MY GUN IS QUICK (1957)

Private eye Mike Hammer stops in at a small diner and befriends Red, a young girl from Nebraska who came to LA to seek her fortune only to find a job as a stripper at a cheap club called the Bluebell (and, we suspect, some side work as a hooker; as she chats up Mike, the chef says to her, "Say, would you stop using this joint as your office?"). When tough guy Louis bothers her, Mike kicks his ass a little bit, then gives Red enough money to buy new clothes and take the next bus back to Nebraska. As they part, he notices she's wearing a large, ornate ring with the letter V. It's stuck on her finger but she assumes it's cheap costume jewelry. The next morning, Mike learns that Red was killed overnight, a hit-and-run victim, but when he finds out that her ring is missing, he suspects foul play. Police captain Chambers discourages Mike from getting involved, but they soon learn that the ring was part of a stash of jewelry called the Vanucci Jewels, stolen in Germany from the Nazis by Colonel Holloway. He got a jail sentence for his crime, but some of the jewels were not recovered. Hammer, ignoring Chambers, soon visits Red's roommate Maria, who introduces him to Jean, the Blue Bell's mute janitor and the man who gave Red the ring. He also runs across Louis again and chases him to the beach house of the wealthy Nancy Williams, just returned from a long stay in Paris due to an adulterous scandal. Louis works as her butler but she fires him and becomes friendly with Mike. While trying to dig up information on Holloway, Mike discovers that he rented Nancy's house while she was gone, and they both wonder if the jewels might be on or around her property. Eventually, Mike runs into Holloway (in a meeting clearly engineered by Holloway) and soon Holloway has hired Mike to find the jewels. However, a gang of French thugs are also looking for them, and things get quite complicated before Mike find the jewels, avenges Red, and makes sure the guilty parties get what they deserve.

Mike Hammer is a tough guy PI, created as a pulp fiction character by author Mickey Spillane. I won’t go into detail here about the character (go to Google), except to say that, for my money, Ralph Meeker gave the definitive Hammer performance in the 1955 noir classic KISS ME DEADLY. Robert Bray (pictured) takes on the role here and compared to Meeker, he gives a kind of made-for-TV performance. He looks more like a chemistry teacher or vanilla businessman than a tough dick; he's fine in fisticuffs scenes and he gets beaten hard enough at the halfway point of the movie that his black eye remains visible right up to the end (like Jake's nose in Chinatown). But mostly, he just comes off as awfully mild—and not nearly as sexy as Meeker was. He never really gets tougher than in the opening scene: when he calls his secretary Velda, she starts to bitch at him about being gone so long, and he snarls back, "Off my back, chick!" A noir atmosphere is attempted on occasion, most effectively in the opening scene and later ones in the club. We're made aware that Hammer has a moral code (he's against murder and casual sex) but unlike in genuine noir, nothing here really comes into conflict with his morals. It's strictly a B-production, with cheap sets that look a notch above Ed Wood's sets, except for the beach house which is fabulous. Other performers run the gamut from pretty good (Whitney Blake as Nancy, Jan Chaney as Red) to so-so (Pamela Duncan as Hammer's secretary Velda) to forgettable (Booth Colman as the cop, Donald Randolph as Holloway). There’s a long, long scene of a fairly low-key freeway car chase through LA. Still, adjusting expectations, I liked it OK. If nothing else, you do wind up wanting to know who has the jewels and who killed Red. Cast note: Later, Whitney Blake played Hazel's boss on the Hazel sitcom of the 1960s, and co-created the TV show One Day at a Time. She was also the mother of Meredith Baxter. [TCM]