My Gun Is Quick

This is a very gritty low-budget Mickey Spillane film. Yet, despite having a no-name cast and every reason to believe it would stink, the film was very good and deserves to be seen. Robert Bray (who?!) plays Hammer--and plays him directly--without being handsome or bigger than life. This Mike Hammer was very human and very believable.

The film begins with an exhausted Mike coming into a greasy spoon for a bite. There he meets a young lady who had dreams of making it big in Hollywood but who is forced to survive through prostitution. Despite this hard life, Mike feels sorry for her and after a brief talk, gives her money to take a train back home to her family in the Midwest. Later, he learns that she's dead--the supposed victim of a hit and run. Hammer knows better--and spends the rest of the film tracking down her killers. Oddly, this case turns out to be related to an old jewel robbery. How can they be connected and how can Mike avoid getting his brains beaten out....yet again.

As I said above, this film is pretty good despite the budget. The story is excellent and the entire production works well because it seems pretty realistic and tough. A very good but relatively forgotten example of film noir that's worth seeing.

A private detective (Robert Blay) helps a prostitute being assaulted, and notices that she is wearing a unique ring. She is later found murdered and there is no trace of the ring, which turns out to be part of a cache of jewelry stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

This is apparently what a B-movie film noir looks like. No actors whose names mean anything to me (including star Robert Blay). Made by United Artists, and then acquired by MGM. Now probably sort of in limbo from the financial mess of MGM...

But you know what? Low budget or not, lack of star power or not, this is a pretty good story with a cool detective, some ladies of the night, shady characters...

Unfortunately, Bray's bland version of iconic Mike Hammer can't hold together an over-extended 90-minutes. I might have responded differently had the actor evinced more than one emotionless expression and ditched that perfect wardrobe right out of Gentleman's Quarterly. Then too, there's that meandering screenplay whose threads come and go-- but crucially fail to weave anything like good suspense.

Now, I'm no fan of the Cold War's "a slug in the commie gut" Mickey Spillane, but the movie as a whole fails to project his particular brand of blue-collar gusto. And that's despite the many half-clad babes that parade in and out. Also, looks to me like the screenplay goes awkwardly out of its way to emphasize Hammer's principled core. That's probably to reassure 50's audiences that this is not Spillane's ethically challenged version. In that sense, the movie's a somewhat revisionist working of the decade's favorite PI.

Still the movie manages a few positives, especially Jan Chaney's beautifully shaded performance as a forlorn hooker named Red. It's one of the more subtly soulful turns I've seen. Note too how that same opening scene registers Hammer immediately as a tough guy but with heart. Then there's a good traveling look at LA's notorious freeways, which must have been an early morning shoot before the system-wide jam starts. Note too,the big glimpse of 50's upscale decor. No wonder this Hammer only parades around in fine suits. And I liked that imaginative junkyard set-up that proves even recyclables can be a menace.

What the movie really needs however is a strong touch of style. I'm just sorry proved stylists like those of of Kiss Me Deadly (1955) didn't have a hand in this pedestrian production. As things stand, the programmer remains an appropriately obscure entry in an otherwise durable franchise.

Mike Hammer (Robert Bray) is the quintessential hard-boiled private investigator. He helps out a working girl named Red with an unusual ring. She had come out from Nebraska looking to make it in Hollywood. She is later found dead. It is a case of a mysterious Colonel Holloway confiscating stolen Nazi jewels.

This is a Mike Hammer film. The production is lesser B-movie. The filming is rather static with many bland interior shoots. The filmmaking isn't that imaginative. There are plenty of women with big assets. The acting is a bit forced at times. There is some violence although nothing shocking. All in all, it adds up to a lesser effort in this B-movie genre.

The quintessential Mike Hammer (Robert Bray), haggard, menacing, but essentially a decent guy in a dirty world inhabited by ruthless killers, gets involved in the murder of a young aspiring actress, who only the night before he had met at a lonely downtown diner, and had helped out with bus fare back to her native Nebraska. Her death was related to a piece of jewelry she was carrying, part of a cache of stolen war time jewels. Forced to get to the bottom of the murder, not for money but because of his connection to the girl, he unravels the mystery in the typical Hammer fashion of payoffs and beatings. Released two years after Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, MGiQ is the poorer man's version, though it has its own charms, mostly in the way of the LA settings and Bray's portrayal, tired and unshaven, but with the determination of a pit bull.