GET OUTTA TOWN (1960)

Kelly Olesen used to be part of a notorious gang of thugs, but he left town and reformed, making money through hard work; now he's back in town to attend the funeral of his kid brother Tommy. The inquest found that Tommy died from a drunken fall, but Kelly suspects foul play and hopes that his old cronies Tony (a friendly underachiever who spent some time at San Quentin, or "The Q" as he calls it) and Rico (a slicker fellow who now is a member of a larger syndicate) might help him find out the truth. But his visit gets off to a bad start: the cops are not happy to see him and tell him to get out of town as soon as the funeral is over. His mother is cold to him and his ex-girlfriend Jill is only slightly more friendly. Kelly has to deal with a feisty young thug named Rocky who distrusts Kelly and comes at him with a knife ("Somebody’s spiking your pablum, kid," says Kelly who kicks his ass), two bar employees who may not have told the whole truth at the inquest, and Claire, another former girlfriend who is married to Rico now. Will Kelly find out the truth before his inquisitiveness gets him in trouble?

This B-film is a little rough in its production values, and most of the actors did not go on to long careers (virtually all of them were completely unknown to me), but if you’re looking for a short crime story that feels like it came right out of an old pulp fiction magazine, you’ll find some pleasures here. The narrative is a little fractured; the movie opens with Kelly getting beat up on the street and making his way to a woman's apartment to recover, then goes into a long flashback before catching up with the beginning. Doug Wilson (Kelly) doesn’t quite look or act like a hero or anti-hero—he’s a little too vanilla in his personality and a little too lumpy in his looks to be all that appealing—but I got used to him. Jeanne Baird (Jill) and Marilyn O’Connor (Claire) are not memorable, and the main cop (Frank Harding) doesn’t modulate his one-note performance—irritated bluster—at all. But as is often the case in B-films, a couple of supporting players stand out. Tommy Holden is fun as Squirrel, a gangster gofer who tries to ingratiate himself with Kelly even as he’s not so sure that he should; Tony Louis as Rico manages to be slimy in a clean way; best of all is Sam Chiodo as Rocky, the good-looking but dumb as rocks thug who doesn’t trust Kelly and keeps whining “I don’t know him!” before he gets knocked to the ground by Kelly. Some of the dialoge has a nice punch with my favorite line being delivered by Tony to Kelly, surprised to see him back in town: “I had you figured for a concrete kimono!” I’ve included the DVD cover above because it’s far cooler than any actual scene in the movie, but don’t believe the claim about it being a “brutal noir”—it’s really just a crime movie, fairly mild as far as violence goes except for Kelly's opening ass-kicking, and a pleasant hour of viewing on a Saturday afternoon. [DVD]