Pickup

(1951) Pickup DRAMA

Adapted from the novel "Watchman 47" by Josef Kopta produced, written, directed and starring Hugo Haas. He plays somewhat overweight and older train track maintenance man, Jan "Hunky" Horak. His workplace also happens to be his place of residence as well as he lets in a familiar friend nickname the "Professor" (Howland Chamberlain) to serve himself some coffee. The Professor then informs Hunky that puppies are for sale at the state fair, after learning Hunky has just lost his dog. A new employee, Steve Kowalski (Allan Nixon) then shows up to take his place for awhile, while Husky visits the county fair to possibly fetch himself a new puppy. While there, we find out Husky is tight with his money, arguing over the price with the person selling it to him, and it is not long before he is taken in by a young gold digger, Betty (Beverly Michaels) after seeing her riding on a carousal with her best friend. Betty assumes he has money despite him not her type and she bets her friend, she can get Hunky to pay for her meal. It was not long before Hunky pays for everything. By the time Hunky drives her to his place of residence, while he goes out to get something for the coffee, she then takes the opportunity to snoop around and take a look at his bank account. By the time she is driven back into town with Steve, she then finds out her and her friend are being evicted with three month back rent owing. The next scene then showcases both older Husky and young gold digger, Betty married, sleeping in separate beds with Husky attempting to show Betty what he does for a living. It was at this point is when Husky loses his hearing. As the doctor could not figure out how to regain his hearing back, it was as soon as he was heading back to town and was almost hit by another vehicle is when his hearing came back. The intended crime is when Betty professes Husky her actual reason why she was with him in the first place, and tries to manipulate Steve involve into murder.

What I liked about "Pickup" is the fact that just when you think something terrible was going to happen, which would have made the entire experience routine and expected- it doesn't. Making the entire theatrical experience much more humanly easy to identify.

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".

The reviewer who said "Citizen Kane it ain't" got it right. This is lowbrow stuff to be sure, but for what it is, Haas demonstrates a surprisingly keen eye for both dialogue and characterization, two things supremely lacking in the cheaper and lesser BAIT produced a few years later. Best of all, this is a highly entertaining ride, with a solid and credible performance by Haas as the pigeon who all but begs for a plucking until he sees the light (or rather hears the dark) when he overhears the plotting and venomous bile directed at him by his conniving and venal wife, who believes him to be deaf.

Trumping all however is the bravura dominatrixesque performance of Ms. Michaels as the throaty pointy-bra'ed femme fatale. Here's one of the few broads I've ever come across who might be able to actually compete with Ann Savage's mouthy and devouring DETOUR chippie for supremacy over a castrated male race. And leave the male species begging for more.

Also in the movie's favor is a reasonably tight storyline which features some nice twists and reveals with great gusto the true depths of treachery to which Michaels gleefully stoops to get her $7300 out of Haas. Again, this isn't DOUBLE INDEMNITY and it certainly isn't Shakespeare but it's charmingly pulpy and has an agreeably creamy evil nougat centre.

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.

Czechoslovakia-born Hugo Haas does a fantastic job of directing, writing the screenplay and enacting the main part in PICKUP. He certainly deserves top marks for that tripartite effort.

He is helped by excellent cinematography from Paul Ivano, sharp editing from WL Bagier, and a convincingly dissolute performance from beautiful, lanky, brooding Beverley Michaels. Howland Chamberlain also does well as the down and out intellectual who steals books from the town library and keeps quoting from them. He is the Jiminy Cricket, the conscience everyone finds irrelevant - even Jan Horak, who fails to listen to the intellectual's advice to get a dog at the beginning of the fim.

Instead, Horak (Haas) gets himself a beautiful wife who is clearly a gold digger, sleeps in different quarters - you get the feeling that there is no sex in that relation - and starts cheating the moment handsome Allan Nixon turns up.

Jan Horak's temporary deafness is exceedingly well exploited. Haas' acting is sublime throughout, the highest point being when he hears wife and lover plotting against him, and he laughs with tears streaming down.

This B pic borrows a little bit from Germany's DER BLAUE ENGEL (1931), in which an older man falls for a much younger and uncaring Marlene Dietrich, and from THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (US 1944), but it diversifies the story lines completely and it holds its own without ever coming into plagiarism territory. PICKUP should earn Hugo Haas a far better reputation than it did while he was alive. In the late 50s, early 60s some rated him the foreign Ed Wood in Hollywood, which was unfair and insulting in the extreme.

I enjoyed it very much and wholeheartedly recommend it. 8/10.