Blaine: Day Five - Samuel Fuller

So far, I gotta say, this week has been mostly pleasurable (I've already bleached that "other" Louis Malle film out of my memory)...and today was no exception. First up, Fuller's near perfect noir:
Pickup on South Street

If you had asked me, yesterday, who Richard Widmark is I would have replied "some actor". Today I would have a different answer. He's a punk. He's a scoundrel. He's a fighter. He's a lover. And while he certainly needs a lesson in how to treat a lady, he's also my third favorite discovery of the week.

Meet Skip McCoy, local pickpocket and all around scumbag...

And don't let him near you on a crowded subway train. That's what sets this roller coaster in motion. His target?

My second favorite obsession of the week, Jean Peters (Candy). Talk about a dame.

Candy is on her way to do one final favor for her ex-lover. It's a simple drop, something she's done several times. But things go off the rails when Skip decides to read a newspaper (that's code for distract her while stealing shit from her purse). Unfortunately for Skip, Candy wasn't alone. You see, she was being followed by the cops and they witnessed the entire event but Skip hops off the train before they can do anything about it. They continue to follow Candy to the drop but something's wrong. Candy digs inside her purse only to find out her wallet's gone. She places a call to her ex (Joey) and he tells her to abort the mission.

Joey...baby...don't get...crazy. We'll come back to this pinko in a bit.

The cops, meanwhile, are fuming. This was a giant fuck up. Turns out, Candy was en route to deliver a highly classified roll of film and apparently McCoy took it off her before she could finish the job. Except the cops have no idea who McCoy is -- they can describe him but that's about all. Enter Captain Tiger...

He might not look like much but he knows how to get shit done. First things first, let's call in the one person who knows every pickpocket in town and their modus operandi.

Hey Mo! Sure, she sells ties and looks like a bag lady, but she knows the criminal underworld like the back of her hand. And after a few minutes of back and forth, she nails down McCoy as the prime suspect. She even knows where he lives.

McCoy, meanwhile, has finished his pickpocketing for the day and discovers among his many trophies, a roll of film. And not just any film. This has some interesting shit on it and dollar signs start flashing overhead in bright neon. Too bad Mo ratted him out. But this isn't McCoy's first rodeo. He hides his stash and calmly accompanies the cops back to the precinct where he and Tiger go round and round.

I admit, McCoy's a hard man to like. He verbally bitch-slaps Tiger and smirks his way out of the precinct, unscathed. But we do learn a few things about him before he goes. For example, this wouldn't be his first arrest. Nor his second. If he gets caught again he's going down, for good.

Candy finally catches up with McCoy and, between us, he really doesn't deserve her. While she, inexplicably, falls head over heels in love, he basically tells her not to come back empty-handed. And when she does return with five hundred bucks, he's slaps the shit out of her. Silly dame. He knows what the film is worth and he's gonna get his pay day one way or another. He wants 25 grand. 25 grand! Back in those days! That's a shit ton of money.

But greed is not good. And Joey and his fellow commies have made a decision to merely eliminate the threat. Which means getting to Mo so they can get to Joey. Big mistake.

When Mo ends up dead Joey just put himself at the top of McCoy's shit list.

And now Candy has a decision to make and she makes it pretty easily. Especially since she had no idea that Joey was using her this entire time to commit treason. So she warns McCoy that Joey and his goons are planning to kill him. And in a moment of passion, she knocks McCoy out with a beer bottle and steals the film from his coat pocket. But let me ask you something...

Does this look like someone who would allow that happen without a backup plan?  Of course not. He kept one of the frames for himself as insurance and, sure enough, Joey and his commies come looking for him.

The film ends in spectacular fashion with a fight stretching from the docks all the way to the subway train and even onto the tracks. McCoy ends up being a hero after all, turning the "reds" into the police, getting back on Captain Tiger's good side (sort of) and of course, getting the girl. And what a girl she is.


Rating: 19 out of  20

Bechdel test: Another fail. Everything is about the men in these movies.

Widmark's level of smirkiness: 17 out of 20


Next up Blaine goes from a cocky, self-assured, woman-beating prick of a pickpocket to a cocky, self-assured, woman-beating prick of a submarine captain in Fuller's 1954 espionage film...

Hell and High Water

Okay, so maybe not espionage but this one is hard to classify. I guess, technically it's a war movie but it's definitely wearing a disguise of some sort. And it also wins the film of the week I would most like to see a remake of. Hey Spielberg, here's your chance to remake your favorite movie.

Fuller wastes no time grabbing our interest by telling us that in the summer of 1953, an atomic bomb went off in the North Pacific waters. Let's back up and find out why...

Widmark plays Captain Adam Jones, a former submarine commander, who is hired by a group of scientists to lead an expedition into the Arctic waters. You see, this group of men...

they believe that the commies are using an island as a nuclear storage facility and plan to detonate that bomb somewhere over the United States. They need Jones to lead a few of them so they can investigate further. They have aerial photographs as proof but need boots on the ground to prove anything. Jones, reluctantly, agrees but on one condition -- he gets to round up his own men, men he served with previously. All parties agree and the team sets off with one extra addition...

Hey, who brought the dame along? Turns out she has a name. It's Denise (Bella Darvi) and she and Professor Montel (the head honcho) are colleagues. The men put up a fight (apparently it's bad luck to bring a woman on board a submarine and I get it -- it doesn't take long for the men to start misbehaving). But Jones keeps his men in check and also falls for Denise. He doesn't treat her especially well or pay her any attention really but apparently that's what the ladies loved back in the day -- assholes.

What could possibly go wrong?

I have to admit, it took me all of Pickup on South Street and half of this movie to finally see Widmark's charm. He's not a bad guy, he just acts like one. When push comes to shove he does the right thing and this time is no different.

Along the way they battle with a Japanese submarine in a surprisingly tense 15 minutes where you could hear a pin drop. The special effects are something to behold considering the time period and Fuller does a good enough job of playing make believe with something I can only imagine was nearly impossible to do -- under water battles.

1954 people. Pretty cool.

Jones mostly makes the right call in every scenario, even though he loses a few men along the way. And when they finally reach the island they discover that the photographs were not lying. There's a plane loaded with an atomic bomb that has plans to depart first thing the following morning. Jones make a plan to shoot down the plane before it can drop the payload and again, things go relatively smoothly but they lose Professor Montel in the progress. Not to worry though, he died a hero and turns out Denise was his daughter all along. Whew. For a while I didn't know what they were to each other and it was kinda gross. He's like 30 years older.

Did I say 30? I meant 50.

All in all I am now all in on Fuller and look forward to seeing the rest of his movies. I have a feeling I'm not done with Widmark yet either. Not by a long shot.

Rating: 18 out of 20

Bech-- nope.

Widmark's level of smirkiness: 15 out of 20



Tomorrow we get to dance with Mark Sandrich...