Cry Vengeance

Cry Vengeance owes a debt to the previous year's Fritz Lang film The Big Heat. It too tells the tale of an honest cop whose family was killed in a mob-engineered explosion and who sets out as a crazed vigilante seeking redress. But while The Big Heat sizzles, Cry Vengeance stays tepid, perhaps owing to its sub-Arctic setting.

The star of earlier noirs The Dark Corner and The Street with No Name, Mark Stevens directs himself as the hate-twisted protagonist, just out of prison after being framed and losing his wife and daughter. (Stevens has aged visibly, and it's not just the scarred-face makeup his character sports.) Strong-arm tactics with plenty of karate chops elicit the information that the man he holds responsible has assumed a new identity in Ketchikam, Alaska. But not only is Steven's arrival expected, he's followed by a platinum-haired gunsel who's the real killer (Skip Homeier, who bears a resemblance to Lee Marvin, The Big Heat's sadistic torpedo).

Cry Vengeance matches its predecessor in brutality but comes up short everywhere else. Muddy photography wastes the scenic north, while the bland dialogue lacks the epigrammatic edge that's one of the joys of film noir (no "sisters under the mink" insinuation here as in Lang's film). The plot, with its double-crosses, needs a more baroque approach to sell itself.

On the whole, Cry Vengeance falls victim to the fatigue that, by 1954, was beginning to beset the entire noir cycle. Plots and characters amount, basically, to retreads. Joan Vohs, as Homeier's sozzled moll, couldn't have given this performance without Gloria Grahame's the year before in The Big Heat. With Stevens looking tired, too, it doesn't augur well for Cry Vengeance. But it holds distinction as the only film noir set in the Alaskan Territory, as Hell's Half Acre of the same year was the only one set in the Hawaiian (it wasn't until 1959 that statehood was conferred on both territories).

Cry Vengeance (1954)

Leading man Mark Stevens falls something short of a cult figure. He is director and first actor in four movies from 1954 (this one, his first) to 1963. He plays his roles as if he is in control, which he is, literally, from the director's chair. He's the hardened type, and here he is bitter bitter bitter, to the point that he is not quite a fully developed character and it's hard to get absorbed in his problem.

The rest of the movie is functional. It doesn't lack interest--for one thing, it's shot in Alaska, mostly (the exterior shots)--and the supporting cast is middling to good, filling roles we've seen before from pretty girl befriending the unlikely hero to chatty bartenders to a sweet kid who turns the man around through her innocence. And the filming (William Sickner, a routine cameraman with nearly two hundred B-movies to his credit) and editing, likewise, are workaday...the job gets done, but it lacks some kind of richness or aura or plain old drama.

Then to make it a little more disappointing, a couple of the main themes are taken a little too directly from earlier noirs, namely "The Big Heat" which came out the year before. The theme, established right away, is a cop who is out for vengeance against whoever killed his wife and child in a car bomb meant for him. Stevens plays this part with cold certitude. It's an interesting film in some ways, but a clunker in many others. Take it for what it was, and what it is.

With the exception of the second half's move from an American big city to rural Alaska, the film noir CRY VENGEANCE is a strange, offbeat venture... and wouldn't be if strange and offbeat Skip Homeier didn't play the primary villain...

Despite there being a mob boss that director and star Mark Stevens wants to kill, befitting the revenge title since his family was murdered while half his face burned and deformed before imprisonment... but the tall and lanky Homeier's hit-man Roxey Davis, with white spiked hair that would be normal decades later, soon becomes just about everything...

Making up for dragging expository scenes that hinder otherwise neat and smokey tavern settings with his target's oblivious bar-working moll Martha Hyers, spending the most time babysitting who's technically the most important character in child starlet Cheryl Callaway as the targeted mobster's daughter...

She's so precious you know our hero with antihero motivations won't pull through on his urban-to-rural journey's primary goal to off her daddy: but it's henchman Mort Mills and scene-stealer Homeier... the latter turning-out even more evil than he'd initially seemed... that provide Stevens, both the director and actor, some worthy tension on screen.

By 1954 the Elements of Film-Noir were Diluted to the Point of Virtually Killing the Genre. At Least the Purity that Made it Remarkable and Different than the Standard Crime Stuff.

Beginning about 1950 the Genre was Intruded Upon with more "Friendly" Considerations as a Bid to Please the more Conservative Elements Taking Hold in Society and "Big-Brother" Authority.

In Mark Stevens Crime Thriller it can be Witnessed by the Location (Alaska) and the Heavy Plot Laden Little Girl.

These Things can Turn Noir into a more Pedestrian Film as the Defining Tropes Gave Way to other More Easily Digested Stories by Increasing Suburbanite Family and the Enormous amount of Kids in Everyone's Life.

The Film Contains some Fine Outdoor Cinematography and some Brutal Scenes, but Overall these are Counterpointed Quickly with a Softer Touch.

The Cast is Competent with Skip Homeier Stealing the Show as a Platinum Blonde Junkie that may put You in Mind of Lee Marvin's Psycho in Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat".

In Fact the Film is often Mentioned as a Low Budget Version of the Aforementioned Classic. Overall it's Worth a Watch.

But it's Sad to Watch Film-Noir Fade Away.

This is a late entry in the film noir genre and maybe helped ruin this wonderful type of film. This was just too boring, too melodramatic for a good noir.

It starts off fine but cools off - no pun intended - shortly after "Vic Barron" (Mark Stevens) arrives in Alaska. We see the slow transformation of a hard-nose vengeful man into a decent guy. At least I liked the Alaskan scenery. Who doesn't?

Actually, the villain "Roxey Davis" (Skip Homeier) was somewhat cool with this strange blonde head of hair. The women, led by Martha Hyer, were decent to watch, too. However, an 83- minute film, especially with good villains and good scenery - shouldn't lag this much.