Kino’s 21st noir series entry gives us two winners and a not-bad contender. Fritz Lang’s Cloak and Dagger with Gary Cooper and Lilli Palmer is a grim spy chase to keep atom secrets out of enemy hands; the weird Shack Out on 101 with Terry Moore, Lee Marvin and Frank Lovejoy sees a Malibu diner become a Cold War battleground for more atomic spies. Short Cut to Hell is a remake of an Alan Ladd hit, directed by James Cagney and showcasing the deserving unknowns Robert Ivers and Georgeann Johnson. All are remastered from 4K scans.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XXI
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1946-1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen + 1:37 Academy
275 min.
Street Date September 17, 2024
Available through Kino Lorber / 49.95
Starring: Gary Cooper, Lilli Palmer, Vladimir Sokoloff; Terry Moore, Lee Marvin, Frank Lovejoy, Keenan Wynn, Whit Bissell; Robert Ivers, Georgann Johnson, Yvette Vickers, Jacques Aubuchon.
Directed by Fritz Lang, Edward Dein, James Cagney

Collection number 21 of the Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema series shapes up as an entertaining trio of pictures. The first effort is an atom secrets espionage story with a seldom-discussed political angle — its original intention appears to have been suppressed. The second is an eccentric ‘out there’ take on the same subject with a Campy reputation. The third is an ill-advised but well-produced remake of a noir classic directed by the one and only James Cagney.

All three titles were remastered in 4K in the last four years, Kino gives each a solid new audio commentary.

Cloak and Dagger
1946 / 106 min. / 1.37 Academy
Starring: Gary Cooper, Robert Alda, Lilli Palmer, Vladimir Sokoloff, J. Edward Bromberg, Ludwig Stossel, Helene Thimig, Dan Seymour, Marc Lawrence, James Flavin, Lex Barker, Robert Coote, Richard Fraser, Neyle Morrow, Ottow Reichow, Douglas Walton, .
Cinematography: Sol Polito
Art Director: Max Parker
Film Editor: Christian Nyby
Original Music: Max Steiner
Screen play by Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner Jr., original story by Boris Ingster, John Francis Larkin, suggested by the book by Corey Ford, Alastair MacBain
Produced by Milton Sperling
Directed by Fritz Lang

In theaters just one year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this passion project by Hollywood liberals tries to explain that atomic weapons are a genie out of its bottle, and that atomic wars may be on the horizon. At least, that’s what it originally said, before its final act was deleted and suppressed. German expatriate director Fritz Lang’s Cloak and Dagger may be the first intelligent movie to address the ‘Brave New World’ of potential atom terror.

Lang invented quite a few standards for spy thrills, and his wartime movies  Ministry of Fear and  Hangmen Also Die!  brought the public up to date with the ruthless world espionage. One of the scripters of Hangman is the leftist Bertolt Brecht, and two of the writers on this picture are Albert Maltz, and Ring Lardner Jr.. Both would soon find themselves among  The Hollywood Ten.

In the middle of WW2, the O.S.S. gets information from inside occupied Europe that the Nazis are trying to build their own atomic bomb. Physicist Alvah Jesper (Gary Cooper) is dispatched to Switzerland to contact scientists forced to work on Nazi bomb research. He tries to rescue allied-leaning physicist Katerin Lodor (Helen Thimig), but Nazi assassins get to her first. Continuing to Italy, Alvah joins a group of partisan agents (including Robert Alda & Dan Seymour) and poses as a German scientist to spirit Professor Polda (Vladimir Sokoloff) out of the country. Beautiful partisan fighter Gina (Lilli Palmer) helps Alvah hide and wait for his chance, avoiding Polda’s Italian Fascist watchdog, Luigi (Marc Lawrence).

Cloak and Dagger begins with a bold pacifist speech about the need to keep atom power away from hostile enemies:

The script’s anti-nuke spin did not toe the line set by the State Department, which considered free discussion of The Bomb undesirable, even dissident. A year later, MGM’s dubious ‘story of the making of the atom bomb’  The Beginning or The End relayed a hawkish, pro-bomb message. The government can’t have liked the pacifist tone here: Lardner and Maltz plainly state what the government didn’t want publicized, that nuclear science is not an American secret. Technical solutions could be stolen, yes, but not the science itself.

As released, Cloak and Dagger is an exciting, humorless spy story with some good episodes. Novice operative Alvah Jasper outwits an American double agent in Switzerland (Margaret Hoshelle) but fails to save his scientist contact; he does better in Italy but still comes out with a middling success — a whole team of agents is lost. Unlike the best Lang pictures, the pacing is erratic: too much speechifying up front, and a slow section when Cooper and Gina hide out in an Italian ruin.

Cooper’s character is also a stretch — his Alvah Jesper is a brilliant physicist but also a cunning action hero. That the O.S.S. would send a member of the nuclear brain trust on such a mission is not particularly believable. When Alvah meets Lilli Palmer’s guerilla agent Gina, they shack up to hide from the Nazis, putting the focus on romance for a reel or two. The most interesting supporting character is the marvelous Vladimir Sokoloff, of  For Whom the Bell Tolls. Almost as strong is the very good actress Helen Thimig (Strangers in the Night) as the sickly scientist Alvah contacts in Switzerland. She unfortunately has only one scene.

The picture sings when Lang is engaged with his material. The rescue attempt at a Swiss chalet turns into a good, messy fight. Alvah encounters a snoop photographer at an airport, just as does James Bond in the first 007 film  Dr. No. When Alvah avoids having his picture taken, he immediately attracts the interest of Gestapo agents.

The film’s best scene is a terrific fight that we’ve praised elsewhere. It’s an action precursor to Hitchcock’s sloppy farmhouse murder in Torn Curtain. Although slow by today’s standards, the violence and sadism are surprisingly graphic: Gary Cooper is shown tearing Marc Lawrence’s fingers apart while an Italian organ grinder plays. The unexpected violence still gets applause.

If the movie’s finale seems tame, it’s because its entire final reel was discarded and destroyed before release. The movie now ends with scientists Cooper and Sokoloff flying away to America, while Gina stays behind to continue the fight. Max Steiner’s music rises to a patriotic climax, for an unmemorable finish.

The missing reel contained an expensive, elaborate sequence in which a hundred U.S. paratroops storm a secret Nazi atom lab in the Hartz mountains, hoping to seize the remainder of the Reich’s captive scientists and their nuclear research. But the mission comes up empty-handed: the bomb lab has already been disassembled and moved somewhere else. The movie ends on an eerie note … the soldiers will soon go back to America, but will their homes ever be safe?   It’s an important message for 1946, but not one popular with the State Department.

Cloak and Dagger was last seen on a good Olive Films disc from 2013. All copies are of course the standard release version. The film remains thrilling as a precursor to James Bond- style Super-Spy pictures, many of which involve ‘saving the world’ from futuristic mad science, weaponized. It’s also an opportunity to admire the talented Lilli Palmer, who is excellent in the later spy films  The Counterfeit Traitor and  Operation Crossbow.

The European poster art on the disc cover must be from a later reissue, as it makes the context look like an urban crime movie, with a ’50s cop car on the street. But the original U.S. poster art just showed Cooper with a gun, and kissing Lilli Palmer.

Heath Holland and author Max Allan Collins’ commentary praises Fritz Lang and points out the movie’s problems. They label this war espionage / political movie a Film Noir, and act as if the missing ending is no big deal. They suggest that Jack Warner and Milton Sperling chopped the last reel because they were shocked, shocked to suddenly discover that the movie made an ‘un-American’ statement about atom secrets. But the two executives had already approved the script and so must have been aware of its content and politics. They had spent a ton of money filming an expensive combat set piece — paratroops storming a mountain fortress, etc. — and would never have thrown it away unless pressured from the outside.

My reading hasn’t found research as to who exactly told Warners and Sperling’s United States Pictures to remove the offensive finale from Cloak and Dagger.   Dangerous conjecture it may be, but FBI head J. Edgar Hoover routinely censored studio pictures about FBI-related matters, whenever he felt national security was at stake. Did the independent production slip by his radar?   I should think Cloak and Dagger must have slipped by somebody in Washington before it was finished, making necessary a post-production editorial massacre.

Oh, the final movie ‘doesn’t hang together?’ … that seems natural when somebody made the producer throw away its entire twist ending. No, political censorship threw the movie off kilter, stepping on film art and some very important free speech.

Shack Out on 101
1955 / 80 min. / 1.85 widescreen
Starring: Terry Moore, Frank Lovejoy, Keenan Wynn, Lee Marvin, Whit Bissell, Jess Barker, Donald Murphy, Frank DeKova, Len Lesser.
Cinematography: Floyd Crosby
Art Director: Lou Croxton
Film Editor: George White
Original Music: Paul Dunlap
Written and Story by Edward Dein, Mildred Dein
Executive Producer: William F. Broidy
Produced by Mort Millman
Directed by Edward Dein

One of the craziest — but well-acted and highly entertaining — Cold War anti-commie spy thrillers is this microbudgeted Allied Artists programmer from 1955. It’s the entertainment equivalent of ‘something that fell off the back of a truck.’  Shack Out on 101 earned absolutely zero respect when new. Variety’s review called it a “dull, confused melodrama,” and “a mish-mash of Saroyan-like characterizations.”  It’s unique, that’s for sure, but never confused or dull, thankyouverymuch.

Considering that it takes place almost entirely in one set, Shack is actually quite an achievement. It’s just your average American story about a typical highway rest stop that happens to be the hub of a nefarious Red spy ring. The writers are the husband and wife team of Edward and Mildred Dein, a couple with an odd career. ‘B’ director Dein was a veteran of Monogram and PRC pictures of the 1940s. The scenario can be goofy, but it’s written with skill and excellently played by a cast of 1950 acting favorites.

Every patron of a beachside diner on California’s Interstate 101 has a crush on the shapely & vivacious waitress Kotty (Terry Moore). She only has eyes for Professor Sam Bastion (Frank Lovejoy), a nuclear physicist from a top-secret lab at the nearby University. The diner’s balding owner George (Keenan Wynn) keeps his dreams to himself, but the short order cook ‘Slob’ (Lee Marvin) paws at Kotty every chance he gets. Sam stays mum about his work on an atom project for the U.S. government — but he’s also slipping nuclear secrets to Slob and a fisherman named Perch (Len Lesser), both of whom are traitors working for the Soviets. Also frequenting the café is Eddie (Whit Bissell), a neurotic terrified by violence of any kind. Eddie and George are veterans of the D-Day landing, an experience that frayed Eddie’s nerves.

Things become serious when Kotty thinks she has witnessed a killing, and no longer knows who she can trust. Two poultry deliverymen that frequent the diner ask a lot of questions. Kotty notices that their hands are unusually soft for truck drivers. Sam keeps asking Slob to introduce him to his communist spy connection, a mysterious mastermind named Mister Gregory. On a stormy night, the shack on Highway 101 becomes a battleground in the struggle between America and evil Enemies of Freedom.

Author Barry Gifford pegged this mini-epic as a “semi-trashy Cold War version of The Petrified Forest” and “a minimalist portrait of America at its most paranoid.” Aided by an enthusiastic cast, the talky proceedings seem unusually sleazy for the Eisenhower years. Slob is like a character from early Mad Magazine parodies. Described as having “an eight-cylinder body and a two-cylinder mind,” Slob suffers from acute sexual inferiority. He molests Terry Moore’s Kotty at every opportunity — on the beach, in the kitchen. At one point he laughingly threatens to “put something gross” in Eddie’s hamburger.

The movie’s tone veers between a paranoid civics lesson and the looseness of a Beat play. The byplay between Lee Marvin and Keenan Wynn often feels like improv. The script includes scenes that give Wynn and Marvin an opportunity to be silly. A comic weightlifting break picks up a gay vibe when Slob and George compare body development. They rush to dress when Kotty re-enters the diner — they don’t want to be seen with their shirts off.

Lee Marvin fans will also be amused when Frank Lovejoy’s Sam Bastion slaps, punches and intimidates the ‘weakling’ Slob. A heavily decorated Marine, Marvin would later be known as one of the most credibly tough of tough-guy actors. Lovejoy’s earlier work included Stanley Kramer’s serious social comment picture  Home of the Brave and the blacklist-bait essay on American injustice  Try and Get Me!  A political realignment may have been required for Lovejoy to stay employed, as he was soon playing anti-Red patriots in fare like  I Was a Communist for the FBI. Sam Bastion also seems to be wound a little too tightly. After a day engineering weapons of mass destruction he relaxes by sorting out little seashells he keeps in a shoebox.

The fight for Freedom naturally involves a measure of violence, including a stabbing and a shooting. And no Cold War thriller would be complete without an eccentric lecture about American complacency in the face of the communist threat:

The actors have great fun with this expanded one-act jaw-dropper. Frank Lovejoy is delighted to play both the romantic lead and a clever spy. Even Terry Moore comes off well; her Kotty seems genuinely hurt to discover that her boyfriend is a traitor, even if she must first look up the word in the dictionary. With its Mad magazine-like weirdness, Shack comes rather late in the game for an anti-Commie epic. By 1955 patriotic Cold War messages could be found in every kind of genre thriller, but pictures dedicated solely to the activities of Red spy rings were on the wane.

Shack Out on 101 was remastered in 4K in 2021, giving it a quality edge over Olive Films’ fine Blu-ray from 2013. Ace cameraman Floyd Crosby manages good lighting in the single diner set, and with director Dein concocts excellent compositions and smart camera moves. The show was one of many stabs in new creative directions attempted at Allied Artists when supervising planner Walter Mirisch was trying to keep the company solvent. Scenes outside the diner are almost all limited to pickup shots — some slightly focus-challenged. But Dein and Crosby do manage a beach opening in which Lee Marvin tries to molest Terry More in the Malibu surf. In this new scan, we notice traffic moving on Pacific Coast Highway — aka ‘101.’ The sharp HD image allows one to see the goose bumps on Terry Moore’s arms when she’s lying on the beach.

The jazzy soundtrack is highlighted by the well-known tune A Sunday Kind of Love written in part by (Barbara) Belle and Louis Prima. Original poster art stressed the sex angle, with no fewer than four images of Terry Moore kissing and embracing the various denizens of George’s seaside diner. Ms. Moore’s PR pushed her persona as a ‘hot’ actress, but also presented her as a vulnerable young woman in an overheated business.

Favorite commentator Jason A. Ney immediately pronounces his admiration for Shack Out on 101 and proceeds with an informative, insightful and funny rundown on its makers, its winning cast, and its place as one of the most eccentric of anti-Red program pictures. He has documentation and memoir-sourced anecdotes about some of the scenes in the film, like the violent shot in which Lee Marvin wrestles Terry Moore around her bedroom and smashes her partly through a window. Jason’s take on the eccentric scenes shows how the film is actually quite creatively progressive. It’s a fine track, not just a rehash of earlier reviews and data from the IMDB.

Short Cut to Hell
1957 / 89 min. / 1.85 widescreen
Starring: William Bishop, Robert Ivers, Georgann Johnson, Yvette Vickers, Murvyn Vye, Jacques Aubuchon, Peter Baldwin, Richard Hale, Roscoe Ates, Milton Frome, Orangey the Cat, Dick Whittinghill, Douglas Spencer.
Cinematography: Haskell B. Boggs
Art Directors: Hal Pereira, Roland Anderson
Costumes: Edith Head
Film Editor: Tom MacAdoo
Screenplay by Ted Berkman, Raphael Blau, from the novel A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
Produced by A.C. Lyles
Directed by James Cagney

The final entry in box 21 of the series is the first feature produced by Paramount executive A.C. Lyles. He was apparently allowed to step up to producer status only if he used his connections to make a movie within a tight budget framework, using studio facilities that had become less busy as the industry tightened its belt. The project was Short Cut to Hell, a remake of 1942’s  This Gun for Hire, the 1942 semi-classic that made a star of Alan Ladd. Lyles was connected and popular among Hollywood talent, and saved more money by talking his personal friend James Cagney into directing. Cagney reportedly had little ambition in that area but he wanted to help A.C. out — Cagney’s name on the show would make a star cast unnecessary.

The posters don’t make a big deal of Cagney but the movie itself begins with him providing a William Castle-like intro. Cagney announces the debut of two future stars, Robert Ivers and Georgeann Johnson. Ivers had been a bit player for three years and Johnson had a resume with 5 years of busy TV work. Each is quite good, but it is a hopeless task to try to erase the memory of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

Directed by Frank Tuttle, the original This Gun for Hire holds up as a classic thriller, with a hit man theme that wouldn’t be seen much again until the 1960s. Short Cut to Hell plays like a throwback, with an old-fashioned script that explains every detail twice over. The budget movie is filmed in B&W, but is given Paramount’s large-format VistaVision camera system, probably because the bean counters needed the studio assets to be kept busy. So this minimally-produced thriller looks especially good, graced with stunning deep focus cinematography.

The story source is unbreakable. Paid killer Kyle Niles (Robert Ivers) murders a city planner on behalf of crooks AT and Bahrwell (Richard Hale & Jacques Aubuchon). Kyle then discovers he’s been framed, paid off in marked bills from a payroll robbery. On his warpath for revenge, with cop Stan Lowery (William Bishop) chasing him, Kyle at first robs and then abducts Glory Hamilton (Georgeann Johnson), a nightclub singer en route to Los Angeles. Glory doesn’t want to see anybody else shot dead, especially not her fiancé — who happens to be Sgt. Stan. After several reversals, the near-psychotic loner Kyle realizes he can trust Glory. He saves her from Bahrman’s sadistic chauffeur-thug Nichols (Murvyn Vye). She then hides with him in a factory’s bomb shelter. Kyle accepts Glory’s help — but is determined to kill the double-crossers.

Short Cut to Hell makes its leading lady a singer instead of a stage magician, and substitutes ordinary settings for some of This Gun for Hire’s fancy set constructions. But it still feels old-fashioned and draggy, too careful to explain every shift in strategy and to show every entrance and exit. An impressive real factory gives the last act some interest, but AT’s mansion and various street locations around Paramount look like TV work — even when filmed in incredibly sharp VistaVision.

The direction … is not good. The actors appear to have little guidance. Many scenes feel unrehearsed and overplayed, with reactions too big or key dialogue emphasized too strongly. The talky script leaves no storytelling to the direction — at one point a factory boss offers a big chunk of advice, telling the cops how to do their jobs. Jacques Aubuchon does reasonably well, favorite Yvette Vickers is painfully obvious and fake in her first screen appearance, and Murvyn Vye is unexpectedly good in a fight scene.

Given 2nd and 3rd billing, the showcased ‘newcomers’ are given a limited opportunity to shine. Robert Ivers is a bit like Jack Webb imitating Humphrey Bogart; he tries to underplay and has difficulty holding center screen. We still like him, even if he lacks even Jack Webb’s quotient of screen charisma.

Georgeann Johnson has more screen time and more interesting dialogue, and fares much better. Ms. Johnson does possess the positive magnetism that James Cagney mentions in the prologue. Whenever her Glory is on screen, the action seems to make more sense. Glory has a sense of humor about danger; she accepts Kyle for a problem that has to be faced. She credibly talks her way out of being shot, and sets forth to prove to Kyle that a little trust in the right place trumps ruthless cynicism. The cliché material plays because Ms. Johnson sells it so well. And such a bright, intelligent face, too.

Most of Short Cut to Hell unspools like storyboard panels; Georgeann Johnson makes the movie watchable. The show did not lead to film fame for either actor, but Ms. Johnson had a long career on TV. Yet most of us have seen her in a famous scene in a famous movie, that we will recognize immediately. Twelve years later she would play an import bit in John Schlesinger’s  Midnight Cowboy, as the first ‘rich lady’ that the brainless hustler Joe Buck accosts on the street in Manhattan, thinking she’ll immediately want to pay him to sleep with her. Georgeann Johnson’s twenty seconds with Jon Voight is priceless.

Short Cut to Hell is a pleasure to watch, just to see the superior VistaVision image. A few scenes in we realize it’s no classic, but it functions at its own level, and isn’t a disappointment.

The pinchpenny movie has no original music score but makes good use of library cues … which also adds to its retro feel. A long section with Glory and Kyle in the bomb shelter is scored with Miklos Rosza music from Double Indemnity, which is more than a little strange.

Gary Gerani offers a friendly, busy commentary with a lot of facts and some nice observations.

The KL Studio Classics Blu-ray of  Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XXI offers two superior thrillers and one oddity-orphan with plenty of interest for noir fans. All are remasters from 4K scans made after 2020. The next series installment XXII will present two minor classics and another almost-great Paramount oddity filmed in Vistavision: The Enforcer, Plunder Road and The Scarlet Hour. We very much look forward to reviewing that trio.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XXI
Blu-ray rates:
Movies: Cloak Excellent; Shack Excellent; Hell Good -minus
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
New Audio commentaries:
Heath Holland and  Max Allan Collins on Cloak and Dagger
Jason A. Ney on Shack Out on 101
Gary Gerani on Short Cut to Hell
Theatrical Trailers.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: Three Blu-rays in three keep cases in card sleeve
Reviewed: September 18, 2024
(7152noir)

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