PORTLAND EXPOSÉ (1957)

Allied Artists released this low-budget crime film. It was directed by Harold Schuster from a screenplay by Jack DeWitt. The jazz combo blast is Paul Dunlap's opening. The film was inspired by crime boss Jim Elkins and the McClellan Committee's investigation into Portland's underground criminal ventures for a decade after 1940. The "travelogue" opening narration encapsulates the city's beauty and surrounding scenery. A great place to call home. But the town has unseen problems: mobsters running amok. The film is pretty routine outside some hard-hitting and sleazy operatives taking over businesses, specifically the tavern, soon to be opened by Edward Binns and his wife, Virginia Gregg. A teenage daughter and younger son complete the family. A salesman pressures Binns into installing a pinball vending machine, arguing that it will make more money than a jukebox. Expect soap opera moments with Binns and Gregg as they wonder what they are getting into, using dull dialogue fit for a television episode.

A syndicate boss, Russ Conway, wants to infiltrate the labor unions. It will be no surprise to see the ever-present and versatile Lawrence Dobkin (sans toupee below) as Conway's right-hand man. Binns' tavern is targeted as it is near some blue-collar industrial plants. Conway enlists thugs, the unknown Joe Marr and up and up-and-coming star Frank Gorshin to convince Binns to install their machines. The multiple "sinball" machines end up making the tavern not exactly Cracker Barrel-friendly. Marr is just awful (maybe an actual thug) while Gorshin makes an impression here, near the beginning of his career, often cast in gangster or hoodlum parts. Speaking of impressions, for those old enough to remember his stellar caricature impersonations of famous actors, it is pretty funny watching Gorshin "method-act" his way through.

Binns catches the pedophilic Gorshin assaulting his daughter, and he is left horizontal and bloodied. Co-captain of the pinball team, actor Rusty Lane, arrives late that night in Conway's late model Thunderbird to meet Marr at a railroad warehouse. It is always a warehouse. Gorshin, still half unconscious in the back of Marr's sedan, is a skinny squealer by nature. Lane is not taking that chance. Gorshin's demise is—by all accounts—gruesome. And it is not even the halfway point of the film.

With assistance from the police, Binns is able to go undercover wearing a wiretap that doubles as a "hearing aid." The recorder is the size of a DVR under his suit. Conway and a skeptical Dobkin accept Binns into his racketeering business, with the former spilling the beans about his bigger operations. The pinball wizard handles everything like an experienced private detective—taking a beating and keeps on ticking. At one point, Jeanne Carmen (above) thrust herself on him. Her acting is so obvious, running neck-and-neck with Mr. Marr in the acting accolades. Note the sarcastic dialogue between Dobkin and Carmen, however. The prostitute is suspicious of Binns' hearing loss and informs her boss.

Knowing Binns has suddenly regained his hearing, he is transported to the obligatory warehouse where he is (naturally) beaten to a pulp. Binns is smirking most of the time until they threaten to blind his daughter with acid. He reveals where he has hidden the tapes. The thugs untie Binns from the "torture chair," but he springs to action, dispensing with some heavies, after hiding his daughter behind some crates. He strangely disappears from the film, leaving his daughter and the audience to wonder if he is still alive. A bit of strange directing. An arriving taxi—with no paying fares—leads two cars full of a rival union. They all casually step from the car as if it were movie night and appear rather reluctant to enter the warehouse with only their fists. A very brief, highly staged, and humorous rumble ensues. An upbeat closing narration closes the film to issue an "all clear" message. The citizens can breathe easy. 

Note: Many who lived near or in Portland, Oregon in the 1940s and 1950s knew or their children have found out the history of the veritable cesspool it was. Still a high-crime area today in the city's center, it has nothing to do with pinball machines. 

WITHOUT WARNING! (1952)

This seventy-seven-minute Allart Productions film noir falls into the unknown realm, though the year offered little, if any, exciting crime films as competition. It seems sandwiched neatly between larger-budget crime films from the prior and following years. From a story and script by William Raynor, the film does not break any new ground, but Adam Williams's sensitive performance will not disappoint. Most often in supporting roles, we witness his talent as he embodies his character's subtle mood shifts. He is first-rate. Do not pay much attention to the routine, dated police procedural segments, lab work, and the oft-used supporting voice-over narration. Focus on the camera work by Joseph Biroc, the editing by Arthur Nadel, and the powerful score by Herschel Burke Gilbert. The film was directed by Arnold Laven and shot in a semi-documentary style. There are many elemental details to this fine film, but it stumbles over a weak conclusion.

Williams is handsomely creepy as an unassuming, polite independent gardener. His living quarters add a visual to his pathetic existence—a small, run-down house in a low-income rural neighborhood overlooking the distant City of Angels. The serial killer returns exhausted with the startling realization of what he has done, yet a gentle grin emerges from his success. And he is compelled to do it all over again. On his belt hangs a leather sheath containing the sharpest garden shears in Orange County. Each month, another blonde female is found with the killer's same modus operandi. The emotionally scarred paranoiac kills, according to a police psychiatrist, in retribution for his unfaithful, equally blonde wife. One could understand his anger over his wife’s infidelity, but his psychological issues may have been simmering since his youth.

The killer has been very careful to cover any evidence. In that opening scene, he accidentally rips his suit coat and takes it to a tailor. As the next customer in line, the panic on his face indicates he realizes a piece of his coat was left behind in the motel room. He exits and returns home to incinerate the coat with his blood-stained shirt in his cast-iron stove. The guy is running out of clothes on a monthly basis. But mistakes accumulate. Tying the clues together falls on the shoulders of Edward Binns, the police detective in charge. I thought his character was a bit nonchalant, almost smirking, because he thought the murderer would be caught in short order, because his department was just that good. Yet he is no closer to solving the crimes after three weeks of investigation.

Some effective camera work is revealed through a shaky “hand-held” effect as it follows Williams wandering the streets at night, looking for his next “wife” to kill in a seedy part of town. Dressed in the only suit equipped with a pair of garden shears, he connects with his next victim in Sears Roebuck. No...in a bar. She instantly cozies up in her car with him for a night she will not remember. The following morning, Williams exits the car, appearing almost sick to his stomach. Two motorcycle cops spot the car parked illegally under a freeway overpass and investigate. In a panic, Williams gets back to the car with the officer asking what is wrong with “that dead lady.” He is asked to get out of the car, but the officer gets clobbered. Williams takes his gun and later wounds the other officer in pursuit, dumping the revolver beside the highway. Williams has played his hand at this point, and it is only about thirty minutes into the film.

After jumping off the back of a delivery truck, not too inconspicuously, he sprints on foot between rows of commercial loading docks, knocking over crates and dodging trucks to distance himself from the freeway. Mostly shot from an elevated position, Gilbert’s score is especially effective with a jazzy solo piano frantically playing only a few, repeated notes. I have always been impressed with actors of this period who are scripted to run at full speed in slick-soled leather dress shoes on concrete. Of course, unless you were playing a sport, it was what every man wore.

To entrap the murderer, blonde-haired—bleached or otherwise—undercover policewomen are sent to the streets to notice anyone fitting the killer’s tell-tale pattern of behavior. Preferably, before it is too late. Williams connects with one female officer (above) who is not particularly cool with the pressure of undercover work. They are heading to the beach, but he catches a view of a car in the rearview mirror and suspects a setup. Deviously smiling, he keeps driving up a winding road while never answering her persistent questions. She is wondering how the beach is accessible at such a high elevation. He stops. She exits, with only a cliff in front of her. In a clever turn, he pretends he is an honorable guy and tells her she can walk home from where they are, throwing her suspicions a curve. He drives to a spot where he sees her enter the tailing detective’s car. Williams confidently smiles. The police department have their man. Finding him is another matter.

Williams purchased his shears from a local greenhouse. The owner's daughter, co-star Meg Randall, is temporarily helping her father's business. “Creepy McWilliams” cannot help but stare...she has blonde hair. Randall becomes his next potential victim. The ending, frustratingly and implausibly, drags on, nearly ruining the intelligence of the film prior to this point. In addition, his final attempted murder goes against the serial killer’s pattern of late-night murders that had been established. Nevertheless, Binns and his partner arrive to find only a little neighbor girl standing by Williams' house. The reason for the interaction at all is simply for the girl to glance in the direction of Williams, crouching outdoors behind a discarded bookshelf, slightly off the property, with Randall. Perhaps hoping Williams would make a move, Binns and his partner appear to drive away. Randall finally breaks free and yells for help. As Williams begins to apply his shears, they are no match for six bullets. He was such a nice young man. Viewers only care about his fate, so the film ends instantly.

Note: This United Artists release is recommended, yet certainly not flawless. An unscripted filmed section that has no business in this film is pretty ridiculous, as Williams’ unsolved crimes become so famously exciting that people are confessing left and right for the notoriety. Among others, volunteering for incarceration is an elderly woman crocheting in the police department, or a man on the street pleading to be arrested. Any humor is redeemed during scenes with the police lab chemist. Byron Kane, playing a dry-witted police chemist who enjoys being smarter than detectives. He pours in a white powder into a glass flask and then a dark liquid. He offers some to a detective who drinks it without hesitation. Kane makes his coffee in a large Retort flask. 

VICE SQUAD (1953)

United Artists distributed this Gramercy Pictures (II) production. Not a great film on the whole, but it is quite satisfying with a script that elicits a fast pace. Judging by the dynamic, dangerous opening score by Hershel Burke Gilbert, one could get the idea that one is about to watch a hardened crime story. But it is as lighthearted as it is gritty. And it is not gritty. Sterling Hayden is not in the cast. It portrays a busy day in the life of the police department with enough characters and subplots to suit a typical episodic television drama show, some fifty years later. Five years later, Jack Hawkins played Gideon of Scotland Yard in a similar premise. There are at least four in this film that United Artists tapped into from the prior year: Adam Williams, Byron Kane, Edward Binns, Harlan Warde, and composer Hershel Burke Gilbert for Without Warning!.

The principal characters revealed in the film are related to one another in some way. The film lays all this out to resolve the main plot of the film, the murder of a police officer. Playing the police captain is Hollywood stalwart Edward G. Robinson. It is a joy to watch him juggle the script's characters in and out of his precinct. The captain has experience on his side. Calm and compassionate, he can be tough if necessary, breaking with police protocol to ensure justice is served. He deftly prioritizes the cases that arise and handles each with appropriate timing. Some encounters are rather humorous (see note below).

Known for his befuddled, confounded characters, Porter Hall (above) is simply exasperating here as a “respected” community businessman with no spine. His credentials usually can mask his illicit female encounters. He is not funny, but his predicament is. He witnessed the murder of the police officer. His attorney, Barry Kelly, assures him of an early release from custody. Both get a few slick runarounds by Robinson, with Kelly at his wits' end. Robinson is not letting Hall go until he uncovers the truth.

Jay Adler is perfect as the quintessential, nervous weasel with a season pass to the vice squad's interrogation room. Adler has relevant information, but his memory is foggy due to fear for his own life. Robinson lets him sweat it out until his “fog” clears. With great reluctance, he lets it slip about an upcoming bank robbery. 

Christine White portrays a daughter concerned that her elderly, gullible mother is being taken by a two-timer who calls himself a Count. Robinson explains that falling in love is no crime, but he will look into the matter. The Captain is concerned enough to have the charming Count brought in for questioning. Robinson relies on a professor of psychology, also a linguistic expert, played by Byron Kane, to assess whether he is telling the truth. While the doctor is of Italian heritage, the Count's fake dialect puts him far from Italy. Indeed, he is an American citizen, likely from the Midwest. It is a delightfully slick procedure.

Paulette Goddard gets second billing here. I got the feeling she relished the part. The police captain and her character have a mutual understanding. She runs a lady's "escort bureau” and has provided Robinson with valuable information in the past. Robinson needs to have her come to the precinct about a young buck with a thing for one of her ladies. She says she cannot possibly come immediately. Robinson puts her on hold about three times, giving two officers time to arrive and take her downtown. 

Adam Williams is the laid-back lady's man, currently set to help pull off a bank robbery. He had an alibi during the opening murder scene. Taking part in a robbery will likely send him back to the "big house." He skips out right before the bank heist. Gilbert's pounding score is effective leading up to the robbery. Officers are positioned throughout the bank in a typically tense situation. A clichéd female bank hostage gives Ed Binns and his wheelman, Lee Van Cleef, a living exit over the other two partners. Gilbert's score intensifies the suspense at the hideout as the hostage attempts to escape. 

Williams, the cool, quiet guy, suddenly becomes a blue ribbon champion at a state fair's “Angry Yelling” contest once apprehended and questioned about who committed the officer's murder. Perhaps he was bipolar all along. Another clever ploy by Robinson gets the information he wanted. Binns leaves the warehouse horizontally limp during his attempted escape. The only one of the gang recommended for the state's room and board is Van Cleef.

Note: Percy Helton (top image) turns in a brief, memorably humorous performance. Because of more pressing issues, Robinson keeps him waiting, fully aware of his condition. Helton is being followed by shadows. Television pictures all over him. Especially on Wednesdays. The police captain compassionately states that he simply needs a “witness” to legally have the police look into the matter. Helton sincerely has no clue how to find one. Robinson suggests a local psychiatrist. Helton is highly encouraged.