PICKUP (1951)

Jan Horak (Hugo Haas) is a widower who works for the railroad and lives alone at a tank stop near the tracks. He's always on call so a younger assistant named Steve (Allan Nixon) subs for him from time to time. A vagabond who calls himself The Professor stops by to chat and drink with him, and is the closest thing Jan has to a friend. Jan's beloved dog has just died and he feels a bit gloomy so he heads into town one Sunday, possibly to get a new puppy,  but at a carnival, a trampy stripper named Betty (Beverly Michaels) sets her sights on him when she sees the wad of money he has in his pocket. He responds well to her, but a sudden attack of loud ringing in his ears cuts short their time together. The next Sunday, Jan brings Betty to his house. She's disappointed by its modest look and size, but while she snoops around, she finds his bank book and sees he has $7000 in savings. When Betty lays eyes on Steve, she goes back into flirtation mode and he agrees to drive her back to town. Betty is evicted from her apartment and talks Jan into a quickie marriage which both Steve and the Professor are skeptical of. Betty tries to talk Jan into retiring early so they can spend his savings, but he's not sure he wants to until he has another attack of ear ringing, this time rendering him deaf. While Jan waits for his retirement paperwork to go through, Steve moves into a small cabin across from Jan's house, preparing to take over his job. But in town one day, Jan is knocked to the ground by a car and when he gets up, his hearing has returned. He doesn't tell Betty or Steve and so hears Betty talk openly about leaving him, then she mentions that the only way she can get his money would be if he died. Shades of The Postman Always Rings Twice!

This B-noir melodrama doesn't scale the heights of Postman (and gets nowhere near Double Indemnity), but it's an enjoyable 80 minute romp involving a tawdry femme fatale trying to twist two fairly dumb men around her fingers. This is Haas' first American movie and he would continue to make B-noirs for several years, usually with himself as star, director and writer. This sets the template for his later films such as ONE GIRL'S CONFESSION and HIT AND RUN; they all involve Haas as a dumpy loser, a sexpot trying to exploit him for his money, and a more traditionally hunky guy hanging around with his eye on the femme as well. Haas' real muse would turn out to be Cleo Moore, but here, Beverly Michaels does a nice enough job of being sleazy and mean. Haas’ acting would never have won him a prize, but he does the schlub bit OK, though I find I rarely have as much sympathy for him as I think Haas wants me to. The hunk, Allan Nixon (pictured with Michaels), is mildly attractive and manages to keep us on our toes a bit in terms of how dumb he actually is. He's in on the game of cheating Haas, but whether he would have gone through with murder is unclear. Given the loss of the dog at the beginning, it's nice that the last scene involves the Professor (Howland Chamberlain) bringing a new puppy to his home. Haas’s response: "That’s what I should have brought home in the first place!" [TCM]