There is apparently debate in noir circles as to whether 1955’s The Looters qualifies for inclusion into the canon. It may not take place in a big city or a desert town (the two typical location choices guaranteeing acceptance), but it does have a group of characters driven to extremes courtesy of a large amount of ill-gotten loot. There’s also a woman with a sordid history (well, what was considered sordid in the mid-50’s). If definitely checks enough boxes on my noir Bingo card to be unmistakably in this awesome ghetto of cinema.
In a brief scene before the opening credits, we see a shadowy man enter a log cabin on a cold and blustery day. He stokes the flames in the fireplace, then takes a rifle down from a rack of them, settles down into an easy chair, cocks the lever-action firearm and points it at the door. That he is whistling the entire time makes this all the more unnerving.
That cabin belongs to Rory Calhoun, who returns to first observe too much smoke emerging from the chimney. Then he opens the door to find that rifle pointed at him. What appears to be a threat is revealed to be a lost acquaintance, a fellow former soldier played by Ray Danton. Conversation reveals Danton once saved Calhoun’s life during the war. Calhoun’s subtle expressions convey a lingering, though unclarified, wariness.
Danton tells of travelling the world in search of thrills in the time since they last saw each other. Now Danton is dead broke and miserable: “When I’m out of money, I’m the poorest guy in the world.” Funny thing but, even at the end of the picture, I still wasn’t certain what he hoped to gain by going deep into the wilderness of the Colorado Rockies and stay with a guy who like is just as poor as he is. Still, I guess a roof is a roof.
I mentioned Calhoun has just returned home, and that was from a meeting with an army major (Russ Conway) who is keeping him informed of the impending start of the annual artillery practices they hold nearby. That may seem like an unnecessary subplot, and I almost forgot about it until it factors into an exciting conclusion that is literally explosive.
In the meantime, the bigger issue is the plane Calhoun and Danton see flying overhead before hearing an explosion suggesting it has crashed. Indeed it has, and the realistically staged wreckage is high up in an area where it will be difficult to attempt a rescue. Still, the experienced mountaineer and his novice associate will get there by rope. There is much said in this typically terse exchange between the two, when Calhoun gestures towards a coil of thick rope, saying, “Here’s our elevator”. Dalton: “Can I learn?” “I can teach.”
The climbing footage is exciting, with some rather exciting stunt work in wide shots. Close-ups of the actors are on an obvious studio set, but their performances sell the illusion, especially when Dalton locks up and comes close to falling to certain death. But there is one moment where Calhoun is obviously the person repelling quickly down a long cliff face, demonstrating his real-life tough guy persona. It is no surprise his acting career was preceded by stints in such jobs as a cowboy and a lumberjack, as well as some time in stir.
At the crash site, they find four survivors of the crash. Julie Adams, only a year after starring in Creature from the Black Lagoon, is a “model” with a past I’ll get to more in a bit. Thomas Gomez is a perpetually irritable and sweaty businessman, of the type he always excelled at playing. He is distrustful and disdainful of Adams from the first moment we see him and his general hatred of women is one of the ways studios coded characters as gay back then. Eventually, we’ll see he is actually trying to suppress his attraction towards her, as he has apparently been burned in relationships before. Frank Faylen is an affable former Navy man who has just retired because, as he will soon note ironically, his wife believed military service to be too dangerous. Poor Rod Williams doesn’t even get a line as the critically injured co-pilot. I imagined his character as being in perpetually hallucinatory state and I wondered if he communing with God and, if so, whether he considered the Almighty to be his co-pilot. Taking this one step further, is God his co-co-pilot?
I found Adams’s character to be the most interesting of the cast, and I was surprised a female character at this time was given so much to do. At one point, she’ll point a gun at the worst of the guys and even pulls the trigger. Early on, we see her in lingerie on the cover of a “gentleman’s magazine” called Lurid (that is amusingly chase in comparison to contemporary standards). What I found progressive about the script is she spends most of the film fending off leers and flirtatious remarks. She is not going to let such photos define who she is. Of the other hand, the film doesn’t explore the hypocrisy of the “nice guy” she was going to marry dumping her after he sees her work in such a publication—and yet, he was apparently buying magazines such as this.
The rude comments largely come from Danton, and I was startled to learn those actors tied the knot shortly after this picture was made. And those remarks are rather blatant. While I’ll admit I could not help but notice her legs and how her sweater emphasized certain attributes of hers, I hope I would have had the restraint to not say in her presence things like “Look at the way that girl walks.”
This setup is enough to support a plot of intrigue and betrayal, but what really sparks the powder keg is the 250 grand Gomez finds in the wreckage, money that was being transported by a now-deceased Treasury agent. Danton and Gomez conspire to split the loot, but they’re going to need Calhoun’s assistance in getting back down from the mountain. That Adams is kept alive is rather obvious, given Calhoun’s intentions (and, as later revealed, that of Gomez), but I wondered why they didn’t just kill Faylen outright. I don’t think it is spoiling anything when I say Williams’s unconscious co-pilot on a stretcher will at one point be determined to be unnecessary baggage.
Much of the auxiliary information I learned about this film was courtesy of the commentary track on this Kino Lorber blu-ray. Apparently, this disc is the film’s home video debut, which greatly surprised me. Tellingly, this is a standalone disc instead of being included in one of the distributors three-film Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema sets, so I assume they don’t believe this to belong in that genre.
As for me, The Looters is solidly noir in my book, and an above-average one, at that. I’ll conclude with some stray observations I would work in elsewhere. One thing I’m still wondering about is the social security card we see in Gomez’s wallet when Danton finds it. Similar to the fake “555” prefixed phone numbers that are a staple of American films, I suspect there is at least one bogus SSN set aside for use in pictures. Also, I was amused the area marked in on a map by Calhoun as the likely site of the wreckage is “South Park”, and I like to imagine the survivors encountering the characters of that animated show.
Dir: Abner Biberman
Starring Rory Calhoun, Julie Adams, Ray Danton, Thomas Gomez, Frank Faylen
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray