Outside the Wall

"Film-Noir" as Newbie Aficionados Find-Out Fast is a Tough Genre to Define, Pigeon-Hole, and Explain.

Whole Books have Attempted the Task and the Ambiguity and Miss-Identifying Remains.

Just Ask Eddie Muller who has Made a Well-Deserved Respected Career as "The Czar-of-Noir and Soldiers-On with His Film-Noir Foundation and Today Still Carries the Torch as Good as Any-Body.

Case in Point..."Outside the Wall", Written and Directed by Crane Wilbur", Little Known Hollywood Citizen, who had a Good Sense for Crackling Dialog.

A Good Cast Peppered with Ingredients the Likes of Richard Basehart with Support by Marilyn Maxwell, who had a Long Career, here in the Role of a Femme-Fatale Bleached-Blonde and is a Tough-as-Polished-Nails Nurse on the Make for Guys, "With Fancy Cars and a Pocket-Full of Miracles...

Dorthy Hart is the "Good-Girl", and Harry Morgan, Once Again Sliding Effortlessly from Cop or Criminal, this Time as a Gang Leader with a Sadistic-Side.

John Hoyt is an Aging TB Patient that Basehart Recognizes from a 15 Year Stint for Manslaughter that is Half His Life, whose Gang just Heisted a Cool-Mil from an Armored Truck and His Ruthless Ex-Wife and the Morgan Gang are Scheming to Steal.

Basehart is Terrific and the Philly Locations are the Digs where Basehart, as Naive as an Untrained Puppy, Navigates and Learns OJT, to Stay One Step Ahead of a Noir World of Bad-Guys, Dishy Blondes Void of Conscience, and the Fast-Growing, often Overwhelming Life Environs.

It's a Neat Little Movie Packaged for the Edgy Fans always on the Look-Out for Hidden-Gems Among the Pile of Rocks we Call Hollywood. While this Might Not Be Considered a "Gem" it is Part of the Better than Average B-Crime-Movies...

that May or May Not be Pure Film-Noir but are an Entertaining Enjoyment Plucked from the Pile that was a Steadily Growing Grist for the Mill of Movies from the Period that are even More than just...

Worth a Watch.

Larry Nelson (Richard Basehart) is a 29 year old convict who wins his plea for a pardon. But "outside the wall" freedom is initially not so sweet. He was in a reform school at 14 - he describes himself as an incorrigible hood at that age - and when a guard who dislikes him hits him, he hits him back, the guard falls and dies, and Larry is convicted of murder but given life in prison instead of death because of his young age. So he is free with 672 dollars he has earned over the course of his imprisonment (that would be about 12 thousand dollars now), but he has never been on a date, never taken a drink, never driven a car or learned how, never applied for a real job. After a couple of days of bad experiences in the city, he hits the road and "tramps it" to a small town and gets a job as a lab assistant in a hospital for TB patients, hoping just to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. On the way to the small town, he reads about a one million dollar robbery in which three of the robbers were killed and three armored car guards were killed. Two robbers escaped.

And then one of the robbers shows up at the rest home with a bad case of TB. Larry recognizes him from his time in prison, but true to the prison code, tells him he will not rat him out. The robber asks him to help him get some of the robbery loot to his wife in Philadelphia. Larry refuses to help. At first. But then he starts pining for a nurse who is money hungry bad news, and he thinks that some of the robber's money will win her affection, so he agrees to help the ailing robber. Complications ensue.

I would normally be annoyed by somebody who makes the obviously bad and even stupid choices that Larry Nelson makes in this film, figuring that any intelligent 30 year old should know better than to trust such a greedy woman as the nurse he lusts after or the murderous robber who wants his help. But then, Larry Nelson experientially is 14, not 30. Thus he makes the mistakes that any 14 year old would make in the same situation. But he learns fast.

This was really a great part for Basehart. I believe him as the hardened con and I believe him as the naive teenager in a 30 year old body. If you want to see Basehart in another film where he practically has a dual role, watch "Tension". But by all means do see this, as it has suspense, noirish undertones, and a great performance by Basehart.

Richard Basehart went into Cherry Hill Prison when he was 14. Now he's 29, and has just been pardoned. The world has grown noisy and strange, but he just wants to keep his head down, so he winds up in a small town working for almost nothing at a hospital that specializes in lungers. He vaguely hopes to get a girl friend, but doesn't know anything about women, so when nurse Marilyn Maxwell turns him down because she's looking for a rich man, he agrees to help armored-car robber Joseph Pevney get some money to his ex-wife in return for a bankroll. He impresses Miss Maxwell with the money, but the wife's mob wants all of the money from the robbery.

I'm so used to Basehart playing deep-voiced authority figures in the 1960s, that watching him play this young-old fish out of water is startling. Crane Wilbur directs his actors to very simple performances that lead you to think that this is all inevitable, while getting in a subtextual knock at society's unwillingness to accept ex-cons. With Signe Hasso, Dorothy Hart, Lloyd Gough and Harry Morgan.

Richard Baseheart never competed with such mega stars as Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne but kept more to himself concentrating on more complicated roles on a smaller scale, like a kind of understatement actor, but the result is that his roles are always interesting and intriguing. Here he is released from prison after fifteen years at the age of 29 and knows nothing about society. His only schooling in 15 years' imprisonment has been to handle tough guys and ruffians and a thorough knowledge of the criminal type. To get away from the stress and noise of Philadelphia, he heads for the country and finds a small friendly town where nothing ever happens, where he is employed as an assistant at a hospital. So far so good, but it is not. An old fellow gangster turns up in a dying state who has hidden a million away somewhere, and the fellow hoodlums he has fooled are after him, so he is not allowed to die in peace. Unfortunately Richard Baseheart is there, they recognise each other, and the case is cooked. From there on the strain and excitement of the thriller keeps constantly rising like a fever temperature, and a few dames get involved also. This is in many ways the perfect thriller, but Richard Baseheart's acting is what keeps it glowingly alive until it bursts into flames, and the finale is an ingenious climax of the composition.

Not RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11 nor BRUTE FORCE, nor THE LAST MILE either. But it is actually a movie about an ex jail bird who was condemned for manslaughter, and who, after his release from prison, encounters many issues. Nothing really exciting, but it is an Universal crime drama, rather hard to find, and Richard Basehart is an actor who is always interesting to see in a movie, especially a thriller. The funny thing is that after this one - OUTSIDE THE WALL - director Crane Wilbur will give us INSIDE THE WALLS OF FOLSOM, and I don't even speak of his CANON CITY, made before this one. Also both prison break plots. Good little noir, pretty much enjoyable.