The Come On

During the 1950s, Anne Baxter appeared in any number of routine, less than distinguished crime thrillers – last gasps of the dying noir cycle that were long on plot but short on style. One of them, The Come-On, is a warmed-over tale of murder and duplicity, but Baxter, bless her trouper's heart, gives it her considerable all as though she were starring in a major-studio `A' production.

Coming out of the surf down in Mexico, Baxter finds Sterling Hayden ogling her. They strike sparks and agree to meet aboard his boat, the imaginatively christened Lucky Lady. She abruptly leaves their rendezvous; later, in a bar, Sterling sees her with her drunken, abusive husband (John Hoyt). It happens, however, that Baxter and Hoyt aren't really married but partners in a racket – high-class grifters. Only Baxter wants out and wants Hayden to help her – by murdering Hoyt.

It's a mechanical, wheels-within-wheels plot, featuring a mercenary gumshoe (Jesse White) and `accidents' with missing bodies that turn out to be neither missing nor bodies, at least in the dead sense. Through it all, Baxter, emotes all over the place (never more effectively than in a scene near a mail chute, where an incriminating letter may or may not be headed to the police). Sterling's role is less meaty: He's not quite the chump, but except for throwing a couple of slaps and punches, he's pretty passive. Come to think of it, he appeared in any number of routine, less than distinguished crime thrillers during the 1950s, too.

Two genres: Horror and Porn have one characteristic in common: a morbid approach to the subject matter. Allied Artists' relatively obscure 1956 release "The Come On" is late-period film noir, like Welles' "Touch of Evil" coming several years after the post-war genre was dwindling, but is singularly morbid and fatalistic in its approach.

With Anne Baxter and Sterling Hayden as the star-crossed lovers (plus veteran John Hoyt a rather amazing villain), the movie is bookended by visually arresting scenes set on a remote beach in Mexico, where Anne and Sterling first meet and finally face their inevitable fate, staged in an idyllic way that contrasts with the traditional look and mood of noir.

Her casting is a key to the movie's success. She begins the movie looking very sexy in her bathing suit, conjuring up any number of 1950s blonde bombshells like Mamie Van Doren, Anita Ekberg, Greta Thyssen or Juli Reding. But instead we have the Oscar-winning Anne Baxter, just as sexy without pinup credentials, and providing the powerful acting her bustier peers could not dream of bringing to the role of a classic femme fatale that screams "lovely but deadly".

With many, many plot twists that are increasingly hard to swallow, the movie verges on fantasy by film's end. It is notable in its emphasis on misogyny, with every male character an exteme example of male chauvinist. Hayden's opening scene on the beach plays like textbook sexual harassment, and Anne's relationship with heavy John Hoyt is an amazingly morbid portrait of codependecny created by his domination/submission approach to her. Even the private eye played so well by a well-cast Jesse White manipulates Anne unmercifully.

After watching this rather strange movie, I was surprised at how obscure its filmmakers were: director Russell Birdwell directed a couple of early talkies (in 1929 and 1933) and then this film and the even stranger "The Girl in the Kremlin" (with Lex Barker and Zsa Zsa Gabor!) almost three decades later -what a career gap! Novelist/screenwriter Whitman Chambers similarly has few screen credits, but is responsible for a true noir classic "Blonde Ice".

Usually a movie with 20 total IMDb votes is a waste of time; there's probably a good reason nobody remembers it. In this case, The Come On is probably forgotten because snarled film rights have prevented a video or DVD release rather than any issues with the content. In fact, this low budgeter has enough small guilty pleasures and creamy nougat noir smoulder to get you through a late night TCM viewing in style. MACBETH it ain't but this is certainly better than its 5.8 IMDb rating, and definitely worth a look for any fan of Anne Baxter or slightly cheesy crime drama.

Baxter's leading lady career was nearing its expiration date by the time this surprisingly nimble b-movie came out late in the noir cycle but she was still one sexy cougar and she roars through this with all the breathy sigh and sexy twitch she's got. Though his acting is uneven, young Sterling Hayden is an effective physical presence with a couple standout moments. His piercing eyes and prurient "hi" to well-heeled Baxter do more to explain her otherwise well-calculated character's misguided but hungry attraction for this no-prospect schlub than three pages of exposition and setup ever could.

John Hoyt, who appeared in other violent shockers like BRUTE FORCE (though many may know him best for his short-lived ship's doctor role from the original Star Trek pilot), is delightfully violent and creepy here as the slick, tanned grifter who has no problem slapping Baxter around but won't let her go.

The actual set-up of the initial con Hoyt and Baxter are running is neatly done; we don't see it coming and it plays well. That Hayden's character is willing to stick with Baxter to a degree after learning what she's really about strains credibility, but somehow their unlikely doomed romance clicks and the viewer goes along for the ride. We can see Baxter will blow things with this dull-witted chump, but are curious to see how.

That the answer comes in the form of Jesse White, the actor who played the lonely Maytag repairman for 30 years, is another quiet pleasure in this tropical noir. White is surprisingly convincing as a seedy PI attemping to blackmail Baxter and Hayden. It's hard to say more about the plotting without pulling back the curtain too far; suffice to say that there are a few nice twists (probably one too many; one character actually says "I just don't seem to be able to stay dead…") but the ending is faithful to the noir tradition. Yes, a lot of cheese and cornballs are consumed over the course of this poison pill meal, but it's still a filling and satisfying repast.

Allied Artists' plot twisty low-budget noir opens with shapely con-artist Anne Baxter emerging from the Pacific to come on to restless fisherman Sterling Hayden who immediately falls hook, line, and sinker. Before you know it, she's begging him to kill her brutal partner-in-crime but Anne isn't wrapped too tight and their plans soon spiral out of control...

In 50s B movies where the budget is spent on the salaries of stars on the cusp of "past their prime", it's their chemistry that counts and although there's none here, it's not for lack of trying on the leading lady's part. Anne Baxter certainly doesn't hold anything back in what amounts to a dry run for her scheming Nefritiri in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and it's kind of campy seeing her vamp it up in broad strokes, especially since she's no spring chicken. Sterling Hayden always seems the same for some reason and was no different than he was in CRIME OF PASSION (1957) when he steeled himself to make love to a mature Barbara Stanwyck -but at least here he does it in swim trunks, albeit briefly. Quirky character actor John Hoyt smoothly plays Anne's control freak "husband" as a civilized sadist while a rumpled Jesse White (TV's Maytag repairman) provides the sleaze as the two-bit private dick Hoyt hires to watch his wayward woman. The twists and turns the story takes keep the pulpy pot boiling until the star-crossed lovers come full circle in the surf and although Baxter & Hayden are no threat to Romeo & Juliet, the body count is satisfying at least. The director (not that it matters) was publicist Russell Birdwell who coined the tagline "How would you like to tussle with Russell?" for THE OUTLAW and would go on to make the preposterous THE GIRL IN THE KREMLIN with two -make that three- glam-mannequins: the life-like lunk Lex Barker and chattering magyar Zsa Zsa Gabor in a dual role.

Anne Baxter and John Hoyt have a nice racket. They're in a bad marriage, but there's always a sympathetic man to help her out, with a check to let her run and hide.... and then Hoyt shows up and demands more money, because what he giving his wife the money for? But when Sterling Hayden shows up, it's different. This time, she realizes, it's really love. She confesses it all to Hayden, and he forgives her. But will Hoyt let her go?

It's an ambitious Allied Artists movies straight down my strike zone when it comes to what I like: con men and women weaving a tale that drags in not only the suckers in the movie, but me. Unfortunately, it doesn't do that, although it took me a bit of time to recognize it. That settled, th twists that were offered after that were not surprises at all, just as inevitable as the shootout at the end of a B western.

There are some good performances here, including Mr. Hoyt and Jesse White as a crooked PI. Alas, the leads were not compelling: Hayden , as he so often did in this phase of his career, seemed anxious to get back on his boat, and Miss Baxter seems to play it too broad in overcompensation.