PRIVATE PROPERTY (1960)

We see two California beach bums steal pop and cigarettes from a gas station. Duke (Corey Allen) is good looking with some surface charm; his buddy Boots (Warren Oates) is scruffy, jittery, and slow on the uptake. When Boots admits he's never had sex, Duke says he must be waiting for a "rich daddy," which upsets Boots. When they see a sexy blonde drive away from the station, they hijack a ride from Ed, a middle-aged salesman (Jerome Cowan) and get him to follow the blonde. Ed tells them they don't have a chance with her as they're from two different groups ("You can’t mate a bird with a snake"). She lives in middle-upper class suburban comfort with her husband, an insurance salesman, and the drifters break into the unoccupied house next door and watch her skinny-dip in her backyard pool. Duke hatches a plan to get the blonde "twitch," named Ann (Kate Manx), to deflower Boots, though we can tell his real goal is to snag her for himself. Posing as a landscaper, Duke slowly gets Ann to open up to him—we see she is bored by her swimming pool days and frustrated when her husband is too tired for sex when he gets home. Finally, one night while her husband is out of town (though due to get home later that night), Duke gets Ann drunk to the throbbing tune of a Bolero-type song, kisses her, and gets her ready for Boots, who can't perform. Violence at the pool ensues.

This indie B-film was given a limited release, didn't get much positive notice, then was considered lost for several years. Its rediscovery led to perhaps an overcorrection by critics and it has been hailed as a small neo-noir masterpiece. Not as great as some say, it's still worth seeing. The most striking thing about it is that it mostly doesn’t feel like a 1960 movie; it has elements in common with later films like THE SWIMMER and LAST SUMMER. Though we see no explicit sex (or violence until the final moments) the atmosphere of erotic tension and menace is held strongly throughout. Rape or assault seem assured, but that's not quite what happens. A homoerotic bond between Duke and Boots is clearly intimated, and the lulling of Ann into sexual receptivity is carried out well, without Ann being blamed for her desires. Of the three leads, Warren Oates is the one who went on to cult fame as a supporting actor, but it's Corey Allen (pictured) who carries the movie, playing a man whose smooth handsome exterior masks a streak of sociopathic danger. He went on to a long career, but mostly as a TV director and acting teacher. Kate Manx was the wife of the film's director, Leslie Stevens, best known to me as the creator of The Outer Limits; the film was shot in 10 days at the Stevens' home. Manx and Allen work well together, establishing a tense chemistry. Sadly, Manx's promising career was cut short by her suicide in 1964. 1960 was the year that PSYCHO came out, another movie with a mood of sexual menace, though that was set at night whereas most of this film takes place in the sunshine. Maybe audiences weren't ready for two such films in one year. Or maybe it's just that PSYCHO was a big studio production from an iconic director and this was a small-budget indie film that didn’t get Production Code approval, which would have limited its playdates. I'm hesitant to overpraise this movie, but it is unique and interesting. [YouTube]