Grito de Vingança

The main interest in this bland and predictable plot is of course the face off between Mark Stevens and an awesome Skip Homeier. Stevens - director and main lead - is nearly as impressive as he was in JACK SLADE, though I prefered this latest movie, which also was a western. This one is good enough noir, crime, for my taste, despite some ending that doesn't excit me that much. It is underrated and would deserve to be more known, again because of Homeier's character. The scenes with him, and especially with Stevens, are pure gems for this kind of B picture. I am happy to have found it again in my library.

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.

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.

By 1954 the Elements of Film-Noir were Diluted to the Point of Virtually Killing the Genre. At Least the Purity that Made it Remarkable and Different than the Standard Crime Stuff.

Beginning about 1950 the Genre was Intruded Upon with more "Friendly" Considerations as a Bid to Please the more Conservative Elements Taking Hold in Society and "Big-Brother" Authority.

In Mark Stevens Crime Thriller it can be Witnessed by the Location (Alaska) and the Heavy Plot Laden Little Girl.

These Things can Turn Noir into a more Pedestrian Film as the Defining Tropes Gave Way to other More Easily Digested Stories by Increasing Suburbanite Family and the Enormous amount of Kids in Everyone's Life.

The Film Contains some Fine Outdoor Cinematography and some Brutal Scenes, but Overall these are Counterpointed Quickly with a Softer Touch.

The Cast is Competent with Skip Homeier Stealing the Show as a Platinum Blonde Junkie that may put You in Mind of Lee Marvin's Psycho in Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat".

In Fact the Film is often Mentioned as a Low Budget Version of the Aforementioned Classic. Overall it's Worth a Watch.

But it's Sad to Watch Film-Noir Fade Away.

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.