The Scavengers

I may as well admit up front that the main reason for my renting out "The Scavengers" (1959) was to see Carol Ohmart in one of her too-rare screen appearances. Fans of the original "House on Haunted Hill" (1958) may empathize with me when I say that, for the past 40 years or so, every time I think of Ms. Ohmart in that film, with a noose around her neck and floating outside the window of Carolyn Craig's room, I get chills down my spine. But other than this horror film, and the cult movie "Spider Baby" (1964), Ohmart films have not exactly been easy to see. And that's a real shame. Ohmart was a real beauty--Miss Utah in the 1946 Miss America pageant and, Paramount hoped, the new Marilyn Monroe--with a unique presence and style. Happily, she is shown to good advantage in "The Scavengers," playing, as she did in "House," a scheming, duplicitous wife. It seems that she had abandoned her husband, Vince Edwards, some six years before, and when Edwards finds her in a Macao gambling den one evening, she is up to her pretty eyes in drug addiction and a hunt for stolen bonds. Edwards, who in two years would achieve TV fame on "Ben Casey," is fine as an ex-smuggler who's still hopelessly in love with his undeserving wife. And it's a kick to see Vic Diaz, star of so many Filipino action films, in this, his first role. "The Scavengers" is basically a sleazy "B" noir, with good nighttime photography, a twisty plot and some interesting glimpses of 1950s Hong Kong. But for me, the main attraction is Carol Ohmart, who certainly does steal the show with her looks and her mysterious character. Now...when is somebody going to release 1959's "Naked Youth" on DVD? That's what I want to know!

John Cromwell has given us some fine movies, as director. "The Scavengers", a noir crime drama set mostly in Hong Kong, is not one of them. An idealistic American, played by Vince Edwards, tries to track down a mysterious woman; thugs intervene. Despite a convoluted plot, the story seems underdeveloped, given the film's runtime of just 79 minutes. I couldn't get interested in any of the one-note characters. Dialogue is flat.

But the problem goes deeper than the script. B&W lighting is not well crafted. Sound effects are uneven. And the background music is so nondescript and generic it could be applied even to a Western. Acting is undistinguished. I like Vince Edwards, but in this film his facial expression hardly ever changes.

To its credit, the film's Hong Kong locations are realistic, the only element that seems credible.

You get the feeling that they wanted to emulate some well-known crime drama film, but didn't have the money or the time. "The Scavengers" looks cheap and rushed. Further, I'm not sure that the director or any of the principal cast and crew really had their hearts in the project. It comes across as a quickie, paint-by-numbers film.

This film seems to be an attempt to write a screenplay that copies the feel of Touch of Evil. But it has insufficient acting, writing, directing and technical skills devoted to it. What results is a poor film-noir knock off. Particularly irritating are its lighting and sound track. Fill lighting is provided by bounce cards which are unsteadily held and too small to cover the subjects. The sound is both muddy and distant.

Anyone who calls this plot convoluted never sat through. The Big Sleep, which is rightly considered a classic.

I too showed up for Carol Ohmart, who is so fantastic in The Scarlet Hour and The Wild Party, only to get an intro to VIc Diaz, a delightful character actor among so many in noirs.

Yes, this is a B picture with somewhat bumpy production values. But it's got a propulsive international intrigue plot, some nice street sequences, and.lots of fun, well cast minor characters, as expected in any good noir.

I would give it 15 minutes and if you don't like it drop it.

This one is ripe for rediscovery.

The Scavengers (1959)

John Cromwell by this point in his career (one film from the end) had pulled off a few rather amazing movies, like "Caged" just a couple years earlier, "Dead Reckoning" before that, and an earlier 1930s solid version of the Maugham drama "Of Human Bondage." In other words, this guy had credentials.

But this is something below a B-movie (it's not even one of the big B-movie companies like Republic), filmed in Hong Kong and the Philippines. The leading man is a severe, handsome fellow who never made it out of B-movies, Vince Edwards, who I just happened to see in a more interesting low budget flick last week ("Murder by Contract"). He looks really brilliant next to the supporting cast of a stiff hyper blonde femme fatale (Carole Ohmart), a round faced Peter Lorre wannabe, and various cops and hoodlums with turbans, scars, and big old Mercedes sedans.

Recommended? Just for the desperate, or for those who want glimpses of Asia at the time. The filming is rather nice, though nothing remarkable. The sound is uneven, and the secondary female has her voice dubbed, and badly. One reviewer shows some interest in Ohmart the actress, but I found her the biggest flaw in the casting--a bad actress is a bad actress. More classically pretty and convincing (if more ordinary) is the secondary woman, Tamar Benamy, who isn't given much to do but who does it well. This is her one and only film role, which counts for something, doesn't it? Not that these things matter much in a movie like this.

If you look closely at the IMDb credits you'll see that the film was banned in Finland (which at the time was under the sway of the Soviet Union, an unofficial member of the Communist Bloc). So maybe there is some hoary pro-Western handling of the rise of Communism in China and the smuggling out of money to Macao and Honk Kong, though this is barely hinted at politically. More possibly there were problems because of the leading woman's open drug use (she's a heroin addict). None of this is enough to make the movie really interesting, though both elements could have been pumped up.

Mostly this is a poorly written story, and both the plot and the specific dialog is weak.

For one example of the wobbly writing, the femme fatale is on the phone and says, "I can't meet you! It's out of the question." Then the next thing she says is, "All right. Three o'clock." And then when they meet they talk. In fact, the movie has lots of talking, either to explain ridiculous plot about some missing bonds or to have our leading couple wrestle with their relationship, which is utterly fake and improbable. There are some moments of action, some shooting, but even here it's filled with improbability, and you need some sense of believing some things to swallow the rest.

The final speech is pretty interesting, and you can see the germ of a great idea at the bottom of all this, a man in love with a woman who had two sides to her, and the wrong side ruled her life even as the "good" side persisted all along, sadly, inside. Then the very last scene? It's about good old American honesty, and true love winning. But not like you think.