Last week, I spotlighted the noir work of director Phil Karlson on 99 River Street and Kansas City Confidential. Karlson helmed a series of crime movies in the 1950s that rank with the best of the era.
Nobody in the classic noir era of the late 1940s and 1950s depicted truly frightening and menacing criminals better than Karlson. This is really evident in The Brothers Rico.
Richard Conte stars as eldest Rico brother, Eddie. He’s a former accountant for the mob who is called back by his former boss to find his missing youngest brother Frankie. Frankie and the third Rico brother Gino were involved in a mob hit and Eddie's boss fears Frankie may be preparing to turn informant. Eddie is tasked with finding his brother and getting them out of the country and away from the cops.
As Conte is on the trail, searching for Frankie, he keeps running into menacing thugs who just happen to be in the same airport or locale that he travels through. Unfortunately, he doesn't pick up on the fact that he is being set up to betray his brother until it's too late.
The Brothers Rico features plenty of Karlson's trademark violence but what really distinguishes it as a noir is the climax of Conte's search for his brother, where he is trapped and helpless to stop the mob from exacting their judgment. Conte plays it well and you can really empathize with the tragedy of his situation. Unfortunately, a rushed ending dilutes the payback.
Unlike some noirs of the period, the gangsters and thugs in The Brothers Rico feel like they were plucked off the mean streets of New York or Los Angeles and are just playing themselves. Other directors may have had an eye for spectacular vistas; Karlson has an exquisite eye for ugly mugs. Beyond that, he employs his character actors in scenarios that don't soft pedal their brutality or evil.
The goons in Karlson's The Phenix City Story (1955) certainly fit that bill. Based on a true story about an Alabama town under the grip of gangsters, it relates how the citizens, led by a father/son team of lawyers, eventually stand up to the corruption and violence and clean up the town.
Of course, since this is a Phil Karlson film, there is plenty of brutal violence, maybe as much as he ever depicted in any of his movies of the 1950s. There are assassinations, bombings, bricks through windows, and beating after beating after beating. Once the main character begins to push back against the criminals, they immediately respond by murdering a little girl and throwing her corpse out of a moving car - in front of a baby in a crib, and then, just for punctuation, run over a kid on a bike. The sequence depicting the violence employed by the thugs on election day resembles a scene from a zombie movie, with multiple viscous beatings and victims staggering around with blood streaming down their faces. The fact that the movie was filmed on location in Phenix City and used many locals for extras only lends it more grit. In terms of pure carnage, this may be Karlson's masterpiece.
In 1959, Karlson was chosen by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez to direct the pilot of The Untouchables, The Scarface Mob, which appeared on CBS's Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. I will discuss The Untouchables in a future post, but suffice it to say, Karlson delivered his trademark toughness, violence, and mood, setting the tone for the show from the start. The LA Times captured its essence it its review: "...a harsh and ugly slab of violence, expertly done with the true metal of history."
During the 1960s, Karlson returned to his role as a journeyman, directing movies as varied as an Elvis Presley movie, a surf movie, and the Matt Helm/Dean Martin vehicles The Wrecking Crew and The Silencers. None were classics, but all were competently assembled.
In the 1970s, however, he returned to the crime genre with a bang. 1973's Walking Tall was a smash drive in hit, earning over $40 million. Fortunately for Karlson, he owned a piece of the film and shared in the profits, setting him up for the rest of his life.
Walking Tall relates the allegedly true story of a Tennessee sheriff who confronts the crooks who have taken over his town. It was John Wick for rednecks, with a big old piece of hickory substituting for a Glock and it is also practically a remake of The Phenix City Story. My favorite scene is where he is lying in a hospital bed after a machine gun ambush that killed his wife. He mumbles through his bandages to his 10 year old son: "Get...stick." The dutiful son returns with his hickory log, handing it to his dad so he can go whup ass on the men who killed his mom. Seeing that in the theater choked me up almost as bad as Old Yeller.
It's hard to convey the cultural impact of Walking Tall in 1973. It was among a string of violent drive-in movies of the era featuring stalwart every man (and every woman) heroes taking revenge on crooked politicians and gangsters. Movies like White Line Fever, Billy Jack, and Gator Bait were pure populism, appealing to middle America's frustrations with politics (this was at the height of Watergate) and fear of big city intruders. With the added inducement of nudity and violence.
Karlson capped off his career with one last tough crime drama: Framed. It features Joe Don Baker from Walking Tall as a professional gambler who is robbed and set up for a killing, who later gets out of prison to take his revenge. It's not one the best scripts Karlson ever shot, in fact, it's pretty lousy. But it is book ended by a brutal fight featuring his patented closeups of sweaty, bloody faces, and the finale, which features shocking scenes involving spark plugs and dobermans. It's worth watching (or fast forwarding through) for those scenes.
Roger Ebert dismissed it as junk, saying: "Framed is a nasty little specimen."
Not a bad epitaph for a master of film violence.
Great piece! Framed is not as fine as Walking Tall, but it's still pretty satisfying and Tarantino is a big supporter of this movie.
One big takeaway from these movies is how relentless those Southern thugs are.
They keep escalating things against all common sense, going so far as to Kill Buford's wife