The Hoodlum

I read on IMDb that a new restored version of this film was just released. However, my review is based only on the public domain version--which may or may not be roughly the same picture. How much restoration was done is unknown to me.

The film stars Lawrence Tierney and one of his real-life brothers. For some very, very fascinating reading, read up on Tierney's life--he was an incredibly dangerous sort of guy--and a lot like the sociopathic character he played in this film. Now that Tierney has passed away, I have no trouble saying this...otherwise I'd keep my mouth shut, as even as an elderly guy he was quite the unpredictable terror! But, I should point out, that because Tierney was such a screwball, he was able to play some of the most menacing and convincing criminals in noir films such as "Born to Kill" and "Reservoir Dogs".

Lawrence Tierney plays an angry man who was just paroled. Instead of learning from his mistakes, he has an incredibly bad attitude and blames everyone for his problems...everyone but himself. It's obvious that despite his family trying to help him go straight, this hoodlum is determined to return to a life of crime. After all, in his mind the world owes him something and working hard at a real job is for suckers! This unrelenting badness made the character terrific and dark even by film noir standards. He destroys his brother's girlfriend, kills with no compunction and attacks everyone around him--making him very memorable. As a result, the film takes a rather ordinary story idea with a small budget and makes it much more. It's gritty and far more realistic than a typical film of the era--and well worth seeing for fans of noir.

If you do see the film, some particularly noteworthy scenes are Tierney slapping a woman as well as the final scene between him and his horrified mother and brother. Great stuff! By the way, in an interesting bit of casting, Lawrence Tierney's real-life brother, Edward, plays his brother in the film as well!

This is typical but quite entertaining B movie fare. Well, not completely typical because the main character of such fare is generally more sympathetic than Lawrence Tierney is here. He's a guy you love to hate as he gets paroled thanks to his sweet and loving mother and then proceeds to be a total heel, raping and impregnating his sister-in-law, robbing a bank and just an overall not-nice guy. He doesn't even evoke sympathy at his dying mother's bedside and that's one of the perverse charms of the film. The ending in a dump is quite satisfying and prompts a feeling of good riddance to bad rubbish. This is a typically short little B film, cheaply made, ludicrous at times, but fun to watch and one which will be appreciated by fans of 40's and 50's 2nd features.

The Hoodlum opens with a montage illustrating Lawrence Tierney's rap sheet, starting when he was a holy terror still in short pants. From preparatory work in juvenile hall to matriculation at the Big House, he majored in recidivism and minored in anti-social personality disorder. When, now a surly menace, he comes up for parole, most members of the board object but are swayed by the tearful pleas of his saintly immigrant mother (Lisa Golm), who thinks he's misunderstood (by the time she's on her deathbed, she's comparing him to the city dump).

Released, he moves back home. He's reluctantly offered, and reluctantly takes, a job at the filling station owned by his straight-arrow sibling (and real-life brother Ed Tierney, later Tracy; actor Scott Brady was a third brother). But, apart from a personal campaign to prove that the customer is never right, Tierney's main interest is getting into the pants of the bank manager's secretary who works across the street so he can plan his next big job. (He also manages, in his off-hours, to rape and impregnate his brother's fiancée, driving her to suicide.) The rest of the movie recounts the brutal bank heist, which is synchronized with a phonily arranged funeral....

The Hoodlum was made at a time when Tierney's off-screen roughhousing was starting to make him, after striking roles in Born to Kill and The Devil Thumbs A Ride, an undesirable in Hollywood. It's a short, stripped-down, starvation-budget programmer. Still, it shows those ragged edges that more artifice might have smoothed away (the rape and pregnancy are startling for their era); a few plot strands seem like distant echoes of the incomparably superior White Heat, of two years earlier. The most noteworthy aspect of The Hoodlum's script is that Tierney undergoes no character development whatsoever: He starts out as a cur and dies like a dog.

... because TIerney was such a seemingly tortured soul and his own worst enemy that he really seemed to understand the most memorable characters that he played. His drunken brawling destroyed his movie career in less than ten years. Once he called the police and told them there was a fight in a bar and they needed to come break it up. There wasn't, Tierney just wanted some fist to cuffs with some cops. In the 1970s his girlfriend died from a fall from a high rise window. Tierney was there and told the police that as he had entered the apartment she had just jumped out of the window, seemingly for no reason. Charges were never filed. But I digress.

The point is that here Tierney plays the brooding violent seemingly tormented hoodlum Vincent Lubeck, into far more nefarious stuff than Tierney ever was, but Tierney has the titular character's mood and mentality down pat. VInce is somewhat enigmatic with few words. It is with posture and factial expressions that you come to know this character.

The first part of the film is almost in documentary style. It talks about Vincent's ride through the revolving door of the criminal justice system with his crimes elevating in gravity with his age. Finally at age 25 he is sentenced to 5-10 in the pen for armed robbery. At his parole hearing after 5 of those 10 years, the parole board can't think of why they should loose this guy on the public. But then his gray haired mama enters and after she slings enough chicken soup, cliches, and mixed metaphors at the board she apparently convinces (confuses???) the board into letting Vince go.

But you might as well meet the new VInce, same as the old Vince. He feels the world owes him something because of his impoverished upbringing, living next to the city dump as a kid. But his little brother (and this actually IS Tierney's little brother folks) doesn't seem to have any of Vince's hardness, is enterprising, and has opened a gas station and gives Vince a job, which he needs to stay out on parole.

But Vince is busy eyeing the things he can't have and that he wants. One is his kid brother's fiancee, Rosa. The other is the contents of the bank across from the gas station where he works. And this is where he plans a rather intricate bank hold-up. This is where low budget Eagle-Lion excelled, what they couldn't afford in really big name stars - TIerney is the only one in this film - they spent on rather clever plots.

Tierney gets to show a bit of range here. He even shows fear and regret, although in small doses. And the end of the film is quite ironic. I would recommend this little film.

Got a chance to watch this little noir/crime film recently and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It's a quick movie that clocks in at about 61 and a half minutes and there is no denying that it was a very low budget programmer but it was quickly paced and had some nice touches. Lawrence Tierney is at his nastiest as lifelong criminal Vincent Lubeck. The film opens with Tierney in a car being held at gunpoint by his brother(real life brother Edward Tierney) Johnny and then goes back in time to take us through what lead up to this point. We get a neat narrated, documentary style montage about Vincent's life of crime to start things off. Nice noir touches along the way as shadows abound and for the most part, the performances are very good. Several scenes in the film sort of reminded me of the vastly superior WHITE HEAT. Several things kind of startled me from a film made in 1951 like rape, suicide and the word "pregnant"! All in all, a pretty entertaining little film and a nice way to kill an hour of your time.