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GIRL ON THE RUN is actually a young couple on the lam from a phony murder rap who hide out in a two-bit carnival run by a cigar-chomping midget who looks a bit like Jack LaRue, she as a midway "chorine" and he as a boxing shill. The story takes place over the course of a night and I wasn't too sure what was going on other than the place being the nexus of local political corruption involving the murder of a "vice crusading" editor or somesuch. It's the kind of movie where the walls shake when a door slams but although it's far from THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, it's not without its tawdry charms, especially the less-than-lovely kooch dancers who have no business being on stage (although Renee De Milo was oddly fascinating) and they're on stage often. The only cast members I recognized were Frank Albertson as a sideshow barker and an uncredited Steve McQueen in among the carnival "crowd". I'm predisposed to "carny noir" however threadbare it may be so you reely can't go by me.

Carny noir concerns 1950's vice rackets. The basic mystery is "Who killed George" but there are a lot of noir type character relationships intertwined in the story. It is tough and cheap, fitting to the 1950's carny world.

Rosemary Petit is svelte and effective and appears to be a legit b-film actress. On the opposite end of the film babe spectrum is French tart Renee De Milo who believe me still delivers plenty of va-voom to the screen after all these years. While by no means great, "Girl on the Run" is a hard boiled film that held my attention. Noir enthusiasts will need this in their collection.

Extras on the Alpha DVD include a goofy trailer for "The Girl in Gold Boots" which extols that "for Buzz, the answer was a gun!" and also some other cheesy stuff.

Great little sleazy noir murder mystery at a burlesque (tame)show on the midway. A pulp story brought to life! But watch for Steve McQueen as a background extra in a couple of scenes! Must be his first part.

Never heard of the directing duo, but they certainly owe a debt to Fritz Lang and Wiemar cinema in general. With an nod to Tod Browning for ambience.

Best viewed as a gestalt. Ignore such conventions as plot, acting and dialogue. The reward is in the esthetic. The evocative cinematography in particular. Cf, the mechanical clown that opens and closes the film. A stunning and memorable image.

"Girl on the Run" is an exploitation film. And, as an exploitation film, it's cheap and tries very hard to titillate. After all, the setting for the story is a burlesque-like traveling road show with lots of barely dressed women. However, I hate to say this because folks will think I am a sexist pig, but most of these 'hot' dancers look incredibly unattractive. Again, I am not trying to be sexist...but the film IS trying to appeal to the baser instincts of the viewers and fails miserably most of the time.

The story itself is very familiar to me...and I am sure I saw another version of this film set at a carnival. It was not the Indian remake from the 1970s...but also from the 1940s or 50s...but I cannot place it and IMDB doesn't give any clues.

A man is accused of murder and hangs out behind the scenes at this show. His girl gets a job dancing in the show's risque review and he eventually gets a job boxing in the same show. All the while, they work at trying to solve the mystery...who is the real murderer.

The film is cheap...cheap acting, cheap sets and cheap writing. The story itself isn't bad...but with so much about the film that is bad, it is overwhelmed by badness and the story never really shines.

By the way, I found this film on a Roku channel...and it billed Steve McQueen first. That's funny as he never received any billing in the movie because his part was minuscule.

Richard Coogan ('The Californians') stars as Bill Martin, an ace reporter who's framed for the murder of his editor. He takes it on the lam with his devoted girlfriend Janet (Rosemary Pettit, in one of only five credits for her), and they hide out in a traveling carnival. There, he finds work as a pugilist and she learns how to do some exotic dancing. All the while, they have to prove that criminal big shot Clay Reeves (Harry Bannister, "The Girl of the Golden West") is the one responsible for the killing.

"Girl on the Run" is zippy, engaging Carny-Noir, shot through with plenty of seedy carnival atmosphere, and featuring enough padding to give us a real assortment of the sights and sounds of this place. It comes complete with typically stark photography for the genre (done by Victor Lukens), and an amusing script by Cedric Worth and co-director Arthur J. Beckhard. Some of the dialogue is pretty entertaining, and quick pacing results in a tidy little movie that runs just a little over 65 minutes. There's enough footage of sexy dancing girls to entice viewers, as well as the sight of Coogan in the boxing ring.

The characters are at least reasonably interesting, with Bannister making for an effective heavy. Coogan is a likeable hero, Pettit an appealing heroine, and Edith King ('The Phil Silvers Show') provides solid support as the matronly Lil, but the show is often stolen by the diminutive Charles Bolender ("Dark Intruder") as carny boss Mr. Blake. Star stripper Gigi is played by Renee De Milo, whose dancing is so good it's likely this was really what she did for a living (this was her only acting credit).

However, as most people will tell you, the real curiosity value is in spotting a very young Steve McQueen, as an extra at the carnival. It was the future stars' big screen debut, and he's not too hard to spot (pay close attention to the opening several minutes).

Seven out of 10.

A third string "C" Film Noir that actually may be the best of the Carney based Film Noir.

As much as I like Nightmare Alley (1947), this carnival film never leaves the midway much like Todd Browning's Freaks (1932). It's a great capture of the gritty atmosphere of a traveling carnival of tent and plywood, lit by strings of bare light bulbs. Victor Lukens cinematographer, creates a gritty claustrophobic carny setting, with convoluted passageways between tents, the midway, plywood arcades, cramped backstage warrens, along with trailers, and other equipment.

Most of the cast are playing carnies, Charles Bolender shines as the Carney Boss Blake, a cigar chomping little person who runs the show. Bolender deploys great ways of evening the keel whenever he has to deal with other people often ending up higher and looking down on them. Veteran actor Frank Albertson (Mantrap, Nightfall, Physco, Shed No Tears, They Mane Me A Killer, It's A Wonderful Life) plays the local cop Hank on carnival duty. Harry Banister a early TV vet plays the local corrupt politician Reeves.

Veteran TV Western Actor Richard Coogan (Vice Raid) is Bill Martin, a falsely accused of murder reporter who takes refuge at the carnival. Rosemary Pettit (Walk East On Beacon) plays Janet his girl who gives off a Gene Tierney vibe. She is forced to hide out with a chorus of carnival strippers, the de-facto "Girl On The Run" mothered by veteran early TV actress Edith King (Calcutta). Pettit is great as the good girl who has to be a quick study learning how to jiggle along with the rest of the strippers.

Rounding out the rest of the cast John Krollers and other un-credited actors play carnival barkers, you can see a bit of Phil Silvers, or Bud Abbott in the parts, for all I know I wouldn't be surprised if they were real carnival barkers.

A shout out to Renee de Milo (her only credit) where ever she may be, she plays the headliner stripper Gigi. She does a complete dance and is so good at it that I suspect that she was an actual carnival stripper. She does her act without removing her bikini type costume but she's got the moves down that you can easily imagine what she'd display. Check out Carnival Strippers - Early Years (1971-1978) by Susan Meiselas for a reference work.

The film also has an early Steve McQueen as an extra.

The score is carnival music inter-spaced with jazz for the dance routines. This low budget Noir delivers, I go as high as a 6.5-7/10. If it did have A list actors for the two lovers, and say Bud Abbott or Phil Silvers as the barkers it could have been an 8/10.

One of several worthy discoveries in Something Weird Video's "Weird Noir" set, and the most formally interesting of the bunch. "Girl on the Run" obeys the classical unities of action (one plot, which is all you have time for in 64 minutes), time (it all takes place in one evening), and place (it is set entirely inside a traveling carnival's grounds). The film is spatially fascinating: you really get a sense of how a carnival can pack a lot of activities into a smallish area, and how, out of direct sight of the public, the "inner world" of the carnival company can go on vigorously despite there being no apparent physical room for it. The sound design is dense and realistic and lends a high degree of verisimilitude to the film's texture.

"Girl on the Run" is bookended by an excellent night-time opening shot of the carnival and its Ferris wheel from a medium distance, very atmospheric, and a great closing shot of a laughing mechanical clown. Some thought went into the presentation here.

On the debit side, the acting is fairly ordinary, although protagonist Richard Coogan - television's first Captain Video - is certainly a handsome, energetic chap. The storyline is nothing special either. And yet the very standardness of these elements throws the more innovative aspects of the movie into higher relief, and the overall result is highly watchable.

I encourage any film history student or scholar looking for an offbeat candidate for detailed analysis to take a look at this movie; I think you might see rich possibilities in it.

A Side-Light to this Low-Life Display of Carny Folks Cramped in Their Environment, is the Debut of Super-Star Steve McQueen.

Actually its about 10 Seconds of Screen-Time at the Very Beginning on the Midway Trying to "Ring the Bell".

The Film's Tricky Camera Set-Ups, in such Limited Space is Above and Beyond Expectations in such a Low-Budget Shoot.

The Sleazy Characters (mostly the cops) Intermingle with the Seedy Carny's as a Newspaper Man (Richard Coogan) is Hiding Out with His Girl-Friend Behind the Scenes and Under the Tent.

Coogan is Best Known for Being TV's First "Captain Video". He does Fine Work in this Sexploitation Entry.

The "Girl On the Run" is His Girl (Rosemary Pettit) who Shows some Gravitas.

Edith King as the "Matron" has a Pivotal Role and is quite a Contrast to all the Bare-Skin Slinking In and Out of the Frame.

The Headliner "Gi-Gi" is the Prettiest, Representing an Attractive Enough "Girlie Mag" Model.

The Rest of the Undressed Girls Perhaps should have Stayed Dressed.

The Manager of the Carnival is a Little Person (Charles Bollender). He is in a Lot of Scenes and Measures Up to the other Regular ""Real" Size Persons on Screen.

Overall, it's a Grind-House Hour Peeking In on the "Others" that Live and Breath Saw-Dust and Road Dirt.

Along the Way it's Decorated with some Scantily-Clad Females.

The Real Reason any Movie Theatre Tickets were Sold.

This film beautifully points up the great difficulty there is in justly evaluating films in peripheral categories which have rather different values and value from mainstream films. All reviewers are unanimous that it is an excellent film and I am not going to disagree with the, It is a first-rate film in a fourth-rate category - the lowly "low budget" "B" film. It is not quite in the class of a film like Ullmer's Detour, which is a masterpiece, but it does magnificently capture the sleazy atmosphere of the equally fourth-rate carnival it portrays. Forget the purely nominal film noir plot. It is really about this grubby and grotesque but actually surprisingly charming little world to which a "straight" man and a "straight" girl on the run have to adapt themselves and come after a fashion to appreciate its values and its value. Like the nominal plot, they are the nomivnal stars. The real performances come fom Chares Olander as the hard-bitten, blackmailing, lecherous - but actually fundamentally decent - dwarf who runs the carnival, Frank Albertson as the baker and Edith Petit splendid as Lil in charge of the dancing girls, themselves only a knife-edge away away from a life of prostitution. The writing is tense and clever and the cinematography by the unknown Victor Lukens is superb. Don't bother to look out for Steve McQueen. If you blink you'll miss him. I must have blinked.

The French phrase in the title means "down there if you find me" (when one wants to get rid of someone, in slightly old-fashioned but delicious slang, one tells them to go and look somewhere else to see if one is there). It was also the title of a long-running radio programme, the last to defend committed investigative journalism in the interested of the underprivileged - those "down tere". And it is precisely that empathy with the world "down there" (see if am not there) that is the great quality of this film. Standing up nobly for the fourth-rate!

Girl on the Run is one of those fascinating throwaway B-movies which really define a genre, in this case, the so-called quickie film noir murder mystery. Filmed in an sweaty, intimate style in a stifling, claustrophobic setting, with an abundance of steamy close-ups, the film looks like it could almost be an early television feature, but for the unerring seediness of the whole thing - and Girl on the Run is seedy! Taking place at an unnamed New York-based carnival, the film revels in grotesque and dissolute characters; even the hero and heroine seem twisted and creepy, and they fit into this sorry social setting perfectly. Running a bit over an hour and unraveling in approximately real time, the scenario asks more questions than it answers as our hero and heroine hide for their lives within this most tawdry setting. Carny folk, cops and customers all occupy the same crummy socioeconomic space, and there is not one character who is not above suspicion here. Everyone here is a sinner, a fallen and battered angel, and this weird, inky purgatory stands as the stage of their final judgment.

As the threadbare plot unfolds, characters reveal themselves to be duplicitous, desparate and at times even deranged. Plot points unufold, contradict each other, even turn back on themselves. Everyone is on the take, everyone has their own shameful secret. And throughout all the backstabbing and betrayal, the film returns every few minutes to showacase some exceedingly up-close shots of very lovely, very "real" burlesque dancers cavorting on the midway stage, smiling coyly as they grind their way into the lustful thoughts of the audience, highly symbolic of forbidden dreams of fallen man. In these amazing recurring sequences, the sins of the flesh are accented in high relief, and these narrative detours are one area in which Girl on the RUn really stands out. Indeed, the seedy carnival setting acts as purgatory for lost souls, yet it also has a certain sacred quality, serving as a cleansing void of possible redemption and resurrection.

The hero, in order to avoid the cops and extend his freedom for another minute or so, ends up at one point being a patsy in a fake boxing match, and the brutal scenes of the two men slugging each other acts as a winning counterpoint to the more serene moments of sublime dancing from the carny girls, in effect the yin and yang of fleshly sin. The film's denouement, in which the hero's innocence is explained via hastily telelgraphed exposition, comes across almost as afterthought, as by this time it has become crystal clear that all those involved are haunted, guilty of sinning, overdue some sort of cosmic justice. What is so compelling about the hero and heroine is that throughout their journey towards redemption, they act exceedingly guilty, and one wonders, even at the end, if their hands are really clean after all. The film opens and closes on an ubiquitous feature of the carnival funhouse, the laughing clown-mannequin, its presence eerily sketching its allegorical role as a stand-in for cruel, ironic Fate.

Richard Coogan shines as the utterly haunted hero in this strange little thriller, giving a performance light years away from his stilted turn as the first Captain Video (where he was forced to perform ridicilous scripts on live television, no mean feat for any actor.) Other characters fall into bonafide genre cliche, including the two-timing cop, the old hag with a heart of gold, etc. The abundant skid-row atmosphere magically captures the forlorn atmopshere of the traveling carnival, where life is cheap and tawdry, and sad, forgotten people come and go without warning, without friends, often without even a name. The pacing is swift, and the crackling thriller really moves.

Low budget and stark, even bleak, Girl on the Run creates an unflinchingly morose world of hunted, unpunished sinners; it is in effect the cinematic equivalent of a pulp fiction magazine book cover brought to life, in which gruesome, snarling men drool over and paw a terrified, scatnily-clad, sexually compromised female. The impressive photography and unerringly dreary mise-en-scene, along with the taut if obtuse screenplay, remind us that this genre was really percolating during the mid-1950s, and may encourage us to reassess films such as Stanley Kubrick's Killer's Kiss which - upon closer inspection - may turn out to be not that much more worthy than similar product cranked out at the time by many other, largely unsung artists.

GIRL ON THE RUN takes place in a carnival, where the nightly burlesque show has been drawing too much attention from the police. This is bad for Bill Martin (Richard Coogan) who's on the lam due to a murder he didn't commit. Bill needs his girlfriend, Janet (Rosemary Pettit) to hide out at the carnival while he looks for the real killer.

Not surprisingly, Janet becomes a dancer in the burlesque show. She quickly trades in her conservative clothes for more interesting attire.

Uh oh!

Someone is snooping around looking for Bill and Janet! Can Bill uncover what's going on before being caught? Will Janet ever get her dance steps right?

With a midway full of fascinating characters, this movie is very enjoyable from start to finish. Of special interest are the hard-edged Lil (Edith King), Blake (Charles Bolender) the diminutive carnival owner, and the lovely tall-drink-of-water known as Gigi (Renee De Milo).

A good example of low-budget filmmaking done right.

P. S.- Watch for a very young Steve(n) McQueen in an uncredited role. He pops up a few times...

Richard Coogan is wanted for a murder he didn't commit. He and girlfriend Rosemary Pettit hide out in a carnival, hoping to make the jump across state lines before crazy town boss Harry Bannister can shoot them and blame em for everything.

There isn't much of a story here, barely enough for a three-reeler. What there is is tons and tons of atmosphere in a third-rate carnival where Coogan is co-opted as a tank fighter and Miss Pettit in the burley-cue line, where the dancers are third rate -- except for Renee De Milo and wear cheap costumes that include pasties over their navels. There's no freak show on the screen, but you know there is one just out of camera range, with a dog-headed boy or a pin-headed geek. The sets are shoddy and worn, and cinematographer Victor Lukens -- his only other feature credit is BLACK LIKE ME -- shoots it with an air of disgust. It's another of those movies that I think needs to be seen .... but, no you won't want to see it again.

Supposedly, that's Steve MacQueen in his first movie as a young man trying to ring the bell on the fairway. If you decide to look at it, let me know.

I think, like for Night of the Ghouls, The Naked Road, etc ..., it adds to the noir, desperation of the characters, and sense of urgency of the plot. Sure, its no Detour, Uncut Gems, or Good Time, but, still good.

Girl on the Run (1953)

** (out of 4)

A reporter (Richard Coogan) and his girlfriend (Rosemary Pettit) are on the run from the police and hide out at a carnival sideshow where they try to gather evidence to clear his name.

GIRL ON THE RUN is a fairly forgettable crime picture that has a rather routine and boring story that really doesn't do much or go anywhere. This film is sold as an adult noir but the crime elements just don't work well enough for it to be too successful. Where the film does succeed is with its atmosphere and setting. The circus setting is actually quite excellent and there's a nice atmosphere that really puts you in this circus. It will certainly remind you of FREAKS and other exploitation pictures from the 30s.

Another thing the film is known for is for the first screen appearance of Steve McQueen. Yes, the Steve McQueen who would go onto appear in THE BLOB, THE GREAT ESCAPE and THE GETAWAY. You can see him early in the picture looking very young with a funny haircut. The performances for the most part are okay as is the cinematography. GIRL ON THE RUN is a decent "C" film but it's too bad that the setting wasn't used for something better.