HELL BOUND (1957)

A freighter bound for Los Angeles stops to rescue a man in a raft whose small fishing boat sunk—a narrator refers to the man as Accomplice A. As the ship waits for docking clearance, a port health officer, Accomplice B, boards to do his duty, but the officer is a diabetic and he claims to feel sick. As he rests, we see him give himself an insulin injection to bring on insulin shock. A sets a small fire to set off smoke alarms and in the confusion, sneaks into the hold and steals a package which he puts in the jacket of B. When an ambulance arrives to take B, Accomplice C, a nurse, boards, takes the man's jacket and the stolen package and eventually mails it to Accomplice D. The package is full of narcotics to be sold illegally, but we discover what we've seen is actually a filmed rehearsal, using actors, of the operation. The real-life Accomplice D is Jordan who has made this film to convince gangster Quantro to fund his plan. Quantro's moll, Paula, wants to be the nurse and flirts outrageously with Jordan; he lets her participate but shuts down the flirting. Jan, a real nurse (and we assume a mistress of Jordan's) who works in tandem with ambulance driver Eddie, has agreed to call off for a week and gets Paula to take her place. Paula trains with Eddie, who is not in on the plan. and the two begin to bond, especially after Paula reacts emotionally to the death of a child during an ambulance run. Jordan brings Herbie, an actual health officer and diabetic, into the scheme. He blackmails Stanley, a recovering drug addict, into playing the part of the sailor in the raft; Stanley was a medical student who performed an illegal abortion which resulted in the death of the woman. In case we had any doubts about Jordan's morals, we see him run down and kill the man who has provided a key to the storage area where the drugs are kept on the ship. But things start to go wrong in violent and unpredictable ways and, this being very close kin to a film noir, almost no one escapes unscathed.

This was a real surprise: a B-crime film with solid performances, a nicely twisty plot (if you can overlook some silly and convoluted contrivances), and some unexpectedly brutal violence. From the beginning, it's clear to the viewer that the plan is needlessly elaborate and there are too many places where things can go wrong, but I suspended disbelief and went along for the ride. John Russell, as Jordan (pictured), gives a great B-lead performance; he's kind of handsome and sexy while also being slimy and despicable. He pitches his portrayal at the sweet spot—his tension never dissipates and never quite goes over-the-top. Without him, the movie would not work as well as it does. June Blair is good as Paula, whose horniness is signaled by the taking off and putting on of her shoes; her high spot is her first encounter with Russell in Quantro's office. She starts as a femme fatale but does a nice job softening up her character as she gets to know Eddie, and she's very good in a violent, climactic confrontation with Jordan. Stuart Whitman is fine as Eddie, playing him as innocent but not a chump. George Mather is a fine sweaty mess as the addict, and Margo Woode does well as Jan. The climax was filmed in an actual scrap yard full of old trolley cars which winds up being crucial to the conclusion. Even though most of the scenes take place in broad daylight, this definitely qualifies thematically as noir, and it should be a more established entry in the noir canon. The violence is not exactly graphic but it is shocking. This is a bright spot discovery of my film watching year. [Streaming]