The Cruel Tower

I must admit...this is the only film I've ever seen about steeplejacks. These are folks who make a living climbing very high structures in order to fix or service them...such as water towers.

When the story begins, Tom (John Ericson) is hitching a ride on a boxcar. However, the other three beat him up, steal his wallet and toss him off the train car! Nice guys, huh? Well, Tom is badly injured and is soon discovered by Joss and taken back to be cared for by Mary and Stretch (Charles McGraw). Days pass and soon Tom is hired by Stretch to be on his steeplejack crew. But unfortunately, guys in Stretch's crew keep having accidents...which leads you to wonder what is really going on here.

This is only a fair time-passer....mostly because the script isn't all that interesting and seems inspired by many previous films. It's not terrible but it's one that seems very ordinary, at best.

Drifter John Ericson picks up a job with Charles McGraw's crew of steeplejacks: Steve Brody, Alan Hale Jr, and Peter Whitney. There's also McGraw's girl,, Mari Blanchard, for whom he falls hard, and her loyalty waves. When McGraw finds himself losing control, people beginning dying in accidents. Is it the dangerous job, or is McGraw a madman?

It's not a great movie, with a story told many times, and director Lew Landers is not the man to get anything extra out of it, but as usual, McGraw gives a performance that is great, and Ernest Haller's neck-craning shots of the high towers induces a sense of vertigo. The result is a pretty good programmer.

I didn't go into this expecting a good story or good acting. I thought a movie with Mari Blanchard would have a lot of va va voom camp. She is wasted. Strictly for John Erickson fans. He shows off his great body and complete lack of talent.

The plot is a bore.

At first, before ordering this film from the USA, I thought it was a medieval, adventure, costume story, involving a castle - because of the tower - but how wrong I was. But that doesn't mean I was deceived. Not a all. It was not a cheap Sam Katzman costume historical agreeable garbage stuff. This is an adventure drama, involving romance, thrill and about an unusual topic. There are not villains here, just characters maybe more sympathetic than others, good but predictable relationships between those same characters. It is really enjoyable to discover, bringing good sequences. I would have not expected such a film from Lew Landers from whom I have seen numerous movies.

This "noir-stained" (as Noir City film festival host Alan K. Rode put it) romantic triangle about men who work at high altitudes and the women, or in this case woman, who watches them from the ground is determined to remain pretty unexciting. John Ericson had a pretty face and looks decent without a shirt on, but he's not much of an actor. The drama never generates much heat, save for a mildly suspenseful climax.

The film does have three things going for it: Mari Blanchard, who the word vivacious was created to describe; the crusty performance of Charles McGraw as the psycho leader of the pack; and some dizzying POV shots from the top of one of the cruel towers that gives the film its name. None of those things make this a good movie, or even a very watchable one, but they prevent it from being a total wash.

I will say I'm glad to have seen it though, because it sounds like I'm one of the few people in the world who have. Its screening in Chicago was apparently only the second time, aside from its initial theatrical run, that it's been shown in a theater ever, and it isn't available to see anywhere else.

Grade: C.