The Big Chase

"The Big Chase" is a B-movie released by tiny Lippert Productions...a studio which made the cheapest of cheap films during its run. It also appears to have been assembled from a couple different productions...one a silly 3-D film with lots of over-the-top stunts. Yet, despite all this, it's actually a GOOD film...worth seeing and enjoyable.

The story is a drama about a gang of crooks planning a heist and shows the policework done to bring them to justice. It's told in a straight forward, almost documentary style way and it's also awfully violent for 1954...which actually helps the movie and gives it some noir elements. No, it's not exactly film noir, as it lacks the artistry and great camerawork of a good noir film...but it still works nevertheless.

Robert L. Lippert's June 1954 release of "The Big Chase" was hardly an auspicious event, but coming one year after the original 3-D short "Bandit Island" from March 1953, serves as the only glimpse of what is now a lost film. Robert L. Lippert Jr. directed "Bandit Island" in color without a script or dialogue, a total of four days of shooting, with Lon Chaney contributing ideas on how the story should be told, and supplying stuntmen he knew from years past to perform their usual thing (Lou Roberson takes the fall from the helicopter, while Gil Perkins plays the robbed payroll clerk). Less than 20 minutes of "Bandit Island" is used however, beginning at the 35 minute mark of a 59 minute programmer, with nearly 40 minutes of dull exposition bringing back Glenn Langan, Jim Davis, and Jay Lawrence to repeat their roles from the year before (only Lon Chaney remains absent from the newly shot scenes). While "Bandit" was filmed in gorgeous 3-D color, the 2-D "Chase" is strictly routine black and white, as Langan is joined by real-life wife Adele Jergens to play on screen wife, pregnant with child, endlessly fretting over his dangerous job while hubby does all the cooking (I kid you not!). Meanwhile, the new character of Police Lt. Ned Daggert (Douglas Kennedy) practically narrates the entire film to a newshound played by Youngstown's own Joe Flynn (McHALE'S NAVY), here billed as 'Joseph Flynn' in virtually his feature film debut (he later appears opposite Lon Chaney in Allied Artists' "Indestructible Man"). We see Jim Davis and Jay Lawrence in newly shot prison footage, spending six months to plot a payroll robbery that looks as though they cooked it all up during a 5 minute coffee break! Glenn Langan cooks, Adele Jergens boozes and smokes, Douglas Kennedy narrates at tortoise level speed, making the 'big chase' seem more impressive than it really is. The director was longtime film editor Arthur David Hilton, whose only other credits in that capacity were "The Return of Jesse James" and "Cat-Women of the Moon." It's nice to see Lon Chaney in anything, but like everyone else from "Bandit Island," his characterization is mute and nonexistent, henchman Kip biting the dust at the railway yard, in what amounts to little more than three minutes-plus screen time (his demise is accompanied by the musical theme from Bela Lugosi's 1940 "The Devil Bat"). Even Chaney fans will feel let down by this one, the actor's first effort for Lippert Pictures, followed by two more, "The Black Pirates" and "The Silver Star." Producer Robert L. Lippert Jr. fondly recalled Chaney as a real pro who knew his business, half drunk half the time, yet always reliable and never holding up production.

Usually the label Lippert Pictures on anything makes it suspect to quality. But I found this one to be an excellent crime drama. As for the title The Big Chase it certainly lives up to that as about the last third is nothing but chase scenes.

This film had its origins in a short subject that Lippert did the year before. The Last Bandit was the short subject and it was virtually a silent film concentrating on nothing but the crime aspect of this story. For The Big Chase the heist that is planned by Jim Davis is blended nicely with the story of Glenn Langan the police officer in pursuit of the robbers.

Douglas Kennedy who is an LAPD police lieutenant and who looks upon Langan as sort of a protégé narrates both the Langan and the heist stories to reporter Joe Flynn. While Korean war veteran Langan is learning the ropes as a rookie cop, Davis is working out a heist while still in prison. The story of Langan who with wife Adele Jergens is expecting their first runs parallel with the heist until the final confrontation.

If you like action and chase scenes, The Big Chase is definitely your kind of film.

Joe Flynn (in his first credited screen appearance) interviews Detective Douglas Kennedy, who proceeds to tell him about rookie cop Glenn Langan, Langan's expectant wife Adele Jergen, and the tracking down of newly released crook Jim Davis.

Most of the last twenty minutes is the chase, as you might guess from the title. It's Langan against Davis and his ever-shrinking cohort, with Kennedy doing the detective work and Langan the pursuit -- and a couple of killings. Given that it's a rare directorial work by two film editors -- Arthur Hilton and Robert Lippert Jr. -- you'd expect it to be visually interesting for the way the chase is edited. Alas, I thought it was something that would appeal to people who know Los Angeles, assuming the movie geography makes sense -- goodness knows, when the movies tackle New York City, it usually bears almost no relationship to my native town.

It seems like the sort of movie that would have had trouble with the Production Code, given the killings and several implied relationships. However, the Hays Office was likely more concerned with the amount of cleavage Jane Russell was showing in her movies; B Studio Lippert was not likely to be gone over in detail. Lon Chaney Jr. Makes an appearance, but the best role goes to Jack Daley as a motel owner who thinks he's geting back with his wife, but is being played for a chump.

And that 3-D version, called BANDIT ISLAND, does not survive in that format but it is all here in THE BIG CHASE. And it is flatter than a flitter. On Movie Connections we learn that BANDIT ISLAND was edited into THE BIG CHASE. No, we learn wrong, as it was the other way around, although the short was released prior to THE BIG CHASE film. A second unit shot the 3-D footage for the express purpose of editing it from the overall film. No way, Lippert Pictures would have shot a 3-D short, and then gather most of that cast again a year later to film a different feature movie with a story framing the footage from the 3-D short. BANDIT ISLAND was all second-unit work done by Gilbert Warrenton on camera; Robert L. Lippert Jr. as the director, assisted by Stanley Newfield and Ernie Johnson was the Prop Master for that sequence, which means he came up with the dummy that gang-leader Brad Bellows (Jim Davis)pot-shotted out of the helicopter.

Plot for THE BIG CHASE has Korean-War vet Grayson returning from that Police Action and joining the L.A. Police Academy, which we learn in a flashback told by Police Lt. Ned Daggert (Douglas Kennedy) to story-hunting reporter Milton Graves (Joe Flynn as Joseph Flynn.) We also learn that Pete's wife Doris is in a family way and eight months or so along, and she is worried because her doctor (Wheaton Chambers) has told her she is anemic---and this must be an internal condition, because Adele Jergens was never anemic---but this doesn't keep her from lighting up a cigarette and downing her anemic pills with a shot of bourbon. No, this was a 50's thing and was not intended as some kind of PSA about the dos-and-donts of being pregnant.

Meanwhile, over to the state pen, where Brad Bellows (played by Davis and not named Brad Meggs as shown on site) and Jim Meggs (played by Jay Lawrence and not named Jim Bellows, as shown on site) are planning a big heist as soon as Brad gets out of prison and has six months to plan this caper. As executed, the caper appears to have been planned in six seconds. Meanwhile, Doris frets over the safety of her husband on his appointed rounds and worries about her anemia and smokes some more cigarettes to help her bridge her current problems, although the chances she may give birth to a pea head if she doesn't lay off the nicotine doesn't occur to her, since the Surgeon General hasn't yet got around to screwing up the beautiful cigarette-package labels with those unsightly warning labels that came later.

Okay, enough plot set-up. Bellows and Miggs and Kitty, who is Bellows wife but wimpy motel-owner Phil Arnold thinks she is his wife and space does not allow the telling of this segment of the story as it is the one highlight of the total film, or films if you insist. And, riding in the back seat of the stolen convertible is none other than Lon Chaney Jr., who, despite the fact he is third-billed, has only about ten minutes of footage to go with his zero lines of dialogue, unless a grunt or two counts as dialogue. They rob a payroll-truck and take off in their stolen car, and wheel down the Hollywood Freeway and are soon spotted by Grayson and his Car-22 partner, and the big chase part of THE BIG CHASE now commences. Kitty, the designated driver, is shot during this pursuit, although Chaney is directly between her and Grayson's line of fire, and the curved path this bullet takes is akin to the path of the 1963 Magic Bullet in Dallas and should disarm those conspiracy nuts who think a bullet can't dart and dodge here and there.

Davis, from the passenger side, guides the car to a halt down at the S.P. yards, and there is a lot of running around, over, between and under some S.P. box cars and even a shot of a slow-moving train engine about to run over the 3-D audience even it does lose a bit when Warrenton's camera is jerked sideways. Chaney gets his at the RR yard, and while he is getting his, Bellows and Miggs hotfoot it over to some other L.A. neighborhood and steal another car and it is about this point that one begins to question just how much time Bellows really put into planning this caper. And they get clean away or would have if the motel owner who thought he was married to Kitty hadn't gotten P.O'ed when he learned that Bellows had dumped the body of his ex-non wife into the La Brea tar pits, and tells all. So Daggert radio's Grayson and tells him the plan and he needs to get over to some park somewhere where a helicopter is waiting for him. The next shot shows the two pursue-es slogging across a beach to get to a rowboat. Yes, a rowboat. They row this boat out about fifty miles to where there is a motor boat moored to a buoy. They board the motor boat and head for an island---which it appears is why they called the 3-D short BANDIT ISLAND---and it is never revealed just what mode of transportation Bellows had chartered to escape from the island on, as Grayson, now really mad about Bellows shooting his prop-dummy sidekick, supplied by Props Master Ernie Johnson, has landed. And, soon after some more 3-D scuffling and camera-ducking, the 3-D part that isn't in 3-D anymore, ends and we get back to the hospital where Adele Jergens has delivered a bouncing, healthy---one can hope---baby girl and is frettin' because she hasn't provided her husband with a bouncing baby boy, but he tells her it is okay, as one of the next 15 is bound to be a boy...and she reaches for her pack of Camels.

Finis.