The Blue Max (1966)

The Blue Max is perhaps the most underrated of all movies dealing with aerial combat in the First World War. In fact this 1966 British production is very underrated in general.

Unusually this movie looks at things from the German side. This is more than a mere novelty approach. Apart from the usefulness of showing us that the stresses of war are the same regardless of which side you’re on the class issue which is at the heart of the plot works more effectively this way, the gulf between the old Prussian nobility who dominated the officer corps in Imperial Germany being even more extreme than in other countries.

Bruno Stachel (George Peppard) is an infantryman who finally, in 1918, gets the chance to serve in the air services as a fighter pilot. This also means promotion. Corporal Stachel is now an officer. Stachel is of relatively humble birth and he soon comes to realise that this will be an issue. The pilots are all officers, and they are drawn more or less exclusively from the upper classes. It’s not that they treat him badly as such. In general they don’t. The difficulty is that they have a set of shared cultural values and ideas about honour, and he does not share those values. His behaviour is misinterpreted simply because his way of approaching life, and more importantly his way of fighting a war, is different.

It is immediately obvious that Stachel is a very good pilot. Very good indeed. No-one doubts his skill or his courage. The question is over his honour. And these are men who take honour very seriously indeed. If Stachel had proved himself to be dishonourable there would have been no problem. They would simply have got rid of him. The big problem is that Stachel’s actions are ambiguous, and could be interpreted either way. The unease of the squadron’s commanding officer Colonel Otto Heidemann (Karl Michael Vogler) steadily grows even as Stachel proves himself more and more to be a a very successful fighter pilot.

Willi von Klugermann (Jeremy Kemp) is the squadron’s leading ace and his twentieth aerial victory has won him the coveted Pour le Mérite (popularly known as the Blue Max), the highest German decoration for skill and bravery. Stachel is determined to win the Blue Max as well. He sees it as the only way he can truly prove himself.

There is a certain tension between the aristocratic von Klugermann and Stachel, a tension that develops into a fierce rivalry. It is not just that Stachel shows himself to be a formidable rival in the air; they will also become rivals for the affections of the beautiful Countess Kaeti von Klugermann (Ursula Andress), the wife of General Count von Klugermann (James Mason). The General also happens to be Willi’s uncle. The rivalry between the two flyers is the key to the plot, directly or indirectly influencing every major plot point.

The plot might sound conventional and predictable but the way it is worked out is anything about. The movie manages to avoid all the obvious pitfalls. It avoids any kind of obviousness or clumsiness by making the characters complex, and the relationships between them even more complex.

Stachel is an outsider but the screenplay does not make the mistake of making him working class, which would be too obvious. He is middle class, but only just. He might not be as cultured as the other officers but he’s certainly not an uneducated yokel. What matters is that he is outside the upper classes. How far outside doesn’t matter.


Stachel and Willi von Klugermann are rivals but it is a rivalry tempered by a certain mutual respect. Stachel is a worthy and very formidable rival and von Klugermann finds the competition stimulating. He enjoys the competition. He is even amused by Stachel’s temerity in actually daring to pursue von Klugermann’s aunt, and when Stachel succeeds in his pursuit Willi is more irritated at being beaten than actually upset. After all it’s not as if Willi and Kaeti were in love. Their relationship was purely sexual, just another aristocratic amusement. Jeremy Kemp’s superb performance help the film considerably. For all his aristocratic manners and his sophisticated disdain for conventional sexual morality he is much more than a mere stereotype.

Colonel Heidemann strongly disapproves of Stachel but even in this case there is a grudging respect, and Heidemann is too much of a gentleman to condemn a man unless or until he has actual proof that the man has behaved dishonourably. Heidemann is a man who follows a very strict moral code but again the actor involved (in this case Karl Michael Vogler) gives him some depth.

Ursula Andress for once gets not only a good role but a challenging one. The Countess’s actions could easily lead the audience to view her as the scheming femme fatale but Andress makes her human. It’s by far the best performance I’ve ever sen her give.

That James Mason is good is no surprise at all. What is surprising is that even though the General is the least sympathetic of all the characters we understand why he does certain things even when we’re horrified by them.

The key of course is George Peppard’s performance, which has come in for a good deal of  criticism. I’m perplexed by this, but then I’m perplexed by the extent to which this actor is routinely under-appreciated. In this film he faces one of his biggest acting challenges. He has to avoid making Stachel a conventional hero but he also has to avoid making him an antihero. For the movie to work the audience has to continue to care about Stachel’s fate even when he really does cross the line and commit a clearly dishonourable and reprehensible act. Stachel is arrogant but it has to be a different sort of arrogance to von Klugermann’s effortless aristocratic arrogance. He has to be arrogant but without being obnoxious. Stachel’s problem is not that he is generally speaking a bad man, or even a weak man. He simply fails to understand the unwritten rules which are second nature to the other officers. He decides to play by his own rules, but he is going to play to win. The audience has to see his fall from grace as being genuinely tragic, a mistake he cannot undo, and a mistake that can be seen as an understandable response to an implied insult that no German officer (regardless of class) could fail to be provoked by.

Peppard’s problem seems to have been that he was an unfashionable actor. At a time when the exaggerated and somewhat histrionic Method style was all the rage Peppard clearly belonged to a much more understated less-is-more school of acting. If in doubt Peppard would always underplay rather than overplay. In truth he was a fine actor and his performance in this film is subtle but entirely effective. He captures all the nuances of Stachel’s character and he makes him a living breathing human being. There’s not much more an actor can do.

The aerial sequences are stunning and this is a movie that does not stint on the action scenes. Douglas Slocombe’s cinematography is superb. A lot of money was spent on this film, and it was well spent.

The Blue Max does not take the obvious anti-war stance that you generally expect in films of this sort. This is a movie about old-fashioned virtues like courage and honour, although it explores them with a fair amount of complexity. This movie also avoids obviousness in its treatment of class. Some of the upper class characters behave badly while others display bravery and honour of a very high order. Whether their views are better or worse than Stachel’s isn’t the issue; the issue is that they see things differently.

The Blue Max delivers intelligent and spectacular entertainment. It’s a movie that really needs to be seen on the big screen, or at least on a big widescreen TV. The DVD release is barebones but the transfer is excellent. Very highly recommended.

No Limit (1931)

For Clara Bow the transition from silent movies to talkies was an uneasy period to say the least. By 1933 she had decided to call it a day. Countless explanations have been offered for this premature end to a glittering career, from chronic weight problems to nervousness in front of the microphone to mental illness. In fact her career fadeout had a great deal to do with the sound films she was offered. No Limit is a movie that could kill any star’s career.

Bow plays Helen O’Day (known to all as Bunny), a theatre usherette who is asked by a casual acquaintance to look after after his apartment while he’s at sea working in the merchant marine. Much to Bunny’s surprise the apartment turns out to be more like a palace than an apartment. There’s an even bigger surprise in store for her - the apartment is simply a front for a very high-stakes illegal gambling club. Bunny soon finds herself with a great deal of money but of course there are complications. For one thing, her handsome new boyfriend  Doug Thayer (Norman Foster) is really a gangster.



The basic setup could have provided the basis for a breezy romantic comedy but No Limit suffers from a problem that afflicts so many movies of the pre-code era - no-one involved in the project seemed to have the least idea what kind of picture they were trying to make. The movie shuttles back and forth between its romantic comedy plot and its gangster subplot. The sudden changes in mood occur without explanation and without any discernible reason. The problem is made considerably worse by lengthy and totally irrelevant comic relief interludes.

Even worse, the comedy parts of the movie are sadly lacking in laughs while the dramatic sections are equally lacking in drama. It gives the impression of several bad movies spliced together quite randomly.

The only member of the cast with any noticeable comedic skills is Bow herself. In fact she’s the only member of the cast with any acting ability of any variety. Had the movie remained focused on her it might have been bearable but the focus keeps shifting away from her.



Bow gives her rôle everything she’s got but given that her talents lay mostly in the area of comedy she’s far too often left high and dry by the overwhelming dullness of the script. She manages to make Bunny likeable enough but it’s not enough to keep an audience interested.

Director Frank Tuttle’s approach is competent but pedestrian and the pacing is far too slow. The 72-minute running time seems like an eternity.

The art deco sets are fabulous but they are really the only high points in the movie.



Like most of Bow’s talkies No Limit has never been given a decent DVD release. Perhaps that’s understandable in this case in view of the movie’s complete lack of  appeal.

Apart from the occasional mildly risque line there’s not much to distinguish this film as an example of pre-code cinema.

Clara Bow completists might be able to endure this movie but anyone else would be well advised to give it a big miss.

Prince Valiant (1954)

Prince Valiant is a spectacular adventure based on the popular comic strip of the same name. 20th Century-Fox clearly spared no expense in this 1954 production and the results are richly rewarding.

Prince Valiant (Robert Wagner) is the son of a Christian Viking king, King Aguar (Donald Crisp), whose throne has been usurped by the traitorous Sligon. The king and his family are living in exile in a remote monastery under the protection of the King of the Britons, Arthur. Prince Valiant is sent to Camelot to become a knight. He finds it’s much harder work than he expected. A chance encounter with one of Arthur’s bravest knights, Sir Gawain (Sterling Hayden), proves to be a lucky one for the young Viking prince. Valiant becomes Sir Gawain’s squire.

On his way to Camelot Valiant had encountered the mysterious Black Knight. The Black Knight is rumoured to be a ghost although Gawain is inclined to believe he is a man, and a villain.

Sir Brack (James Mason) is one of Arthur’s most trusted knights although he and Valiant seem suspicious of each other. When Sir Brack sets off to find the Black Knight Valiant tags along. This almost costs him his life. Grievously wounded by brigands he is nursed back to health by Aleta (Janet Leigh), the daughter of a minor king. Valiant and Aleta fall in love. Aleta’s sister Ilene (Debra Paget) is in love with Sir Gawain. This should all work out neatly but a series of misunderstandings threatens to wreck the happiness of Valiant and Aleta. There is a further complication - Aleta’s father is determined that his daughter should wed the knight who wins the upcoming tournament at Camelot. And to add a further complication, Sir Brack is determined to be the one who wins Aleta’s hand.

Prince Valiant soon lands himself in strife, but there is even bigger trouble brewing for him. He must break his word to King Arthur in order to save his father’s kingdom.

The script by Dudley Nichols is serviceable enough but the real attractions here are the pageantry and some spectacular action scenes. Director Henry Hathaway pulls off some impressive set-pieces. The climactic sequences at King Aguar’s castle are a major highlight.

There are some problems here though. You won’t have any trouble guessing who the villain is. Robert Wagner lacks the charisma needed for a swashbuckling hero and Sterling Hayden is ludicrously miscast. Janet Leigh and Debra Paget are fine but they get very little to do and the supporting players in general are a little on the dull side although Victor McLaglen livens things up somewhat as a Viking faithful to the rightful king. Fortunately James Mason is on hand to rescue the movie with a delightfully over-the-top performance.

Franz Waxman’s score helps keep the excitement bubbling along. Location shots and matte paintings are integrated quite well to create the settings. The costumes and sets are as you’d expect in a major studio release.

Of course the movie makes absolutely no sense historically with some of the anachronisms being enough to give a history buff apoplexy. But it’s based on  a comic strip and the producers, quite correctly, were more concerned in remaining faithful to the spirit of the comic strip rather than to history. If the armour is nearly a thousand years too late for King Arthur’s time I’m prepared to overlook that. After all King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have a much stronger basis in legend than in historical fact.

Sadly the Region 4 DVD is rather sub-standard. This is a movie that relies a great deal on its visual impact, being shot in Cinemascope and Technicolor. The transfer is anamorphic but the colours are slightly faded and fluctuate quite a bit which can be irritating and distracting. The colour balance just seems to be slightly wrong. The picture could also be a bit sharper. These same flaws are apparently present in other region releases and even in the UK Blu-Ray release.

If you tried to take this movie seriously you could find plenty of flaws here but why would you want to take a movie based on a comic strip seriously? Treat it as harmless fun and you’ll enjoy it.

The Party's Over (1965)

The Party's Over has been released as a dual-format Blu-Ray and DVD edition by the British Film Institute in their Flipside series. The series presents odd and offbeat British movies of the 60s and is interesting in giving us a look at some completely forgotten moments in British cinema. Sadly some of these moments really are best forgotten, including this film.

The movie had a troubled history and the first thing that needs to be noted is that despite its 1965 release date it was in fact made in 1962. That’s important because if you view it as a 1965 film it looks hopelessly dated, as indeed it was by the time it finally reached cinema screens in 1965.

The subject matter here is the beatnik sub-culture, a forerunner of the hippies and other counter-culture movements of the 60s and 70s. The beatniks were every bit as self-righteous and irritating as the sub-cultures that followed them.

A clean-cut and very conventional young American businessman named Carson (Clifford David) arrives in London. He’s looking for his fiancée who has joined a beatnik crowd and is enjoying the hedonistic lifestyle of this sub-culture. Or rather she’s not enjoying it since it consists mostly of pompous would-be artists and poets getting drunk and getting stoned and jumping in and out of bed with each other and making their lives as wretched as they can. They’re rejecting the materialism of their parents and protesting the wickedness of the system so it’s obviously important to be as miserable and self-destructive as possible.

The leader of this annoying bunch of half-wits is a prize half-wit named Moise (Oliver Reed).

Carson finds that his fiancée, Melina, is avoiding him. Moise has been trying to get her into bed, without success. He’s become obsessed with her. Almost as obsessed with her as he is with himself. One of the other losers among this crowd, Phil, thinks he’s in love with her. Carson finds an ally of sorts in Nina (Catherine Woodville). Nina has started to tire of the infantile lifestyle of the beatniks and decides that maybe a man who is not a pathetic loser might be a better bet than any of her erstwhile companions. She’s ready to leave the kindergarten and join the grown-up world.

But tragedy is about to strike the beatniks, confronting those who still have a few brain cells left with the possibility that maybe it’s time all of them stopped playing in the sandpit and grew up. Maybe the party’s over, and not before time.

The movie had endless problems with the British censor which delayed its release for several years and caused director Guy Hamilton and the producers to remove their names from the credits in protest at the censor’s cuts. Not having his name attached to this turkey was probably a lucky break for Hamilton. OK, I can see what he was trying to say. His view of the movie is that the message was that if you’re going to reject society’s values then you’d better have something workable to replace them with, which of course the beatniks don’t have. It’s a valid message that does come across fairly well. The problem is the clumsy script, the cringe-inducing dialogue, the listless directing, the repellant nature of the characters and the generally poor acting. Even Oliver Reed is bad, and I’m a huge Oliver Reed fan.

At one point the chief censor suggested a new ending be added which would see the entire beatnik crew run over by a bus. To me that idea had considerable merit but I’d have put it at the beginning. That way we’d have had a tedious three-minute film instead of a tedious 95-minute film.

As a look at beatnik culture it’s as depressing as beatnik culture really was. Overgrown children thinking they’d discovered the answer to all of society’s ills by wallowing in their own vomit while spouting excruciatingly bad poetry.

You can almost enjoy this movie if you approach it as a so-bad-it’s-good movie, except that it’s too long and too dull. If you want a more entertaining British look at this sorry sub-culture you’re better off with Beat Girl (1960). The Party's Over just takes itself too seriously.

I compared the DVD and Blu-Ray transfer and to me they look identical, so I have no idea why the BFI bothered with the Blu-Ray. Both transfers are good although there’s quite a bit of print damage. There’s an informative booklet that takes this dreadful movie almost as seriously as it takes itself.

Murder by Contract (1958)

Many books on the subject will tell you that film noir was all but dead by the mid-50s and that Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil represented noir’s last gasp. That hasn’t stopped various corporations from releasing a lot of late 50s movies on DVD under the noir banner in recent years. Some of these movies are at best only marginally noir but many are nonetheless quite interesting. Murder by Contract, released by Columbia in 1958 and included in the Columbia Film Noir Classics I boxed set, is a pertinent example and it’s a very interesting film indeed.

Claude (Vince Edwards) has a good steady job but he’s a young man in a hurry. If he waits he will get the things he wants but he doesn’t want to wait and he think that guys who are prepared to wait are suckers. Vince isn’t going to be that kind of sucker. He’s going to have what he wants now. So he makes a career change. He decides to become a hitman.

At first he does pretty well. He gains a reputation as something of an eccentric - he dislikes having anything to do with guns. But he also gains a reputation for success. Claude is a careful planner and he takes an innovative and imaginative approach to the job.

Then comes the Williams job. If Claude had been told the details he would never have accepted to contract. The target is a woman and Claude isn’t happy about that. It should be noted that his unhappiness about the job has nothing to do with chivalry. Claude considers women to be too unpredictable. To carry out a contract you have to get to know the target’s habits, you have to be able to anticipate their actions, and that’s much too difficult with women.

In fact Claude has a decidedly odd attitude towards women. He dislikes them because he doesn’t understand them. Claude is an orderly man and women offend his sense of order.

The Williams job takes Claude to LA. His contacts there are George (Herschel Bernardi) and Marc (Phillip Pine). Billie Williams is a nightclub singer who had been the girlfriend of a top mobster and now she’s been persuaded to testify against him. Her testimony promises to be devastating which is why she’s had a contract taken out on her. George and Marc are key henchmen of the gangster in question and if he goes down they go down, so they have a personal interest in this contract.

George and Marc are mystified by Claude’s leisurely and eccentric approach to the hit. Since Claude likes to take his time and since George and Marc are not going to let him out of their sight until the job is completed these three men will get to know each other rather well, and while they’re getting to know each other the audience is getting to know a great deal about all three. Marc doesn’t really trust Claude right from the beginning. He thinks he’s a screwball. George is inclined to agree about this but he is also inclined to believe that Claude is a genius. The uneasy relationship between these three men becomes one of the key elements in this movie.

The tone of the movie is somewhat odd. At times it seems to veer ever so slightly into the realm of black comedy with an existentialist flavour to it. At times it also seems to have a certain absurdist quality to it. It’s all done with admirable understatement but these elements seem to me to be clearly there. A modern film-maker would have bludgeoned the audience with these things but director Irving Lerner and screenwriter Ben Simcoe prefer to rely on subtlety. In fact there is so much in his movie that would have been ruined by the more obvious approach in vogue today.

Visually this movie is all California sunshine, and in this case and given the movie’s subtle oddness it’s a more appropriate choice than noir shadows. You can still meet a film noir fate in bright sunshine. Lucien Ballard was responsible for the cinematography and he and director Lerner make all the right choices.

On a superficial level Claude might not seem a typical noir protagonist but in fact he does fulfill many of the requirements of such a protagonist. He seems to lack the necessary desperation and fatalism but in his own way he’s a noir loser. He’s doomed by excessive self-confidence and ambition rather than lust for a femme fatale but his less obvious character flaws lead him to make the bad decisions we expect from a noir character. He thinks he is ideally qualified to be a hitman but he’s wrong.

It possibly could be argued that there was a distinctive “late noir protagonist” and that Claude in this movie and Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success are representative of the type. Those who like to take a particular political view of the world, the view that is so very popular in film schools and academia in general today, will doubtless try to argue that Claude is a victim of the American Dream. In fact Claude is a victim of his own ambition. There always have been and always will be men who think they can take a shortcut to success and that’s merely a common human weakness, a reflection of human nature rather than of society. If there’s one thing that unites film noir protagonists it’s an unwillingness to take responsibility for their own dumb decisions.

Those who only know Vince Edwards from the long-running Ben Casey TV series will find his performance here to be a revelation. He carefully avoids the obvious clichés and keeps everything low-key which makes Claude’s character quirks all the more disturbing. It really is a very effective performance. Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine are also excellent and provide perfect foils for Claude. I don’t know if Quentin Tarantino is a fan of this movie but I’d be surprised if he isn’t. The interplay between these three hoodlums is the sort of thing that would appeal to him, although of course it’s done in a much more subtle style compared to his own approach.

The strange but effective guitar score, clearly influenced by The Third Man, should also be mentioned.

The transfer (from the Columbia Film Noir Classics I boxed set) is anamorphic and it’s excellent. The only extra of note is a brief introduction by Martin Scorcese which is a pity since this movie would have provided plenty of material for a commentary track.

Murder by Contract is offbeat noir but it’s really a little gem of a movie in its own odd way. Very highly recommended.

Secret Service of the Air (1939)

Secret Service of the Air was the first of four Brass Bancroft thrillers made by Warner Brothers in 1939 and 1940. All four starred Ronald Reagan as Secret Service man Lieutenant Brass Bancroft.

This movie gets off to a flying start, literally, with some great aerial scenes. The opening sequence in the monoplane bringing illegal aliens into the United States is pure B-movie magic. I won’t spoil it by giving any hints about what happens in this sequence. Then we get some great shots of a Clipper flying boat. OK, they’re stock footage, but if you’re an early aviation geek you’re going to be in bliss over the scenes of a Martin M-130 making a landing in San Francisco Bay. Brass Bancroft is the pilot of the Oriental Express Clipper service.

All this serves to emphasise that Brass Bancroft is an aviator, and a good aviator is exactly what the Secret Service needs on this case. They need to bust an alien smuggling ring wide open. To do that Bancroft will have to be on the inside and first he needs to establish his criminal credentials. The Secret Service arranges this by arresting him on a phony counterfeiting charge. In the penitentiary he makes contact with Ace Hemrich. The Secret Service is pretty sure Hemrich is involved in the alien smuggling racket and they’re right. Bancroft discovers that being a Secret Service agent is a pretty grueling business. You get mixed up in all sorts of criminal capers and you end up getting shot at by the police and of course there’s no way of telling the cops that you’re one of the good guys!

Brass gets himself into the gang when they find themselves short of a pilot and he finds that there’s danger in the air as well. Being in the Secret Service can also play havoc with your love life - dames aren’t always that well pleased when they see you being carted off to prison and when you’re sworn to secrecy you can’t tell them you’re not a real crook.

Providing the comic relief that Hollywood studios in this era believed to be so necessary is Eddie Foyle Jr as Brass’s radio operator on the Clipper, Gabby Watters. He keeps turning up unnecessarily and annoyingly throughout the movie and he’s painfully unfunny. The love interest is provided by Ila Rhodes as Pamela Schuyler, the daughter of the head of the airline for which Brass had been working. She’s quite adequate. The same can be said  for John Litel as Saby, Brass’s controller in the Secret Service.

 Ronald Reagan is the star though and he does a fine job. He’s suitably heroic and he’s convincing in the action scenes and he comes across as the sort of likeable hero whose further adventures an audience would be happy to follow in further movies in the series.

A thriller of this type obviously has to have plenty of action and this movie has that commodity in ample supply. There’s a rather impressive (by B-movie standards) car chase, there are gunfights and fist fights, and there’s aerial adventure and stunt flying. The plot may have a few holes in it but the pace is fast enough that an audience is unlikely to have time to worry over such petty details.

Noel M. Smith was an incredibly prolific director of low-budget features and watching this movie it’s easy to see why he was in demand. There’s no time for anything fancy in B-pictures like this; you just have to get on with the job and Smith does that and does it well.

The Warner Archive Brass Bancroft of the Secret Service set has all four movies on two made-on-demand DVDs. The transfer on this first movie is extremely good.

Secret Service of the Air is a particularly fine example of the 1930s Hollywood B-movie - well-crafted, fast-paced, action-packed unpretentious fun with a likeable hero. What’s not to like here? Highly recommended.

The Sniper (1952)

The Sniper forms part of the Columbia Film Noir Classics I DVD boxed set. Whether this movie really belongs in a film noir collection at all might well be a matter for doubt. One thing that is not in doubt is that this is an extremely bad movie, albeit a fairly well-made bad movie.

The first worrying sign comes in the opening credits - the dreaded words A Stanley Kramer Production. If you’re anything like me your response to this will be to mutter under your breath, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” It’s a perfectly understandable response and the movie goes on to provide ample proof that sometimes prejudices are actually perfectly valid. And prejudices against Stanley Kramer movies are very valid indeed.

Edward Dmytryk directed this film in 1952. It’s an early example of the Hollywood obsession with serial killers, an obsession that would become more and more tedious with every passing year.

Eddie Miller (Arthur Franz) is a disturbed young man. He hates women. And he has a rifle. He likes to find a nice secluded spot where he can’t be seen and aim his rifle at women and pretend to pull the trigger. Eddie knows he has a problem. He has tried to telephone the psychiatrist who was treating him in prison but the doctor is on holidays. So he deliberately burns his hand. When he goes to the Emergency Room maybe he will get the help he needs. Surely they will recognise his act as a cry for help? Unfortunately they’re too busy in the Emergency Room treating sick people. It never occurs to Eddie that maybe the best way to get help might be to tell the doctor at the Emergency Room about his problem.

Pretty soon Eddie goes beyond just pretending to pull the trigger. He kills his first victim. Eddie is really upset about this. Can’t people see that he needs help? He sends an anonymous note to the police asking them to stop him. And he keeps killing.

Lieutenant Frank Kafka (Adolphe Menjou) is a grizzled veteran on the Homicide Squad. He knows he’s dealing with a psycho but psychos are a bit out of his line. Luckily he can call on the police psychiatrist, Dr James Kent (Richard Kiley). Dr Kent is an Expert. Dr Kent knows the police are going about this all wrong and his frustration brings on the first of the movie’s speeches (there will be plenty more to follow). The gist of Dr Kiley’s long-winded speechifying is that this is a problem that could be solved if only the government could be made to realise what has to be done. If only more laws could be passed. If only governments were given greater powers. If only psychiatrists were given greater powers. Much greater powers. If only lots and lots of government was spent and the country could then be turned into one gigantic mental hospital with the right people in charge. The right people being, naturally, psychiatrists like Dr Kent.

You keep waiting for Dr Kent to tell us that the killer isn’t really the guilty one, that society is to blame. And sure enough that’s exactly what he tells us.

Meanwhile Eddie keeps killing, and Dr Kent keeps giving speeches. Sometimes he gets tired so then Lt Kafka takes over the speech-making. Kafka knows instinctively that Dr Kent is right. After all Dr Kent is a psychiatrist.

This is a movie that certainly has that Stanley Kramer signature. It reeks of Stanley Kramer. For Kramer this subject is just perfect for a Social Problem Movie. I’m inclined to suspect that Kramer rather than director Dmytryk was responsible for the faults of this movie. They’re the same faults you find in every other movie Kramer was involved with. The pacing is rather leaden but there again Kramer may have been more guilty than Dmytryk of wanting to pad the movie out with speeches. Edna Anhalt and Edward Anhalt who wrote the story and scriptwriter Harry Brown must take some responsibility as well although they may simply have been giving Kramer what he wanted.

The acting doesn’t help either. Arthur Franz tries to put as much angst as he can into the role. He does a lot of grimacing, which apparently means he’s suffering badly. It’s a slightly embarrassing performance. Adolphe Menjou seems rather subdued which may indicate that he was aware of just how bad the movie was going to be. Richard Kiley is extraordinarily pompous and irritating as the psychiatrist who wants to save the world if only someone would give him the sweeping and absolute powers he so clearly craves. It’s perhaps not fair to be too hard on Kiley. The dialogue he is given would have defeated a much better actor.

Just in case we haven’t yet got the message the ending pulls out all the stops to emphasise that Eddie is just a Victim Of An Uncaring Society. I imagine we’re supposed to be shedding tears although in my case it was more likely to induce vomiting.

Despite all these flaws The Sniper does have some redeeming qualities. The movie was largely shot on location and Dmytryk makes superb use of the San Francisco locations and while cinematographer Burnett Guffey avoids the usual noir techniques he gives us some memorable visual moments and the claustrophobic feel of noir is certainly there. Dmytryk is generally very strong when it comes to using images to counterpoint the plot points, and he pulls off some impressive visual set-pieces. This was an A-picture and it has A-picture production values.

If you’re prepared to buy the movie’s line that poor Eddie is a victim of a wicked and callous society then you might feel it qualifies as film noir. If you’re like me and you see him as a vicious loser than you might be more sceptical of its noir credentials.

The DVD transfer is excellent. The extras include a commentary track from Eddie Muller. Muller has some interesting points to make about this movie and he does his best to sell it to us. He also once again takes the opportunity to browbeat us about the blacklist, a subject that really has been done to death by this point.

The Sniper is an object lesson in how to make a bad movie even when you have at least some of the right ingredients. It tries to bludgeon the viewer into agreeing with it whilst failing to deliver enough in the way of suspense. I suffered through the 88 tedious minutes of this movie but there’s no reason why others should suffer as I did. Take my advice and avoid this one.