Aufgelesen

The reviewer who said "Citizen Kane it ain't" got it right. This is lowbrow stuff to be sure, but for what it is, Haas demonstrates a surprisingly keen eye for both dialogue and characterization, two things supremely lacking in the cheaper and lesser BAIT produced a few years later. Best of all, this is a highly entertaining ride, with a solid and credible performance by Haas as the pigeon who all but begs for a plucking until he sees the light (or rather hears the dark) when he overhears the plotting and venomous bile directed at him by his conniving and venal wife, who believes him to be deaf.

Trumping all however is the bravura dominatrixesque performance of Ms. Michaels as the throaty pointy-bra'ed femme fatale. Here's one of the few broads I've ever come across who might be able to actually compete with Ann Savage's mouthy and devouring DETOUR chippie for supremacy over a castrated male race. And leave the male species begging for more.

Also in the movie's favor is a reasonably tight storyline which features some nice twists and reveals with great gusto the true depths of treachery to which Michaels gleefully stoops to get her $7300 out of Haas. Again, this isn't DOUBLE INDEMNITY and it certainly isn't Shakespeare but it's charmingly pulpy and has an agreeably creamy evil nougat centre.

This Hugo Haas vehicle about a middle-aged railroad worker and a young woman who is attractive on the outside, but pure lowlife on the inside has elements of several better films, like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and even Blue Angel. But this film never achieves anywhere near the status of those classics. I loved Beverly Michaels as the heavy, and it is a shame she did not make more significant films. But Hugo Haas was never more than a minor B actor, although he does a good job in this role. The film is intriguing in some spots and lifeless in others, so it gets the rating that can't make up its mind; a five.

Hugo Haas had a fascinating life - a top actor in his native Czech Republic, he lost everything when the Nazis took over. He escaped just in time but he lost many relatives in the concentration camps. Coming to America, he established himself as a working character actor throughout the 1940s but in the early 50s Haas started making films himself - they usually were looked down upon by the critics of the day but a few did very good box office - like PICK UP. The film is now regarded as a terrific little noir and Haas is good as well as the femme fatale Beverly Michaels. If you enjoyed PICK UP, check out some of Haas' other films THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE, BAIT, THE OTHER WOMAN, HIT & RUN, HOLD BACK TOMORROW, etc. Yes, they are low budget but they are always interesting and filled with good performances.

Hugo Haas is in charge of a tank stop on the railroad. When he brings Beverly Michaels home, she gets a look at his bank book and decides to marry him. It's tough, out in the middle of nowhere, but there's young Allan Nixon whom she captivates. Meanwhile she urges Haas to claim some disability so he can retire with the cash and a pension and they can get away. Then Haas has an accident while surveying the tracks, and loses his hearing. Miss Michaels grows wilder; when another accident restores his hearing, before he can tell her, he hears her slanging him and pretends to still be deaf, while Miss Michaels urges Nixon to kill him.

Haas' first American movie as writer/director/producer was done on a tiny budget, and then sold to Columbia for distribution at a handsome profit. Although it looks like it was based on THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE Twice with a Tobacco Road air, it's actually based on a Czech novel. It's film noir at its cheapest and most tawdry, and glories in its filth, with Miss Michaels giving a fine performance. Haas would do the same thing almost a score of times through 1962. He would die in 1968 at the age of 67.

Citizen Kane it ain't, but Pickup isn't nearly as bad as one might think. Actor-director Hugo Haas deserves better, and I hope I can help the poor man (long departed) out. Haas,--no, I won't go into his career and background--let's just say the man had the reputation for being an okay actor, but as a director he was considered a sort of Central European version of Ed Wood. Pickup is about an older man, played by Haas, whose life is made a wreck of and nearly ruined by a toothy, gum-checking but withal irresistible blonde, portrayed by the unforgettable Beverly Michaels. The girl is, to be as genteel as possible, a worthless tramp, and nasty and stupid in the bargain. She plays with her adoring and naive lover like a cat with a mouse, and has an affair with a much younger man on the side. Amazingly, no one is murdered in the course of this film, which is actually at times quite sweet. Look, every novelist cannot write The Brothers Karamazov and every composer cannot write the Eroica, so why put down poor Mr. Haas whose only sin as an artist that I can tell is that is that he isn't Orson Welles. The man had a heart and soul, and this comes through in many scenes. He understands cruelty, too, and the woman in this film is, for all the melodrama, a not innacurate portrait of a certain kind of low-down broad who, if one were to show her videotapes of her inflicting her standard dose of pain on whoever the poor dope fool enough to get involved with her at the moment is, would shrug, light a cigarette and say, "Well, he was asking for it, wasn't he?". I'm not too sure about the character Mr. Haas plays in this film, but there is a kernel of truth in the mean little tale he tells; tacky though it may be, there's life in it nonetheless, which is good enough for me.