The Looters

The Looters must have been one rugged shoot for the cast given the story location and the profession of Rory Calhoun's character. But if you haven't seen it, it's an undiscovered gem.

Taking a break from westerns, Rory Calhoun plays a mountain guide with training from the Army mountain rangers. As it turns out his old outfit is having artillery practice in the neighborhood.

But even closer is old army buddy Ray Danton who just dropped in out of nowhere. Danton saved a wounded Calhoun in the Italian Theater during the war and he's looking basically to get away from the world and Calhoun's mountain cabin is about as far a retreat from civilization as you can get.

Even farther away from civilization is the mountain side where a small commercial airliner crashed. As Calhoun is on a mountain climbing training exercise with Danton they're on the scene to locate the downed plane.

All that's left of the plane are surviving passengers Julie Adams, Frank Faylen, and Thomas Gomez. We also learn that Gomez who's a nothing of a clerk back in the city has found $250,000.00 from a dead Treasury man and he joins forces with Danton who sees his ticket back to an easy life. But they need Calhoun to get them down off the mountain.

This film truly belongs to Ray Danton who never had the career he should have. Watching his moral degeneration as he leads the whole party down the mountain is something to see. Even more than The George Raft Story or The Rise And Fall Of Legs Diamond this film may be Danton's career role.

There's also quite the climax involving the army maneuvers and Calhoun's maneuvers to stop Danton. The Looters is another undiscovered gem, a real sleeper from Universal-International.

When a small plane crashes on the mountain, it's a good thing that Rory Calhoun lives nearby and his old army buddy Ray Danton is visiting; they were both members of a unit that scaled mountains. When they get up to the plane, there are a few survivors. Although the best thing for them to do is stay there and wait for rescue, Thomas Gomez has other ideas. He has a quarter million dollars he has stolen from the bank where he worked. He offers to pay Calhoun and Danton to get him out of there. Calhoun isn't interested, but when Gomez ups it to a full partnership, Danton takes him up on it.

It's a well cast movie, with Julie London present for the men to fight over -- wouldn't you? -- and Frank Faylen along as a survivor; he has very little to do so his presence is a puzzle. Was his behavor so poor they trimmed his part to nothing? Was the movie running long, so they cut it to the essentials?

In any case, it's a decent programmer, although I was interested in a most vexing question or two: Danton's pompadour never flattens despite being in stormy, mountainous terrain, rappelling down cliffs and such for a couple of days; likewise, Miss London always looks fabulous and smudge-free? Did they think no one would notice?

This is a gritty story about greed. It begins at a cabin in the middle of no where. Unexpectedly, Pete (Ray Danton) shows up at his old friend's home. Why would he show up now? Well, his prospects are poor and he's looking to stay with Jesse (Rory Calhoun) for a while. However, there is a plane crash nearby and the pair manage to make there way into the mountains and they find the survivors. Here's where it gets interesting, one of them (Thomas Gomez) is a thief--and he's got a briefcase full of money. This swine offers the pair money to take him back to civilization...and it's pretty clear he doesn't want the other survivors to make it back as well. What's to come of this hellish trek back to civilization.

The best thing about this film is evil. Ray Danton and Thomas Gomez were both excellent at playing evil. For this reason, it's worth seeing this relatively low budget thriller.

The Looters (1955)

Well, it was at the Gratiot Drive-In outside of Detroit that the still obscure Swiss photographer Robert Frank saw this movie on its first release. I know because it's in one of his photographs, seen in his legendary book, "The Americans." And that's the only reason I sought out this B-movie. It has no DVD release, but there's a lousy copy on Youtube. Check it out. The movie is better than it should be.

The plot seems simple enough—a plane has crashed in some truly steep and dangerous mountains in Colorado. Two ex-army associates, one now a low-level crook (Ray Danton) the other (Rory Calhoun) now a principled mountain guide, head off to find the crash. There are a few survivors, including a beautiful woman (Julie Adams with a great haircut) and a money-grubbing bank clerk. And with a box of money, little food, and a couple of guns, rivalry and greed take hold on their long walk to survival.

But as with any crash movie, like the recent "Grey," survival isn't enough to get through an hour and a half. And the other theme here is worth the effort—what it is to be a man, and a woman. There are some quick but sincere points made about the woman's superficial life as a model (and she reforms by the end) and the two young men's lives as "real men" playing it rough in a rough world (and the army wins that showdown). There is that box of money, a major plot point, but more important is the mink coat, which has its role right up to the final minute.

A year later, Spencer Tracy starred in a rather similar movie, "The Mountain," and on the surface that's a better production in full Technicolor, set in the Alps. (Neither movie is great.) This 1955 black and white one has a kind of seriousness that creeps through all the thin ideas and holds it together. Adams (the woman) gets hit a couple times very hard, a weird roughness. And the director, Abner Biberman (in his first true feature film) even sneaks a scene past the censors where the Calhoun and Adams characters spend the night sleeping together in a tent.

It's been noted that this was filmed on location, which really is rugged, though it's supposed to be bitter cold and it looks like a nice summer day. The army helped with its artillery training unit, so when the two young men get their final fistfight going, and the cannons are firing, and jets fly by, it's one hell of a scene.

Yeah, check this out for fun. The acting is solid, the cinematography is by the same guy who shot "Miracle on 34th Street" and it's excellent, and the setting is intense. Different enough to warrant a look.