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"The Killer Is Loose"(1956) , Hitchcock, and Psycho

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I have some weird history with a 1956 black and white "sorta B, sorta noir" movie called "The Killer is Loose."

I remember it coming on the "4:30 afternoon movie" in the 60's when I was a kid(where you could also find Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt) and being intrigued by its spooky title sequence painting and its 1950's ambiance. Even in the 60's, the 50's "at the movies" seemed a long time ago, and the opening of "The Killer is Loose" gave us a gray Los Angeles where all the men wore suits and hats and the West Los Angeles area was 'wide open spaces" with some banal buildings on clean streets.

I lost track of "The Killer is Loose" for DECADES and then I bought a book of reviews written by Francois Truffaut called "The Films of My Life" which collected reviews he wrote for Cahiers du Cinema in the 50s before becoming a film director(though the book also had some special "new" reviews of movies like Frenzy.) A major director each got a section, the Hitchcock section did NOT have Truffaut's review of Psycho...but it did have reviews of To Catch a Thief, The Wrong Man, The Birds, and Frenzy.

Truffaut's reviews were pretty funny. He was an "angry young man' who could write something like "I"ve just seen Mervyn LeRoy's The Bad Seed...and I never want to see a Mervyn Leroy film again!" He shot down "The Bridge on the River Kwai" as "alternating scenes of second unit action and old fogies talking."

And in a section on a director named Budd Boetticher , Truffaut included a review of "The Killer is Loose."

I was tickled. Hell, I hadn't seen that movie even AROUND since I was a kid. It had disappeared. Did it matter?

Well, in 1956, it sort of mattered to Francois Truffaut. As I recall, he liked the movie and felt that one of its stars, Wendell Corey, in disguise at the end, "looked like a duck."

Flash forward a few more decades. Thanks to the miracle of streaming --" The Killer is Loose" was available to me to watch. And I did.

First I noticed that the credit painting I found so scary as a kid...wasn't. My brain wasn't fully formed yet.

And now, some random thoughts:

THE CAST. The three stars of "The Killer is Loose" are Joseph Cotton(as an LA plainclothes cop); Rhonda Fleming(as his beautiful, pregnant wife) and Wendell Corey (as the killer who is loose.) Well, that's three Hitchcock actors. Uncle Charlie, famously(but Cotton was also in Under Capricorn.) Rear Window for Corey(made only two years before THIS, and THIS was much cheaper and less important looking.) Spellbound for Fleming -- my memory is weak on that Hitchcock, but wasn't she a seductive but crazy inmate at the institution?

Cotton(my computer always autocorrects the spelling wrong), Corey, and Fleming are the "big Hitchcock names here," but "The Killer is Loose" hits a Trifecta of Hitchcock cops(well, three movies, four cops) from his three greatest movies, in "The Killer is Loose."

From Vertigo: Paul Bryar, the actor who played Stewart's "cop boss" who comes to support him at the San Juan Bautista inquest(and I always thought that Bryar looked more like a cop than Stewart did.) From North by Northwest: John Beradino, who was uniformed cop Emile Klinger in North by Northwest AND rotund Stanley Adams, who was one of the Glen Cove cops who went with Grant to the mansion. From Psycho: George Eldridge(the police chief who so angrily voiced "Did he confess to?!!!:). All that was missing were Harold J. Stone, Ken Lynch and Mort Mills!

Yes, from the three leads to all those "Hitchcock cops," The Killer is Loose is a comfort jacket of Hitchcock players.

Plus a younger and slimmer Alan Hale Jr. also as a cop. The skipper from Gilligan's Island...here quite out of place.

In 1956, Hitchcock was making the very big budget and international Man Who Knew Too Much plus the "realism" of The Wrong Man, but "The Killer is Loose" is even below the budget of The Wrong Man -- "B competition" in Hitchcock's "A world." Could part of the problem be that the last name of director Budd Boetticher was hard to pronounce and impossible to spell(versus "Hitchcock?")

That said, Budd Boetticher WOULD become famous in cineaste circles for lots of Westerns(many starring Randolph Scott) and I'd read enough good things about Boetticher to be watching "The KIller is Loose" with some high expectations. That were rather dashed.

For "The Killer is Loose" plays pretty stilted and wooden in the script(that very important thing to any movie.) Its a borderline "bad B" that gets particularly ridiculous during a climax that otherwise plays...pretty suspenseful(how odd: good suspense AND bad suspense, in the same scene.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The plot -- which I think interested Truffaut in its "mean logic" -- is kind of simple.

Wendell Corey plays a meek bank teller. In the opening scene(very "Los Angeles 1956"), his bank is robbed. Within 10 minutes, we learn that Meek Corey was "in on the job" -- an inside man -- and cop Joseph Cotton leads the team to arrest Corey, who yells "come and get me" through the door. Cotton rushes in , gun drawn , and opens fire. He kills Corey's WIFE.

Cut to: Corey's trial. He is sentenced to prison for the bank robbery. But he gets to stop and stand before Cotton and his wife(beautiful Rhonda Fleming, remember) and to tell them both: "I owe you a debt." He means: since Cotton killed Corey's wife, Corey must escape prison and kill Cotten's wife.

That's a pretty tough, concise thriller plot. Its a little like "Cape Fear." And it fuels Corey's murderous desires with "justification." An eye for an eye. A wife for a wife. (Who is pregnant and always talking about "eating for two.")

Its interesting watching Cotton and Corey here. As I've noted before, it seems that Joseph Cotton lost his looks rather rapidly(his ey lids got too dark and baggy, his face too crinkled) and the "dreamboat" of Shadow of a Doubt is here an older, rough looking man who frankly does seem like he should have landed Rhonda Fleming as a wife(but he's a tough guy, so, yeah.)

Wendell Corey -- so "regular" and believable as the cop in Rear Window, is here playing a bit of a ...psycho. We realize from the get go that this "meek man" was willing to front a violent bank robbery ..and he becomes quite willing to kill thereafter(Corey kills a "road gang guard" and a farmer for his truck as part of his escape.) Corey gives a PERFORMANCE here which is weird and a BIT indicative of Norman Bates to come: the quiet, meek man who is capable of violent murder without remorse.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

There are some amusing other precursors to Psycho in "The Killer is Loose." Here's one: Joseph Cotton is named Sam and Rhonda Fleming is named Lila and believe me...it keeps causing a "twinge" every time they call each other that. ("Hey...wrong movie!")

Also: with all the cops on alert that "The Killer is Loose' and coming to kill Fleming , Corey gets within a couple of blocks of Sam and Lila's house, and elects to put on a disguise. Its a big raincoat and scarf on his head and...he looks rather like a man in drag, like a WOMAN. (Also, in accord with the viewpoint of Truffaut, like a duck.)

Its sort of odd. A man swearing to kill the wife of the man who killed HIS wife seems like a compelling plot, but I'm not sure that a major movie could have been made of it. It plays "real, but contrived." Hitchcock, for instance, needed something more(like the "exchange of murders" in Strangers on a Train.)

And the climax...Corey in "duck drag" walking along behind Fleming(unsuspecting) for minute upon minute...starts to lose suspense and gain unintentional comedy. Its yet another lesson that Hitchcock knew how to make "the ridiculous real."

One more actor of interest (and his two scenes.)

John Larch was a character guy from the 50's across the 70's. He could play mean brutal hard-punching villains and nice guy cops. He was the uniformed SF police chief in Dirty Harry(1971) and also in 1971 with the same star(Ciint Eastwood), Larch played "the Arbogast part" as a snooping police detective who gets stabbed by a psycho in Play Misty for Me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

John Larch is younger in "The Killer is Loose" and you can't quite "make " the character. He's in line at the bank in the opening scene and recognizes Corey as an old Army comrade(not friend) who was belittled and called "Foggy" by the other GIs. In this first scene, you can't tell if Larch is part of the bank robbery gang, or a bully to Corey, or what.

Well, Larch is not part of the bank robber gang, but "flash forward" to the third act of "The Killer is Loose" and escapee Corey is holding Larch and his wife at gunpoint in Larch's kitchen. In a scene of legitimate tension, Larch's tough ex-Army guy taunts and mocks "Foggy" (suggesting, "You know I can take you, right? You make one wrong move, I'll jump you") -- until "Foggy" shoots him -- exploding the glass bottle of milk in Larch's hand as the bullet hits. This anticipates the shooting through a cardboard milk containerof "bleeding heart liberal" John McGiver in "The Manchurian Candidate" and -- along with Joe Cotten's shooting of "Mrs. Foggy" -- demonstrates Budd Boetticher's talent for sudden, loud, violent -- but entirely bloodless -- gun action. I felt an "auteur" at work in the shooting of Mrs. Foggy and of John Larch.

I was decades in getting to see "The KIller at Loose," and it was pretty disappointing as an actual movie but....all those Hitchcock players. That 50's "LA ambiance." The demonstration of how "non violent" a thriller could be for a number of years. It was worth a watch. Once.

And maybe the best thing about it was that title: "The Killer is Loose." Think about the REALLY scary thriller that could be made from that title. Hollywood...its all yours.

PS. Breaking Bad had a rather pleasant milquetoast character named "Gale Boetticher." Who lived in "the new West" of New Mexico. Some sort of In-Joke?