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Killing to the existential hepcat is a source of income, a logical extension of capitalism: "Instead of price-cutting, throat-cutting." The "contractor" (Vince Edwards) is a taut torso that's willed out its soul, leaving only a rifle-sharp eye and übermensch delusions. Terse segments of scenes (methodical rubouts in hospitals and barbershops, sparsely scored to Italianate guitar plucking) illustrate his rise as hitman, soon the middleman himself is liquidated and Edwards receives the top assignment, offing an irritable mob witness (Caprice Toriel) stashed behind a wall of police protection. In an unnervingly blank Los Angeles, he alternates Zen monologues about the inescapability of death and the unpredictability of women with sightseeing, snorkeling and golf sessions, to the aggravation of the gangland stooges (Phillip Pine, Herschel Bernardi) tasked with chaperoning him. "Look, we don't pretend to be Superman. Me? I don't even claim to be Mighty Mouse!" Ionesco's Tueur Sans Gages is intriguingly concurrent with much of the material, Irving Lerner gives it a dapper reading, rich with limpid camera setups and perversities like the exploding TV set. Verdoux's discourse about the difference between warriors and murderers is updated, toy shops and gun shops, a key sequence staged amid the debris of a dilapidated studio—the grunge playacting of loneliness, whether it's a hipster imagining himself as an icy executioner or a secretary doubling as a pushed-around escort. "Boy, while it lasts, it's pretty gorgeous." (It ends in a smoke-filled tomb.) Baron's Blast of Silence scrapes the varnish off, pieces turn up in Le Samouraï and Taxi Driver. With Michael Granger, Kathie Browne, Joseph Mell, and Frances Osborne. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |