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Roger Corman's Macbeth, morbid and raffish: "You wanted the jungle... now live in it!" The overture shows off the swift, racy technique, a tight flurry that registers a bank robbery with a slightly elevated shot of shadows on the floor and a glass door promptly shattered. The Depression hoodlum (Charles Bronson) is a saturnine hunk of granite until the sight of a hearse stops him dead in his tracks, the fist clutching the Tommy Gun suddenly trembles before Thanatos. "Run away, brave boy," cackles the bordello madam whose daughter (Susan Cabot) becomes the criminal's razzing moll, the raven mercilessly pecking at his necrophobic insecurities. The old gang disbands and kidnapping becomes the new business, all the skull-and-crossbones omens point toward the protagonist's showdown with the G-men on his trail and the terrors in his mind. "When rabbits roar, it's a bad time." A coffin lid inexorably lowered onto a macho gangster fantasy, overflowing with jazzy resourcefulness and sardonic vaudeville turns: Morey Amsterdam as a queer pickup man patiently nursing a vengeful streak Frank DeKova as a gimpy accomplice keeping mountain lions caged in a backwoods gas station, Connie Gilchrist laying the raucous foundation for Shelley Winters. As an anticipation of the dread-choked Poe hallucinations of the 1960s and a template for the AIP drive-in barnstormers of the 1970s, a key Corman work. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre and Bloody Mama complete the demolition, though nothing beats Bronson's lunkhead bully crumbling down with a still-life glimpse of his favorite weapon, "just a pop-gun." With Richard Devon, Barboura Morris, Jack Lambert, Wally Campo, Lori Martin, and George Archambeault. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |