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 and lab work. 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 with voice-over narration in “Dragnet” fashion. 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 rural neighborhood overlooking the distant City of Angels. Few would peg him as a serial killer, but his guilt is no surprise to the moviegoer from the opening scene. He returns exhausted with the startling realization of what he has done, yet a gentle grin emerges for its success. And he is compelled to do it all over again. On his belt hangs a leather sheath containing garden shears. He gives a literal meaning to the term, “backstabber.” 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. I can understand his anger over his wife’s infidelity, but to become a serial killer because of this suggests his psychological issues may have been simmering since childhood.

The killer has been very careful to cover evidence of his crimes. In that opening scene, he accidentally rips his suit coat and plans to have a tailor repair it. 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 and 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, Angela Stevens, in Sears Roebuck. No...in a bar. With the same possible outcome after arranging a blind date through social media, 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. Mostly shot from an elevated position, Gilbert’s score is especially effective with a jazzy solo piano frantically playing as Williams tries to create distance from the freeway. 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 is 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 her nervously looking into 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 to find only a cliff in front of her. In a clever bit of scripting, 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.

Williams purchased the sharpest shears in Orange County 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 of Randall goes against the serial killer’s pattern that was established earlier. Nevertheless, Binns and his partner arrive to find only a little neighbor girl standing by Williams' house. It is apparent Binns does not have children of his own as he attempts to bribe her with clichéd child communication. He even offers her a stick of gum, which she smartly declines. It is a little awkward. 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. This also explains why Randall has not yet kicked Williams and let out a scream prior to that glance. Perhaps hoping Williams would make a move, Binns and his partner start 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, focused on Williams’ dormant face.

Note: This United Artists release is recommended, yet certainly not perfect. An unscripted filmed section, with voice-over only, 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 then a man on the street pleading to be arrested. Perhaps an attempt for laughs but it certainly has no relevance in the film. Humor is redeemed during a scene in the police lab. Byron Kane, playing a dry-witted police chemist, pours a white powder and then a dark liquid into a large Retort flask. He offers some to a detective who drinks it without hesitation. Kane, in a bit of lab humor, makes coffee in his lab beaker.