Walk the Dark Street

Low budget thriller, with a strange plot, that is delivered well by the actors and director. Exemplary.

Don Ross returns from Korea and calls on Chuck Conners. Conner's brother was in Ross' platoon and had been killed. The two chat. Both are big game hunters, but Conners has a new twist. He has a big game rifle, but the bullet has been replaced with a camera. He wants to hunt people in the city. When he pulls the trigger, there's a snapshot with a time stamp. He challenges Ross to a bet: they stalk each other, and the winner walks away with either a thousand of Ross' money or ten grand of Conners. It's a good gamble as far as Ross is concerned. A field-promotion second lieutenant doesn't pull down much, and while he was away, his partner let the business go to pot and failed to pay the insurance just before they had a fire.

So they shake hands on it, and Ross walks away with a rifle set up with a camera in the barrel. Whereupon Conners replaces the camera in his with a 30-30 shell. His brother had written him that Ross was a tin g*d and would probably get them all killed. So he's going to get some revenge.

It's an interesting variation on THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. Writer-Director Wyott Ordung shoots most of it in medium length stolen shots, showing the two men looking for each other, vanishing around one corner as the other comes around another. It didn't quite work for me, looking almost foolish the fifth or sixth time it happened, rather than suspenseful. The subplots also miss by a hair: Conners' bum ticker, his brothers' girlfriend who thinks he's crazy.

Also, the times have changed: two men walking the streets of Los Angeles carrying big game rifles are going to be shot by the LAPD. But kudos for a nice idea.

Was this a Jr High Film Club project? Well, the camera boy did a good job, but the script and acting must be about the most inept, unlikely set of events in Hollywood--or anywhere else--history. One you-got-to-be-kidding moment after another! Why'd they make this thing? Who funded it, what was he smoking and where can the rest of us get some? Good for beginning screenwriting class: what not to do!

Definitely a takeoff on THE MOST DANGEOUS GAME. You have a contemporary big game hunter (squarely played by Chuck Connors) walking the streets of a big city --instead of a jungle --hunting down another human being. Character actor Don Ross, who appeared in scores of tv shows for decades, plays the man on the run, who Connors believes caused the death of his brother.

The catch -- both men are armed with rifles. AND may the best shot win. Not a bad premise, and even with a super low budget, the story has its moments; adventure and a few chills, mostly filmed on the streets in 1950s Hollywood. Also a neat time capsule.

The film will hold your attention and it does move. Connors is interesting, especially as he grows frustrated in his attempts to nail Ross, who is quite elusive. Regina Gleason co-stars, likewise a veteran of hundreds of tv shows, though her claim to fame in the 1960s was her arrest for wearing "thick" sunglasses while driving in LA. True story. Wyott Ordong, the low, low budget director whose name was more famous than his work, produced this adventure, also credited for cult films like ROBOT MONSTER and MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR. He also gave Ed Wood (PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE) a run for his money, not the only director and producer to scrape together a few bucks to make cult movies. Ordong also managed to get a large studio involved, in this case Universal Pictures, at least to use their sound stages and leftover sets.

Not a bad time killer, which in the last few years had turned up on dvd. Thanks much to MOVIES NET for adding this oldie to their noir weekend edition.

What we have here is a low-budget film featuring a pre-Rifleman Chuck Connors, helmed by Corman vet Wyatt Ordung. The on-location filming, of Connors being hunted through the city streets, helps this one quite a bit. And the scene on the ferryboat makes this film. The camera's POV, showing the hunter and the hunted, moving about the ferryboat, builds the tension nicely. It's a well-shot cat and mouse segment -- just one wrong move and their paths will cross! I won't give the outcome away but this film delivers the goods. Wyatt didn't direct a lot of films and supposedly Corman stiffed him on his salary for an earlier film, but this film shows some good directing chops.