The Big Caper

I was interested in this film not only because it is a noir, but because it costars opera star Mary Costa.

Conman Frank (Rory Calhoun) approaches a wealthy colleague (James Gregory) with an idea he has to rob a bank. It's in a town that houses the military base payments on certain days. Frank thinks this would be a cinch, but he needs backing.

Flood has an interesting idea. He sets Frank up with a gas station and arranges for Frank and his girlfriend Kay (Costa) to live in the town and establish themselves as good citizens who fit in.

It turns out that not only do Frank and Kay get along better than expected, but the gas station is turning a profit. They also are making friends. Kay confesses she envies her sister's life as a wife and mother and realizes she's been losing out. She wants to break with Flood, but Frank warns her to wait until after the robbery.

The next problem is the unsavory and unreliable people who are supposed to help on the job. One is the alcoholic pyromaniac (Robert Harris), posing as Frank's uncle, who is supposed to distract the police and firefighters by setting some fires. He can barely get around and is constantly asking for booze.

Corey Allen plays Roy, a dumb as a box of rocks muscle man who gets beaten by Flood for showing his muscles off to Kay. Paul Picerni as Harry arrives to the job with a bimbo girlfriend (Roxanne Arlen) in tow, who tries to hold up Flood for a cut of the take.

How anyone expected this group to pull off anything, and how Flood could just send Kay off to live with Rory Calhoun - well, it all seems pretty preposterous. Still, it does hold some interest, and the end is exciting.

Mary Costa was the singing Aurora in Sleeping Beauty for Disney, and had a wonderful career as an opera star. Costa and Anna Moffo set a new high bar for beautiful women in opera. After Costa retired, she worked with children in ChildHelp, and as of this writing, is still alive at 91.

Adapted, like Stanley Kubrick's more celebrated 1956 crime movie THE KILLING, from a novel by underrated thriller writer Lionel White, THE BIG CAPER is an economical, pacy minor 50s crime movie which, unfortunately, somewhat loses its grip and falls away on the home strait to deliver less than it initially promises. Trapped in an ever-increasing spiral of gambling losses, Frank (Rory Calhoun, taking a welcome break from the saddle) sells his now semi-respectable gangster boss Flood (James Gregory) the idea of bankrolling a 'big caper'. The sleepy Californian coastal town of San Felipe is home to a bank which holds the substantial payroll for a nearby army base, and appears just ripe for the pickings for a team of professional hoods. Flood stakes the plan, and, after buying up the local gas station (an ideal stakeout locale for the bank located across the street), Frank sets up home with Flood's moll Kay (Mary Costa), aiming to win the trust of the local populace based on a seemingly legitimate veneer of domestic normality. Biding their time, Frank and Kay ingratiate themselves with the local 'square' population as they await the arrival of Flood's specialist team. But when this outfit includes an alcoholic pyromaniac, an inveterate womaniser, a psychotically loyal bodyguard and a kingpin who is beginning, rightfully, to suspect that his girl wants out from her previous lifestyle, the seemingly perfect caper begins to look fatally flawed. Swift and punchy, and betraying the best of its paperback origins in swift, sharp characterisation and abrupt narrative gear changes, this benefits from a nicely embittered change-of-pace lead performance from Calhoun (who, in forsaking his cowboy boots and spurs here, suggests he would have made an effectively downbeat noir actor) and a surprising sense of well-oiled coiled-spring menace from the underrated Gregory. Although a tad schematic in its paralleling of the Eisenhower-era nuclear family with Flood's dysfunctional criminal one, and running out of steam on the way to a regrettably contrived ending which involves a Damascene conversion which doesn't quite convince (a more cynical remake would probably put that right, though), this is a diverting slice of 50s criminality which seems, like much of the quirky crime roster from this period, to have slipped off the generic radar in recent years. Worth a look, even if it can't hold a candle to Kubrick's more celebrated Lionel White adaptation from the same period.

Rory Calhoun stars in a different sort of role for the handsome hero -caught up in a crime caper that -guess what- goes awry. The United Artists picture may lack the style of "Rififi" or the big-budget Clooney films, but its interesting characters make for an entertaining ride.

Rory has a great get-rich-quick heist in mind - grab the weekly payroll sent for an army base that is kept at a small local bank. He goes to an old colleague, cool (but slippery) James Gregory to put together the team to pull off the caper, and the guys he hires are a colorful lot.

Chief scene stealer is Robert H. Harris, a guy who looks crooked at first glance, constantly getting drunk on gin yet oddly in charge of explosives! Throw in the fact that he's a pyromaniac and you have just the right guy to mess up a mission. (Harris was a frequent actor in the live TV series "Suspense", piloted by this movie's director Robert Stevens.) A young Corey Allen (later to become a top TV director) has an even showier role, a little hard to pigeon hole, but basically Gregory's all-purpose helper. These two roles bring in a certain sleaze factor, familiar from low-budget movies but definitely down market for a major studio (UA) release.

The pitfalls of crime are well-demonstrated, and a central motif of Rory and Gregory's girl (my in-joke reference for the day) Mary Costa posing for months as man and wife anticipates some classic movies using that shtick, like the Inger Stevens TV movie "The Borgia Stick".

Recommended for many reasons, but I'm seriously tired of every crime film (it seems) being tagged a "film noir" for marketing purposes. This is not a noir at all, and despite the false advertising, there's no femme fatale in the cast.

The Big Caper (1957)

Fabulous. Here's where having unknown talent and a plot about ordinary folk really gels into something genuine, without glitz and without the high production values that are terrific in the best crime noirs but are also so slick they become something more and also less. "The Big Caper" obviously has aspirations, beginning with the title (one of the great "Big xxx" films like "The Big Heat" and "The Big Combo" and "The Big Sleep"). And it doesn't let up, or let down.

By the end this is a heist film through and through, but the curious part is the core central part where a couple, with criminal intentions, sets up a normal seeming life in a small and unsuspecting town. But the woman of this pair is married to another man, who happens to be the mastermind of the whole affair. Things go wonderfully right for awhile, and romance blossoms as well as a clever and huge (and simple) robbery. But of course things also go wrong.

All of this is unfolded in an idealized American town, and that's part of the fun. When some of the smaller characters in the crime arrive, they are glaringly out of place. I smelled hints of sexual weirdness (including some possible S&M stuff with a strange blonde guy) and of course there's the conflict between the two leading men and the leading woman. Like Kubrick's "The Killing," a nearly contemporary heist film, this isn't about getting caught at all, but just about the inside workings of some small time thugs with a very big and bad dream. If Kubrick's film is better technically, and has some acting that rises above (several key players are terrific), this one rises up on its quieter simplicity, and on some very solid and less sensational acting.

And on a great job pulling it together. Robert Stevens did mostly television, including a whole series for Alfred Hitchcock t.v., and among his handful of feature films this is probably the best. Nicely filmed with lots of convincing (and real) night stuff, and edited tightly, it never flags. If the ending is a little too sweet, remember this isn't Kubrick after all. But good stuff.

I just finished watching "The Big Caper" and thought it among the best film noir pictures I have seen--and I've seen a lot. Because it was so good, I am shocked that its current rating on IMDb is quite mediocre. Believe me, it's well worth your time.

The film begins with Frank (Rory Calhoun) approaching Flood (James Gregory) with a plan to knock over a bank. But, it's no ordinary bank--it will have a million dollars for the payroll of the nearby military base. The plan, however, is NOT to just walk in and steal the money--it's much more subtle. Frank and Kay (Mary Costa) will first go to this small town and open a business. Then, after four months of fitting in, they'll launch the caper.

There are LOTS of glitches along the way. The biggest one is that after four months of playing house, Frank and Kay find they actually are enjoying their fake married life. The business is going very well and they like the community. For the first time, they like being normal. But, normal is NOT what the rest of the gang turns out to be. They are among the sickest group of misfits I've ever seen--far sicker than the usual noir baddies. Frank's phony uncle is actually a psycho who loves blowing up and burning things...and he's also an unpredictable alcoholic and complete sociopath. Flood's other recruits aren't much better--but you'll just have to see this motley group for yourself to believe it. Where does it all go? As I said, you just have to see it for yourself.

The biggest pluses of this film are the character development as well as the assorted group of sick freaks. Frank and Kay's transformation through the course of the film is believable and the sickies are terrifying. In addition, the film is quite taut and exciting. Rarely have criminals seemed so evil during this era than in "The Big Caper". Believe me, they make folks from other contemporary films like "The Asphalt Jungle", "DOA" and "The Killers" seem like pussycats! Well worth your time.