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Cry Vengeance (1954)

Leading man Mark Stevens falls something short of a cult figure. He is director and first actor in four movies from 1954 (this one, his first) to 1963. He plays his roles as if he is in control, which he is, literally, from the director's chair. He's the hardened type, and here he is bitter bitter bitter, to the point that he is not quite a fully developed character and it's hard to get absorbed in his problem.

The rest of the movie is functional. It doesn't lack interest--for one thing, it's shot in Alaska, mostly (the exterior shots)--and the supporting cast is middling to good, filling roles we've seen before from pretty girl befriending the unlikely hero to chatty bartenders to a sweet kid who turns the man around through her innocence. And the filming (William Sickner, a routine cameraman with nearly two hundred B-movies to his credit) and editing, likewise, are workaday...the job gets done, but it lacks some kind of richness or aura or plain old drama.

Then to make it a little more disappointing, a couple of the main themes are taken a little too directly from earlier noirs, namely "The Big Heat" which came out the year before. The theme, established right away, is a cop who is out for vengeance against whoever killed his wife and child in a car bomb meant for him. Stevens plays this part with cold certitude. It's an interesting film in some ways, but a clunker in many others. Take it for what it was, and what it is.

Mark Stevens was a leading player in B movies, and was an excellent cop in THE STREET WITH NO NAME (1948, see my review) and private eye in THE DARK CORNER (1946, see my review), both excellent noirs. Here he got his first chance chance to direct himself. Although he does well enough as a director in other respects, because he could not see himself he probably did not realize that he looked too grim throughout most of the film, never changing his expression during the early portions. This may have made sense in theory, because he a wronged man seeking vengeance, and grief-stricken at the death of his wife and child. But one cannot have a single expression for nearly an hour like that without it becoming monotonous. Stevens furthermore according to the story had to have a severely scarred side of his face, which meant that he could show very little emotion on his face in any case. The film was largely shot at Ketchikan, Alaska. Alaska was not even a state at that time, but still a Territory. This was an extremely unusual place to set a film in the 1950s. The location footage, especially the aerial footage, is thus of considerable historical interest, not least to the people who live there today. Mark Stevens went on to direct himself again in TIME TABLE (1956) and directed three more feature films and 50 television drama episodes in the nine years between 1956 and 1965. He last appeared as an actor in 1987, and he died in 1994 at the age of 77. This film is not outstanding, but it is nevertheless a contribution to the noir genre.

Cry Vengeance owes a debt to the previous year's Fritz Lang film The Big Heat. It too tells the tale of an honest cop whose family was killed in a mob-engineered explosion and who sets out as a crazed vigilante seeking redress. But while The Big Heat sizzles, Cry Vengeance stays tepid, perhaps owing to its sub-Arctic setting.

The star of earlier noirs The Dark Corner and The Street with No Name, Mark Stevens directs himself as the hate-twisted protagonist, just out of prison after being framed and losing his wife and daughter. (Stevens has aged visibly, and it's not just the scarred-face makeup his character sports.) Strong-arm tactics with plenty of karate chops elicit the information that the man he holds responsible has assumed a new identity in Ketchikam, Alaska. But not only is Steven's arrival expected, he's followed by a platinum-haired gunsel who's the real killer (Skip Homeier, who bears a resemblance to Lee Marvin, The Big Heat's sadistic torpedo).

Cry Vengeance matches its predecessor in brutality but comes up short everywhere else. Muddy photography wastes the scenic north, while the bland dialogue lacks the epigrammatic edge that's one of the joys of film noir (no "sisters under the mink" insinuation here as in Lang's film). The plot, with its double-crosses, needs a more baroque approach to sell itself.

On the whole, Cry Vengeance falls victim to the fatigue that, by 1954, was beginning to beset the entire noir cycle. Plots and characters amount, basically, to retreads. Joan Vohs, as Homeier's sozzled moll, couldn't have given this performance without Gloria Grahame's the year before in The Big Heat. With Stevens looking tired, too, it doesn't augur well for Cry Vengeance. But it holds distinction as the only film noir set in the Alaskan Territory, as Hell's Half Acre of the same year was the only one set in the Hawaiian (it wasn't until 1959 that statehood was conferred on both territories).

With the exception of the second half's move from an American big city to rural Alaska, the film noir CRY VENGEANCE is a strange, offbeat venture... and wouldn't be if strange and offbeat Skip Homeier didn't play the primary villain...

Despite there being a mob boss that director and star Mark Stevens wants to kill, befitting the revenge title since his family was murdered while half his face burned and deformed before imprisonment... but the tall and lanky Homeier's hit-man Roxey Davis, with white spiked hair that would be normal decades later, soon becomes just about everything...

Making up for dragging expository scenes that hinder otherwise neat and smokey tavern settings with his target's oblivious bar-working moll Martha Hyers, spending the most time babysitting who's technically the most important character in child starlet Cheryl Callaway as the targeted mobster's daughter...

She's so precious you know our hero with antihero motivations won't pull through on his urban-to-rural journey's primary goal to off her daddy: but it's henchman Mort Mills and scene-stealer Homeier... the latter turning-out even more evil than he'd initially seemed... that provide Stevens, both the director and actor, some worthy tension on screen.

What do you do when you get framed for bribery, your face is disfigured and your wife and child are killed? You seek revenge, even if it takes you to Ketchikan, Alaska. Mark Stevens (THE DARK CORNER, THE STREET WITH NO NAME) both stars and makes his directorial debut with a cheapie BIG HEAT knockoff, but it's a tasty little morsel. Stevens gives the best performance I've seen from him, cold and intense, and leads a mighty fine cast of B-roster supporting players. The characters are so engaging that the deaths are tangibly felt by the viewer. Pretty much everyone in this movie is fun to watch, especially Skip Homeier as the suave, menacing gangster and Joan Vohs as his conflicted moll. Even the little girl is good. The film has a terrific rough-and-tumble attitude, with biting dialogue, dark morality, smoky jazz in nightclubs and cheap dives, and lots of fist fights. There's some good exploration of ethical grey area. It could use a little more directorial finesse, but for a first effort it's not too bad and sports a couple of well-shot sequences. Maybe not one of the greats, but it packs a good noir punch.