the subsequent letdown all the more painful.

Bars make for a useful narrative setting in cheap filmmaking, and are consequently a B-noir staple. But they also resonate with me, because I spent more than a decade standing at the doors of shitty dives with my arms crossed, trying to make like a tough guy — and occasionally having to be one. I’ve seen my share unpleasant things in the thousands of hours I’ve spent eyeballing barrooms, and I have an understanding of, and undoubtedly some affection for those sad souls who rot away on barstools — perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to the losers that populate crime films. The bar offers filmmakers a convenient place to aim characters at one another, to set them on a collision course, particularly characters of the opposite sex. What better symbolizes the seediness of the city than the bar? What could be a more emblematic of recklessness, danger, and the allure of easy sex? What better place to be noticed, or to go unnoticed; to conduct nefarious business or a illicit affair? And then there’s the booze itself, any screenwriter’s most expedient gateway to sex, violence, or oblivion — in life, as in art. Bars are often put to such purpose in film noir, so it’s hardly surprising that Highway Dragnet, a 70-minute chase picture, opens with a man and a woman sparring over drinks. The scene is brief, spectacular, and best of all: absolutely authentic — so I’m going to slobber over it. If you are anxious for a summary, just go watch the movie — it’s plenty short enough, and if I know you it’s already in your instant queue.

The scene gets moving after Conte does the polite thing and offers Hughes a drink in exchange for the vacant seat, currently occupied by her handbag. She hungrily accepts, but not before making a floozy’s feint at good-girl morality: “I’m not here for that.” Oh, yes she is. They chit-chat about their pasts, how they each got from there to here, with both actors coming over as only casually interested in one another — or maybe suspiciously disinterested. Here are two performers who understand the way that life-hardened souls interact in a bar, nursing secret little hopes as they rattle the ice in their drinks. Men and women let their guards down over cocktails, sitting side-by-side instead of across from one another. Everything comes so much more easily when looking up doesn’t mean looking at, and lighting a cigarette isn’t necessarily foreplay, it’s just another step in a tried-and-tested ritual. Conte and Hughes intuit all of this, and their performances take on the unexpected air of truth.

He’s good, but she’s great, playing tipsy just right, Hughes’s head not quite steady as she smiles in his direction, her brassiere showing under her dress as she shifts unsteadily on her stool. The pair share the easy banter of those who believe that sex is either impossible or inevitable, and their certainty is what makes this scene so good: Hughes thinks she’s hooked him while Conte is just wasting time. She tells him she’s an ex-fashion model — her glossy is hanging on the wall, just over there, on your right — yet he blunders when he says, “Hey, you were really beautiful then.” There are few creatures more perilous than the woman sitting alone at the bar: her vulnerability makes her dangerous, and Hughes reacts like a classic mad drunk: she gets aggressive. Conte grabs her, pinning her arms behind back, but to his surprise she smiles — she’s finally getting what she wanted the whole time: human contact. Hard or soft, it doesn’t matter. Her body relaxes and she leers into a kiss, just like she planned it that way, and the scene fades out. It’s a moment that reminds me why I love B-pictures: sometimes, because of their meager budgets and lowbrow subject matter, these tawdry movies get it exactly right.

[dave jenkins]

CJ gives it 10\10 and I can't see why. To me it makes a generous 6/10 only because of Powell (and Conrad, especially the russian roulette scene), the rest is cheap and seen before.

You must watch this with the Italian dub, or with bad sub-titles. If you watched it without titles in its original dub AND you understood English you'd note the film's strongest quality: the dialog. For snappy patter the great noirs are these, in descending order: Double Indemnity; Out of the Past; Murder, My Sweet; Cry Danger. In some films all the good lines go to a single character; not so here, where Powell and Erdman trade lines so fast it's hard for listeners to keep up. Even for listeners who know the language.

[Novecento]

For snappy patter the great noirs are these, in descending order: Double Indemnity; Out of the Past; Murder, My Sweat; Cry Danger.

- The Sweet Smell of Success?
- The Big Sleep (particularly the lesser IMO theatrical release)?

[titoli]

You must watch this with the Italian dub, or with bad sub-titles.

I'll follow your advice.

[dave jenkins]

I'll follow your advice.

Again your lack of English understanding is telling. Here "must" is not prescriptive, but shows probability.

[dave jenkins]

- The Sweet Smell of Success?

Not a noir.

- The Big Sleep (particularly the lesser IMO theatrical release)?

This might go into 5th place. I like the stuff at the beginning between Bogart and Bacall and between Bogart and the butler. After that there isn't much I like in terms of witty byplay: the girls Bogart meets say obvious things; Bogart and Bacall never recapture that earlier give-and-take (the exchange using the horse-racing metaphor is particularly strained); there's nothing good between Bogart and Toomey; maybe a little of the Bogart-Eddie Mars dialog works. No, the best Chandler (and sub-Chandler) chat is in DI and Murder, My Sweet. It doesn't get any better than, "My bank account was trying to crawl under a duck."

[dave jenkins]

Image quality is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF5N5QdFLw0

Wow, it was up yesterday, down today. The rights holders must read this board!

[titoli]

Again your lack of English understanding is telling. Here "must" is not prescriptive, but shows probability.

Probability of what?

[dave jenkins]

Probability of what?

Probability that you're an ass.

[titoli]

Probability that you're an ass.

At least it is not a certainty, as it is for you.

[dave jenkins]

At least it is not a certainty, as it is for you.

What a comeback! Do write all your own material, or does your sister help you?