The Cruel Tower

This popped up on my YouTube, because I like older movies. I knew nothing about the plot before watching it. This movie is fine if you have insomnia and are trying...to go...to sleep...!

It was mildly interesting for the first 15 minutes or so, but the characters were almost caricatures of themselves. One-dimensional. Very little drama, although there were some interesting camera angles of the tower which threatened vertigo.

However, when one of the characters, Joshua--apparently not playing with a full deck--advised the drifter (John Ericson), "Get out now, while you still can!!", I took his advice, and bailed out of the movie right then and there. Good advice-- saved me some time!

At first, before ordering this film from the USA, I thought it was a medieval, adventure, costume story, involving a castle - because of the tower - but how wrong I was. But that doesn't mean I was deceived. Not a all. It was not a cheap Sam Katzman costume historical agreeable garbage stuff. This is an adventure drama, involving romance, thrill and about an unusual topic. There are not villains here, just characters maybe more sympathetic than others, good but predictable relationships between those same characters. It is really enjoyable to discover, bringing good sequences. I would have not expected such a film from Lew Landers from whom I have seen numerous movies.

This "noir-stained" (as Noir City film festival host Alan K. Rode put it) romantic triangle about men who work at high altitudes and the women, or in this case woman, who watches them from the ground is determined to remain pretty unexciting. John Ericson had a pretty face and looks decent without a shirt on, but he's not much of an actor. The drama never generates much heat, save for a mildly suspenseful climax.

The film does have three things going for it: Mari Blanchard, who the word vivacious was created to describe; the crusty performance of Charles McGraw as the psycho leader of the pack; and some dizzying POV shots from the top of one of the cruel towers that gives the film its name. None of those things make this a good movie, or even a very watchable one, but they prevent it from being a total wash.

I will say I'm glad to have seen it though, because it sounds like I'm one of the few people in the world who have. Its screening in Chicago was apparently only the second time, aside from its initial theatrical run, that it's been shown in a theater ever, and it isn't available to see anywhere else.

Grade: C.

Drifter John Ericson picks up a job with Charles McGraw's crew of steeplejacks: Steve Brody, Alan Hale Jr, and Peter Whitney. There's also McGraw's girl,, Mari Blanchard, for whom he falls hard, and her loyalty waves. When McGraw finds himself losing control, people beginning dying in accidents. Is it the dangerous job, or is McGraw a madman?

It's not a great movie, with a story told many times, and director Lew Landers is not the man to get anything extra out of it, but as usual, McGraw gives a performance that is great, and Ernest Haller's neck-craning shots of the high towers induces a sense of vertigo. The result is a pretty good programmer.

The movie consists of a series of loose elements unrelated to a convincing plot, resulting in an inevitable conclusion, - like that of a syllogism -, which is logically implied by its premises. Syllogisms, as fascinating they may be, are not related with any kind of pathos: these are the premises, that is the conclusion. Automatically. What I just called a "convincing plot", in my opinion, is precisely one in which something unexpected happens: that not being the case for "The Cruel Tower", the film ends up as being a story devoid of any suspense or driving force. Even the action shots on top of the tower are not particularly entertaining.

Some sub-plots, or secondary roles, of the film, are even more unrelated to the central topic: they could be present or not, they can be substituted by any other thing, the whole wouldn't change a bit. See the character of Joss Jossman, in the film, and his totally random psychological delineation, for example.

In conclusion: watchable, if you can spare a little more than 1 hour. And if you can't find nothing better for the moment. If that is the case let me suggest you to turn off your screens and to revert to the written pages of good old Aristotle, quite more thrilling than "The Cruel Tower".

I don't give any rating for the film because, (at today), it is exactly the same as the average rating of IMDb. Pastime with good company.