The definitive Joseph H. Lewis crime melodrama, “Gun Crazy” is “Bonnie and Clyde” retooled as a low budget but stylish and powerful tale for the disillusioned postwar generation.
Grade: A-
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Theatrical release poster
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The screenplay, based on a magazine article by Kantor MacKinlay in Saturday Evening Post, is credited to Kantor and Millard Kauffman, who served as a front to the then blacklisted writer, Dalton Trumbo.
John Dall (right after appearing in Hitchcock’s “Rope”) plays an emotionally disturbed World War II veteran, burdened with a lifelong fixation with guns.
He meets a kindred spirit in carnival sharpshooter Peggy Cummins, who is equally disturbed, but a lot smarter than him, which makes her more seductive and dangerous. Beyond their physical attraction to one another, both Dall and Cummins are obsessed with firearms.
They embark on a crime spree, with Cummins as the brains and Dall as the trigger man. As sociopathic a duo as you are likely to be found in a 1940s film, Dall and Cummins are also perversely fascinating.
As they dance their last dance before dying in a hail of police bullets, the audience is half hoping that somehow they’ll escape the Inevitable.
Some critics (not me) have complained that Dall is too effeminate and Cummins too butch.
The most visually striking scene in Gun Crazy is the bank robbery sequence, shot in “real time” from the back seat of Dall and Cummins’ getaway car.
Nominally a crime thriller about love on the run, Gun Crazy is equally (perhaps even more) effective as a portrait of delinquent American youth, all the more impressive because the film was made during the conservative post-WWII Turman era.
Refusing to psychologize his characters too much, Lewis suggests that neither John Dall nor Peggy Cumming could be explained away by slum background; they just like guns. As Bart explains to the judge: “Shooting’s what I’m good at. It’s what I want to do when I grow up. It makes me feel good inside.”
In interview with Danny Peary, director Lewis revealed his instructions to actors John Dall and Peggy Cummins: I told John, “Your cock’s never been so hard”, and I told Peggy, “You’re a female dog in heat, and you want him. But don’t let him have it in a hurry. Keep him waiting.” That’s exactly how I talked to them, and I turned them loose. I didn’t have to give them more directions.”
Initially slated for Monogram release, Gun Crazy enjoyed a wider exposure when its producers, the enterprising King Brothers, chose United Artists as the distributor. In the 1960s and 1970s, Gun Crazy became a cult movie, cherished by a new generation of critics who did not look down upon low-budget B-picture. Film historians use this film as a prime example for a sleeper.
You can spot Russ Tamblyn, billed as Rusty.
Cast
Peggy Cummins as Annie Laurie Starr
John Dall as Barton “Bart” Tare
Berry Kroeger as Packett
Morris Carnovsky as Judge Willoughby
Anabel Shaw as Ruby Tare Flagler
Harry Lewis as Deputy Clyde Boston
Nedrick Young as Dave Allister
Trevor Bardette as Sheriff Boston, who apprehends the teenage Bart
Mickey Little as Bart Tare at age 7
Russ Tamblyn as Bart Tare at age 14 (billed as Rusty Tamblyn)
Paul Frison as Clyde Boston at age 14
David Bair as Dave Allister at age 7
Stanley Prager as Bluey-Bluey
Virginia Farmer as Miss Wynn
Anne O’Neal as Miss Augustine Sifert (office manager shot dead by Laurie)
Frances Irvin as Danceland singer
Robert Osterloh as Hampton Policeman
Shimen Ruskin as Cab Driver
Harry Hayden as Mr. Mallenberg, the plant manager
Credits:
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, MacKinlay Kantor, based on “Gun Crazy” 1940 story in The Saturday Evening Post by Kantor
Produced by Frank King, Maurice King
Cinematography Russell Harlan
Edited by Harry Gerstad
Music by Victor Young
Production company: King Brothers Productions
Distributed by United Artists
Release date: January 20, 1950 (US)
Running time: 87 minutes
Budget $400,000
Endnote:
The film is aka “Deadly Is the Female.”
The movie was loosely remade in 1992 by Tamra Davis under the title of “Guncrazy,” starring Drew Barrymore.
Running time: 86 minutes.
