The Devil Thumbs a Ride

First of all, let's get something straight. "The Devil Thumbs A Ride" is the BEST title in the history of motion pictures. Hands down. It's not even close. What a vivid and startling image those words conjure up in the mind's eye.

This is a movie I've been trying to track down for years and it does not disappoint. It's surprisingly nasty considering the year it was made, though always with a wingy "now let's not take any of this too seriously folks" feel to it. It's as if the director, Felix Feist, was hired to crank out a simple little crime quickie with a good guy, a bad guy, a nice girl and a bad girl, but wasn't quite sure how to do that (sort of like a gifted baseball pitcher who just can't throw any pitch straight). So he tosses everything into a blender and twists it into a swirling, pulpy freak show. The bad guy seems too cool and in control, the "good" guy is sort of a creep, the nice girl meets a shocking fate, and the bad girl almost steals the show. Certainly a zippy, wicked ancestor of Tarantino and all the Tarantino knock-offs that litter the shelves at Blockbuster.

Feist was a breathless, inventive director who really knew how to move the camera and keep things humming along. (His movies are incredibly tightly paced.) The vacuum cleaner scene, played without dialogue, is a real highlight. And Lawrence Tierney of course, is excellent. When he advises "better let me take the wheel", you know it's going to be a wild ride.

There are some goofy B-movie slip-ups (the cop who agrees to let the gas station attendant come along on the chase for the killer, for one) but that only adds to its charm. One of the cruelest code-era films I've seen, it has a slapped on happy ending that seems to go about as well as perfume on a chainsaw. Richly deserving of its growing cult.

A very enjoyable, mostly fast-paced film noir written & directed by Felix Feist, who also brought you This Woman Is Dangerous. FF doesn't muck around. The story of a murderous armed robber on the lam cracks along, and is full of snappy lines from all the characters - especially Lawrence Tierney, who clearly revels in his nastiness. Story gets a bit bogged down in a holiday house, and it's full of implausibilities, but it's also packed with a great supporting cast, who give it all they've got - even if what they've got tends to the fairly dumb at times..but hey, this is cheap and cheerful entertainment. Even Tierney's unremitting (and enjoyable) meanness is alleviated by the lively tone of the piece. Tierney by the way is the guy who plays Elaine's implacable dad in a classic episode of Seinfeld. However, his performances in the title roles of Dillinger and Born To Kill (both 1947) are chilling.

Over the decades, Felix Feist's The Devil Thumbs A Ride has gathered a fierce reputation as some sort of ultimate, quick-and-dirty film noir (like Detour). It's not quite that. Its dark star, Laurence Tierney, was more explosively, unpredictably violent in Born to Kill (and he had Claire Trevor at her malevolent best to play against). And Ida Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker corners the market on the terrors of the lonely road, come nightfall. (The better part of Devil Thumbs A Ride, by contrast, occur in a posh beach house somewhere between San Diego and Los Angeles). But the ensemble cast works well together -- Betty Lawford as good-time-gal Agnes is especially memorable. The end is somewhat troublesome; the necessary "restoration to normalcy" is abrupt and discordantly upbeat. The best films noirs close on a greyer, more ambiguous note. Still, this may be the finest 63-minute film ever made, and a key piece in the noir cycle.

With a title like that, incredible plugs from several film noir historians and the presence of Lawrence Tierney, I just had to find this movie and buy it, even if it was sight-unseen and hard to obtain.

This had a "Detour" look to it, meaning a very low-budget film noir with a no- name cast except for Tierney, although he wasn't a big star anyway. I knew him from the film "Born To Kill" and was intriguing. Tierney played the same kind of psycho here. He was convincing, since he was mean and tough and nasty in real life, too.

In this film, four people dominate: one good man, one bad man, one good woman, one bad woman. The bad people, of course, have the best lines. You know Tierney is not good because insults everyone he sees, even a little baby. The other people are idiotic and you want slap them and say, "Wake up!" before Tierney does something bad to them.

The cops in here are also a bit strange. They would rather play poker than go chase a criminal. On second thought, maybe that was sensible. Anyway, it was odd to see.

In a nutshell, Tierney is on the run, and winds up with these other saps who he cons into hiding out in someone's vacant house. Most of the film is talk, not much action, but it moves pretty well and it only lasts 62 minutes. There are laughs along the way despite the seriousness of the story but it still was disappointing overall. I guess I expected too much. The title is still the best thing about the film. See it, if you can, but don't spend money on it as I did.

I saw this many years ago on AMC. I barely remember the story, but I do remember that it was a very effective piece of noir. I've wanted to see it again, but it is extremely hard to come by. It isn't on video or DVD, and it rarely appears at revival theatres. If you ever have the chance to catch this on AMC or TCM, do whatever you can to see it. I definitely put it up there with "Detour" and "They Walked By Night". Great stuff.