Fallguy

"Fallguy" is a very cheap crime film with small-time actors. Yet despite this, it's effective and worth seeing.

When the story begins, the mob tries to kill one of its own members. However, the killing is bumbled and the man is run off the road but is very much alive. A young man sees the car go off the embankment and goes to help--only to have the man draw a gun on him and force him to drive to a doctor's home. The doctor, too, is part of the gang and the intended victim and doc soon get into it and the doctor kills the man...and the young man sees it all. However, the local cops are also in on it and instead of arresting the doctor, they spend the movie chasing the innocent man. Does this poor schmuck stand a chance?!

As I said before, the film is a cheapo production. It also has a few deficits--such as a cheap musical score as well as a few scenes where the acting is a bit suspect (such as the crazy catfight that comes from out of no where midway through the movie). But on balance, the good outweighs the bad and it's a pretty good suspense film.

If you do watch the picture, you might try finding it somewhere other than on YouTube, as the copy there is very dark and murky.

The local head of the Syndicate is killed, and the police pick up Ed Dugan. He's confused and adamant that he didn't have anything to do with it. He was driving by when the hit took place. He escapes, and now he has the police and the crooks after him. The Syndicate originally looked on him as a convenient fall guy, but now that he's gone in the wind, they're worried.

It's an interesting story, but there's a lot of clumsiness in transferring it to the screen. The actors are a mixed lot, from competent to inept. The camerawork by Vilis Lapenieks is fluid, with lots of dramatic shots. the blaring jazz-influenced score by Jaime Mendoza-Nava is intrusive rather than supportive. these things make what could have been an interesting if cheap B movie into an overblown effort.

This film was being shown on a specialty TV channel named "Drive-In" that plays obscure B movies. Right away, the low "production values", i.e. the money spent on sets and location, became apparent, so much so it reminded me of a 1940s era episode of a serial like Space Gordon.

True to it's B movie stature, there are obvious flaws, primarily the "wooden" performances. Occasionally, the actors' dialog would hesitate as if the next line of the script was forgotten. Some of the acting was altogether unbelievable, bordering on the ridiculous. For example, in a scene toward the end of the movie, the lead actor was slapped across the face with a left hand, but his head spun to the right so that he would fall through a doorway and down a flight of stairs! Was a director on the set?

I suppose this movie with it's dim lighting was attempting to be a "film noir" of some variety. But no matter what the genre, the film seemed too dark and shadowy, at least as it appeared on my TV. After awhile, a daylight scene came as a relief! Finally I found the abrupt and otherwise amateurish scene transitions and loud jazzy score intrusive. So much so they were not only distracting, they competed with the plot for interest. As the film skipped along, it became fascinating to see what laughable scene the movie would stumble into next. The movie suddenly ends with no credits, just the film title!

As much as I thought I could make an amateur movie that would compare favorably, the movie had enough merits to hold my interest. And even seem likable. The plot, such as it is, does move quickly, the culture of the late '50s and early '60s was fascinating and you couldn't predict how the next plot twist, or yet another incongruous exchange of dialog, would unfold. So in the end, I found I couldn't take my eyes off it!

This is, obviously, a low budget movie with a fairly predictable "man on the run" plot. Leaving that aside ...

The opening credits are as good as anything Saul Bass did in the wake of "Anatomy of a Murder."

The jazz score is wonderful, and it is not the composer's fault that the director chose to turn up the volume so high that it becomes intrusive at times and even overrides the dialogue. There is a proto-Peter-Gunn feel to it that is really better than this film deserves.

There are some nice location shots around Los Angeles, and the scenes of the teens dancing at the hamburger joint are almost documentary-like in their naturalness.

Nice cars! Nice bus! Nice short-bed newspaper delivery truck! The hot little convertible and the young male lead give the whole affair the air of an episode of "77 Sunset Strip."

The director seems to come from a planet where people's faces are not important but their shoes, legs, and waists are. Shot after shot is deliberately set up to scope out men's shoes and trousers. The result is almost fetishistic, but, weirdly enough, kind of "manly" at the same time.

The bizarre angle shots in the sterile modern rooms look forward to the 1965 French New Wave Science Fiction / Film Noir cult classic "Alphaville" by Jean-Luc Godard -- only not ironic.

The sleazy exploitation subplot, including underwear-clad escorts, a ridiculous cat-fight, men slapping women around and roughing them up, and multiple negligee scenes, are spectacular examples of what happens when a demented director tries to interject a bevy of pretty young "blonde models" with no acting experience into a noirish crime drama.

Some of the actors are wooden and many of the interior scenes were badly miked, so there are unexpected echoes. and the resultant efforts to correct these deficiencies with overdubbing are failures. So what? Who cares?

The build-up of violence has an early Coen Brothers feel to it, somewhere between "Blood Simple" and "Miller's Crossing," only without their great dialogue. In fact, there is very little dialogue in this film at all, and some of what there is seems improvised.

The ending is completely over the top and veers off into Quentin Tarantino territory, and the denouement is a sweet heartbreaker, and entirely unexpected.

I gave this movie a solid "7" because i think it should be shown to all aspiring film-makers. It is a fascinating study in good intentions that do not quite make it to a professional level. It is not a travesty, like an Ed Wood film, but it is just enough below the threshold of what you are expecting that you wish Raymond Burr, Frank Cady, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, and Sterling Hayden had been in the cast, and that the director had been Edgar G. Ulmer.

Looks like everyone is on the take in Fallguy featuring a one an done cast an director taking torpor to another level. A mess from the outset your interest wavers from the plot to how bad this film can get and it does not disappoint.

Sonny Martin experiencing a case of dullsville at the hop, jumps into his Austin Healey and roars off into the night. He comes upon a mob whack gone wrong and is forced to assist the mortally wounded thug. Powers that be (a newspapaer editor and a chief of detectives) who orchestrated the hit set the kid up to take the fall and be eliminated by what turns out to be the worst hitman in film history who goes zero for three before getting himself killed.

Fallguy's major appeal is in its attempts to spice matters up in this directorial debut and swan song of Donn Harling. Infected with a slight case of Max Ophuls syndrome, panning tracking and zooming in on hamburgers and VW radios with Bose quality as well as adding a sloppy trailer gold cat-fight to go along with a myriad of wooden performances Fallguy offers up more than its share of so bad it's good moments to make it slightly easy to endure over its hour running time.