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The Killer Is Loose (1956)
Wendell Corey not only kills, he steals the show.
That's not a rip on Joseph Cotten, who solid as a mildly henpecked cop whose wife's primary nag is to ask him to quit police work. But after the end of the movie, I didn't remember the last name of Cotten's character (Wagner). Or the name of his regrettably still living wife (who cares?) at all. What I remembered was Leon "Foggy" Poole.
First, to correct something I saw in a couple other comments, the cops did not kill Mrs. Poole through the door. After Leon calls out the cliché "you're not gonna take me" and shoots from the apartment wounding an officer, the cops then break in guns firing.. but it's Mrs. Poole in the middle of the room while Leon is over in a corner. If the police had taken a split second to look where they were shooting, they would have gotten the right person. Which is what sends Leon over the edge
But Corey as Poole is, even as a killer, a sympathetic character. In the apartment after the shooting he seems more dazed than crazed as he asks Wagner "Don't you see how wrong it was to do that?" The movie then jumps to Poole's trial, where he gives the calmest revenge threat I've ever seen. This IMHO is what makes Poole so memorable... he's so matter-of-fact about what he's doing. No hysterics or foaming at the mouth. At Otto's house when Otto's wife asks why Poole had to come there, he replies, "I had to come somewhere" as if holding your former sergeant's wife at gunpoint after breaking out of jail and killing 2 people happened every day.
Later on after killing Otto he asks the room at large, "what else could I do?" after Otto essentially talked himself into getting shot by reminding Poole how much stronger/faster/fresher he was. By trying to talk Poole into giving up, Otto instead ensured his own death... A great bit of irony.
This movie's only real weakness is that that Rhonda Fleming lives through it. Some movies would simply be better if the villain had won, and this is one of them. The idea that Poole, who had doubtless been fixating on Wagner's wife throughout his trial, wouldn't recognize her when she walks by him on her way home is ridiculous. The only explanation for this is that at this time (1956), production codes would not allow the criminal to get away with it. However, they could have at least had Poole kill the wife then get gunned by Wagner. Then maybe a dying Poole could tell Wagner, holding the body of his wife, something like "now you know". Instead, after a great 70 or so minutes, the so-called climax left me going "oh please" followed by "that's it?"
But the first 65+ minutes of this movie more than make up for the last 5. If you get a chance to see this movie, do it, and just rewrite the ending in your head :)
The Rainmaker (1956)
Interesting story, cast sabotage selves chewing scenery
Is there a 5-minute sequence anywhere in this movie where someone isn't either laughing, crying, yelling, throwing a punch, or more likely multiple characters doing all of the above? To me the best performance was easily Wendell Corey.. the only one not seemingly possessed by multiple personalities. His first scene about having a dog named "dog" is a great bit of "dramedy", and in the one-one-one with Hepburn he looks just like what File is... a man who might be in love but terrifed at the thought of showing his hand and getting burned. OK, right after the dog scene he does punch somebody, but "he had it coming"... and a nice swing too.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Blows me away every time I watch it
It's older than I am, it's in black and white, and I'm watching it for the 3rd time this week.
Take a U.S. patrol in Korea, have them led into capture, then suddenly the platoon is home, Sgt. Shaw (Laurence Harvey)has won the Congressional Medal Of Honor, and everything is peachy. Except that Ben Marco (Sinatra) wakes up screaming every night. And thereby hangs a alternately funny, frightening, satirical and tragic tale.
I'd always viewed Frank Sinatra as a singer who merely dabbled in acting. Then I saw this movie and was picking my jaw off the floor. The train scene with Janet Leigh is mesmerizing. Sinatra as Marco looks like a man about to completely disintegrate while trying not to show it in front of Leigh. It's so good that I didn't even question until after the movie why Rosie (Leigh) would give her address and phone # to a guy twitching so badly he can't light a cigarette. People have questioned what Leigh's character is for in this movie, as she's not in the armed forces, or politics, or a victim. It's simple... she's the sounding board so Marco can talk to somebody who doesn't think he's nuts, so he can get what he suspects off his chest before he does go nuts.
Anglea Lansbury as Raymond Shaw's mother is one of the scariest political creatures you'll ever meet. She yanks her senator husband around like a dog, sets up his speeches, yammers at Raymond until he just covers his ears, torpedoes his one true love affair for political revenge, and slanders any opposition as "communists". James Gregory as Senator Iselin is a cartoon caricature of Joe McCarthy who asks his wife to please give him just one number of known communists in the defense department so he can remember it and not look like an idiot.
And then there's Laurence Harvey as Raymond Shaw. For the first half of the movie, the unknowingly brainwashed Shaw is icy, disdainful, kills 2 people in the first 1/2 hour, and still a more sympathetic character than his mother. And then his walls come tumbling down while drinking with his new "friend" Marco. Starting with a typically Raymond cynical commentary on Christmas, a progressively drunker Shaw then spills the story of how he, a man who knows "I'm not lovable" fell in love with the daughter of Iselin's political enemy, Senator Jordan, only to have have his mother break them up. By the end of the scene, Shaw has crumpled into a hunchback on the brink of tears saying "I did love her, I do love her" Which makes what his mother does to him after that even more chilling.
The final dominoes (and bodies) fall leading up the party nomination convention, as Marco races to find Shaw before this man who Marco now really does consider a friend destroys himself along with his victims.
Although I do like Denzel Washington, this film never should have been remade. Some things you simply can't top.