La racoleuse

"Pickup" is the best kind of film noir. Cheap, tawdry, lurid, and funny, all at the same time.

This film has obtained cult status for being such a good bad movie, but I didn't think it was even bad. It's quite good actually, not least because it knows just how seriously to take itself, which isn't much. Hugo Haas is a very winning presence as the film's beleaguered protagonist, a kind of poor man's Frank Morgan. But the film's best asset is undeniably Beverly Michaels as the towering, glowering femme fatale. Wait till you get a load of this broad and her way of disdainfully tossing off a one liner. I still can't decide whether or not Michaels was a terribly bad actress in a phenomenally entertaining way, or whether she plays this role brilliantly. All I know is that she had me rolling with practically every line she delivered, and the film's final line perfectly sums up the audience's feelings about her by the time this film wraps up.

I saw "Pickup" as part of a noir festival, and it probably made a huge difference to see it with a live audience who was totally into it.

Grade: A

Citizen Kane it ain't, but Pickup isn't nearly as bad as one might think. Actor-director Hugo Haas deserves better, and I hope I can help the poor man (long departed) out. Haas,--no, I won't go into his career and background--let's just say the man had the reputation for being an okay actor, but as a director he was considered a sort of Central European version of Ed Wood. Pickup is about an older man, played by Haas, whose life is made a wreck of and nearly ruined by a toothy, gum-checking but withal irresistible blonde, portrayed by the unforgettable Beverly Michaels. The girl is, to be as genteel as possible, a worthless tramp, and nasty and stupid in the bargain. She plays with her adoring and naive lover like a cat with a mouse, and has an affair with a much younger man on the side. Amazingly, no one is murdered in the course of this film, which is actually at times quite sweet. Look, every novelist cannot write The Brothers Karamazov and every composer cannot write the Eroica, so why put down poor Mr. Haas whose only sin as an artist that I can tell is that is that he isn't Orson Welles. The man had a heart and soul, and this comes through in many scenes. He understands cruelty, too, and the woman in this film is, for all the melodrama, a not innacurate portrait of a certain kind of low-down broad who, if one were to show her videotapes of her inflicting her standard dose of pain on whoever the poor dope fool enough to get involved with her at the moment is, would shrug, light a cigarette and say, "Well, he was asking for it, wasn't he?". I'm not too sure about the character Mr. Haas plays in this film, but there is a kernel of truth in the mean little tale he tells; tacky though it may be, there's life in it nonetheless, which is good enough for me.

Hugo Haas is in charge of a tank stop on the railroad. When he brings Beverly Michaels home, she gets a look at his bank book and decides to marry him. It's tough, out in the middle of nowhere, but there's young Allan Nixon whom she captivates. Meanwhile she urges Haas to claim some disability so he can retire with the cash and a pension and they can get away. Then Haas has an accident while surveying the tracks, and loses his hearing. Miss Michaels grows wilder; when another accident restores his hearing, before he can tell her, he hears her slanging him and pretends to still be deaf, while Miss Michaels urges Nixon to kill him.

Haas' first American movie as writer/director/producer was done on a tiny budget, and then sold to Columbia for distribution at a handsome profit. Although it looks like it was based on THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE Twice with a Tobacco Road air, it's actually based on a Czech novel. It's film noir at its cheapest and most tawdry, and glories in its filth, with Miss Michaels giving a fine performance. Haas would do the same thing almost a score of times through 1962. He would die in 1968 at the age of 67.

It's pretty difficult to dismiss Haas as an 'sleazy, murky old guy' or 'The Bad Director' in his exile days (read US, later). He's trying hard and the pictures do have some bright moments, when you feel like as if it was a serious drama, or when you laugh hard. The problem is -- for some people -- that you get both in one package and that you might laugh at places where it wasn't intended. But I enjoyed this picture -- and I am not saying this only because of my hurt national pride or something.

The set-up is the same as in "The postman always calls twice", but Beverly Michaels is no Lana Turner. She is much worse, much cheaper and much more vulgar but at the same enticingly prettier and more taunting. You will hate her but at the same time adore her splendid vulgarity. Hugo Haas is the poor old service man who is stupid enough to marry her without suspecting the consequences. Allan Nixon is the young man who becomes her second prey, but as he cannot fulfil her desires he is actually saved. The most interesting part is Hugo Haas' spells of losing his hearing, which forms a vital part of the drama. It is not a very remarkable film but very good of its kind, having had no ambitions for any masterpiece, but it should go along well together with "Detour".