The little studio Eagle-Lion Films was at the forefront of noir violence in 1948, skating on the edge to tell the story of a particularly vicious real-life bandit. Richard Basehart excels as the trigger-happy psycho killer whose antisocial estrangement evokes an eerie noir vibe of existential amorality. The filmic approach pioneers the semi-docu style that would dominate noir in its final decade, but expressionist touches persist, through the fine cinematography of John Alton.

He Walked by Night
Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 79 min. / 4K Restoration / Street Date January 30, 2024 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell, James Cardwell, Jack Webb, Dorothy Adams, Ann Doran, Byron Foulger, Reed Hadley (narrator), Thomas Browne Henry, Tommy Kelly, John McGuire, Kenneth Tobey.
Cinematography: John Alton
Assistant director: Howard W. Koch
Art Director: Edward Ilou
Film Editor: Alfred De Gaetano
Original Music: Leonid Raab
Written by John C. Higgins, Crane Wilbur
Produced by Bryan Foy, Robert T. Kane
Directed by Alfred L. Werker

Kino Lorber is re-issuing popular titles from its library with fancier slipcover packaging and new art, and often with better transfers and encodings. Some of its recent film noir reissues were first seen on other disc labels, like Twilight Time, Olive Films and, on this title, ClassicFlix.

The no-nonsense police saga He Walked by Night pushed the limit of explicit realism in film noir. Hard facts from a real case file take precedence over entertainment niceties. The cops on view have personalities, but the focus is on a fascinating hero-villain with a meticulous modus operandi. Richard Basehart is brilliant as an existential public enemy who makes few mistakes as he evades a police force itching to take him down. The show could have been called  To Live and Die in L.A. “The 1948 Edition.”

Produced by the tiny studio Eagle Lion Films, the show continues the ‘100% Raw’ noir style of Anthony Mann’s  T-Men and  Raw Deal. Critics once theorized that Anthony Mann directed He Walked without credit, but the experts can only prove that Mann filmed some scenes, possibly as retakes, or to finish the show when the credited director Alfred Werker moved on to direct for producer  Louis de Rochemont.

The film’s consistent stylishness could easily have been the contribution of ace cameraman John Alton — some directors ceded issues of camera placement, etc., to their directors of photography. In the final judgment, He Walked by Night was accepted as superior filmmaking by both the public and Hollywood insiders. Alan K. Rode notes that He Walked was awarded a special prize at the Locarno Film Festival . . . was that possibly because it hews closely to the tenets of Italian Neorealism?

Meet psycho killer Roy Martin.

Making liberal use of a stentorian narration by Reed Hadley, He Walked by Night opens with a brutal crime. Policeman Robert Rawlins (John McGuire) is shot dead on the streets of Hollywood and Sgts. Marty Brennan (Scott Brady) and Chuck Jones (Jimmy Cardwell) are assigned to apprehend his killer. Months of dogged police work eventually lead to Roy Martin (Richard Basehart), a detail-minded, obsessive mystery man who lives ‘under the radar.’ With no prints on record and no criminal file, Martin hides with his dog in a Hollywood bungalow, monitoring police calls on his custom radio. His preparations for escape are unprecedented — and when he’s cornered he’s deadly.

“Listen to the calls coming in on the police phone lines and you’ll think the city has gone completely insane.”

He Walked by Night starts with a bang. Roy Martin shows no emotion when blasting a victim point plank with a large pistol. The cops roust every male on the street in hopes of coming up with a clue. These officers play rough; Scott Canon City Brady is a handsome lug with a chip on his shoulder and a bulldog attitude. The movie believes so firmly in police work that it depicts the cops as borderline ruthless in their work. Citizens swept up in the dragnet are obliged to prove their innocence when questioned. When a clue leads Brennan and his superior Captain Breen (Roy Roberts of  Force of Evil) to an electronics salesman (Whit Bissell), the cops treat him like a possible accomplice.

With his partner gravely wounded, Scott Brady’s Marty Brennan goes on a personal crusade to find the cop-killer, initiating a passage devoted to the boring, rote element of police work. He even masquerades as a milkman to get close to a possible suspect. The finale is strictly society vs. the criminal, with no “G-Men” heroics or personal vendettas. An army of cops surrounds the killer’s hideout and comes down hard and swift.

A Psycho Killer as the leading character?  Even after the example of Richard Widmark murder of an old lady in the previous year’s Kiss of Death, we always wondered how He Walked by Night could depict such a violent criminal, whose motivation remains unexplained. Alan Rode has a good comeback for that one too: the head of Eagle Lion hired a relative of a Production Code official. Roy Martin’s psychotic violence could very well have provided the impetus for James Cagney’s deranged Cody Jarrett in  White Heat, two years later.

Richard Basehart’s Roy Martin characterization is truly noir. For much of the film we follow the killer, noting his skill and composure under pressure. Martin lacks the erratic lifestyle that makes many criminals easy to chase down. Pathologically anti-social, he lives in a tiny bungalow that he keeps as neat as a pin. Snitches can’t help the police because Roy doesn’t associate with known criminals, or anybody, really. His only relationship is with a little dog who serves as an intruder alarm. Roy is endlessly resourceful. His escape routes are meticulously prepared. He even keeps stashes of weapons handy in odd places.

Assassin Heal Thyself.

Roy Martin sneers at The Law, but does he consider himself some kind of self-made Superman?  Wounded in a shootout, he operates on himself, boiling his instruments and probing for a bullet in a painful procedure. The traumatic scene surely convinced Hollywood that Richard Basehart could do anything; we certainly believe that Roy can. The scene must have given the censors pause: nothing graphic is shown, only Roy’s grimace of pain. But the intensity of the scene points the way to future cinematic extremes.

Roy’s lightning-fast escapes elicit applause in screenings. Like an insect, he evades pursuit on the street by ducking into L.A.’s underground storm drain system, sliding through curbside gutter openings like a cockroach finding a crack in a wall. Surrender isn’t part of Roy’s vocabulary. The echo-y tomb-like subterranean storm drain tunnels express the twisted blackness of Roy Martin’s psyche. He is resolutely anti-Human.

The storm drain sequence pre-dates Carol Reed’s spectacular finale for the classic  The Third Man, in the underground waterways of Vienna. Could Reed and writer Graham Greene employ the same evocative, ironic detail, the gag of a sewer escape thwarted by a vehicle parked on a manhole cover.

Much of He Walked by Night alternates moody police interiors with stock footage, and documentary-like scenes of Marty Brennan gathering information by day. John Alton’s noir lighting never looks forced or artificial. It’s safe to say that nobody used Venetian blinds like Alton. An interrogation scene with some young punks has just the right mix of dawn’s light peeking through a window. The extreme visuals are saved for highlights like the subterranean conclusion. Helped by excellent sound effects, Roy Martin is cornered in a hellish limbo-world.

 🎶  Dum, da Dum Dum! 🎶  

The ambitious Jack Webb saw great possibilities in He Walked by Night’s law ‘n’ order format, and adapted it for his radio and TV franchise Dragnet. The similarities aren’t difficult to see, starting with an opening narration over City Hall that tells us that ‘names were changed to protect the innocent.’ Although nowhere near as clipped as Webb’s TV dialogue, the cops of He Walked keep the small talk under control, especially Scott Brady’s lead detective Marty.

Webb would later work with the movie’s technical advisor Marty Wynn, a veteran Detective-Sergeant, to provide an authentic veneer for  Dragnet. Wynn is actually in the movie, creating a  L.A. Confidential connection: Wynn’s bit part aligns with Kevin Spacey’s ‘Hollywood showboat cop’ in the movie made from the Ellroy novel.

The film overflows with interesting actors in small parts. Handsome John McGuire, the luckless cop in the first scene, has mythic roots 13 years before in John Ford’s  Steamboat ‘Round the Bend, playing a leading man named Duke . . . a vacancy eventually filled by John Wayne. Whit Bissell is excellent as an electronics salesman taken in by Roy Martin. In tiny bits we find the youthful likes of John Dehner  (Man of the West), Frank Cady  (When Worlds Collide) and Kenneth Tobey  (The Thing from Another World). Instantly recognizable Dorothy Adams may be the archetype for the blabby housewife character that became a fixture on the Dragnet TV shows. Dorothy’s actor-husband Byron Folger plays the police clerk whose good memory helps Marty Brennan break the case.

Los Angeles lovers will like the many authentic locations. Roy Martin’s hideout is given a specific address between Fuller and Poinsettia just south of Santa Monica Boulevard. That’s about a mile west of CineSavant central, adjacent to what used to be The Goldwyn Studios. A large grocery store is there now. Roy’s escape across a playing field might be the school lot one block to the south. Few bungalow-style wooden apartment courts are still left in the city; the motel-like structures were built in the ’30s to create affordable housing. When property values rose in the ’60s they disappeared along with the temporary Quonset hut buildings thrown up during WW2. The first home of the UCLA film department was said to have been a G.I. Quonset hut building.

We heartily endorse the film’s unsentimental tone and the brutal end of its anti-hero. Forget latter-day baloney that portrays cops and criminals as blood brothers in a weird yin-yang crime cosmos — as in Michael Mann’s 1995  Heat. He Walked by Night’s bleak finale is as black as noir gets: no moralistic reaffirmation of societal values, and no sympathetic eulogy, just a stark close-up of staring, dead eyes followed by a swift fade out. Roy fought the Law and the Law won. Good, good show.

The KL Studio Classics new disc of He Walked by Night is an excellent Blu-ray encoding of this key film noir police docudrama. The package text identifies it as a new 4K remaster of MGM’s original 35mm fine grain film elements. The picture looks so good that we can’t automatically spot the stock footage … and suspect that some stock shots seen in other crime pictures may have been originally shot for this one. Earlier DVDs and Blu-rays made from MGM’s elements looked very good as well, so the improvement here is not dramatic.

John Alton’s cinemtography makes the conclusion in the storm drains into a tour-de-force. Note that the flashlights used in the damp tunnels are really flood lights — and that the cables to power them are frequently visible.

This disc has two audio commentaries, both of them excellent. Imogen Sara Smith goes solo on one, and the other is an earlier track with Alan K. Rode, augmented by Julie Kirgo. They draw from the same pool of information, but each has exclusive insights and research. Both tracks dive into the story of how bit actor Jack Webb leveraged this movie to launch his legendary career producing radio, TV and film, starting with  Dragnet. The feeling of L.A.P.D. authenticity becomes more chilling when one realizes that the film was in production during the horrifying Black Dahlia investigation.

Both commentaries also cover the gruesome and shocking story of  ‘Machine Gun Walker,’ the virtual super-criminal who inspired the fictional Roy Martin. Alan Rode answers the question of how the Anthony Mann – John Alton team was split asunder: MGM production chief Dore Schary bought them from Eagle-Lion, along with a whole film project. MGM moved them to Culver City, and soon split them up. Their last film together was 1950’s  Devil’s Doorway.

Kino’s ‘new’ cover art appears to come from a Japanese one-sheet design.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

He Walked by Night
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary with Imogen Sara Smith
Audio commentary with Alan K. Rode and Julie Kirgo.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: February 3, 2024
(7074walk)

Visit CineSavant’s Main Column Page
Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: cinesavant@gmail.com

Text © Copyright 2024 Glenn Erickson