My Gun Is Quick (1957)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Too much of everything

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

In my Gun is Quick,The Maltese Falcon flies again but not too high. Dolls and dead bodies litter the landscape in this Mickey Spillane story featuring a pair of rookie directors and a cast consisting of minor TV second stringers that nevertheless rises above its drawbacks on more than one occasion. Mike Hammer (Robert Bray) comes to the aid of a stripper in a hash house when he clocks a thug about to rough her up. Down on her luck she does sport an impressive rock on her finger, one that is part of a priceless set stolen by Nazis during the war. When the girl is murdered Hammer is determined to find her killer. He is also hired by a retired Army colonel to locate all the jewels, promising him a huge payday.Busy ducking punches and bullets from flunkies while fending off passes from dames the disheveled and surly Bray's cynical deadpan economically conveys Hammer's take on the cesspool society he moves through with few words. His take on everyone is suspicious and for good reason. Hammer's character calls for little stretching and the limited and terse Bray gives Quick a healthy pace by keeping it short and sweet. The rest of the cast is flat (save for Donald Randolph's inspired Colonel) with the mugs supplying perfunctory menace, the babes intense uncontrollable desire for Mike. Considering the personnel My Gun is Quick is a decent Spillane rendering. It may not approach Kiss Me Deadly but it does retain it's pulp sensibility most prominently explored in the hang dog visage of Bray that at times transcends the classic world weary expressions of Mitchum and Bogart.

Watch out Plan IX From Outerspace...this is hysterical. The actors routinely shout their lines...scenes start with overtly posed characters...the "mystery" develops through a series of impossible coincidences...A concluding death scene of featuring (of course) last words, clutching, a pause - and a chin dropping abruptly to chest caps this priceless work.On a serious side, the cinematography creates excellent film noir seediness. You get a wonderful feel for a vision of seedy Los Angeles in the '50s. And the soundtrack is a perfect match to create a nice dark side of L.A. presence.This is delightful and you will be smiling as it ends.

This film has been on my 'must see' list for years and I finally got to see it recently. It is probably one of the better low budget detective yarns of the late 50s and is improved by having a producer (Victor Saville) very familiar with his material having produced two earlier Spillane/Hammer films. Robert Bray is excellent as an unshaven worn out Mike Hammer and is well supported by the rest of the cast. The script and location photography are good and the music suitably sleazy and atmospheric. What lets it down is the predictable ending, often a problem with Spillane stories - it's nearly always 'the dame that dunnit'. My favourite Hammer film is the first version of 'I, The Jury' which benefits from some superb noir imagery. This film isn't quite that good but is a serviceable and very entertaining movie.

I have never read any of the Mike Hammer novels so I cannot comment on how faithful the film adaptations are but I have seen all the films.This film has a plot similar to the previous Mike Hammer film KISS ME DEADLY. As in the latter film Mike Hammer helps a girl escape from a gang of thugs, but the girl later turns up dead. Mike meets a women whom he thinks is trying to help him solve the girls murder, but like Gabrielle in KISS ME DEADLY, she is really working for the bad guys. The bad guys are lead by a retired English army officer who is trying to recover stolen Nazi loot he smuggled out of Europe after the war. Robert Bray is adequate as Mike Hammer, but he is no Ralph Meeker. But his Mike Hammer performance is light years ahead of Biff Elliot's or Armand Assante's.