Shack Out on 101 (1955)

Very best movie i ever watch

Just what I expected

Good concept, poorly executed.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I first discovered this film shortly after I became a Keenan Wynn fan; I had heard it was a bit of a strange customer. Indeed, 'Shack Out on 101 (1955)' is an eclectic little thing: part Communist spy drama, part romance, part screwball comedy. Lee Marvin sleazes around as a shady chef passing along government secrets to the Russians. Keenan Wynn slops across the diner floor in swimming flippers and snorkel. And you just know that harpoon gun is going to impale somebody by the end of the film! I was even proud to recognise a young Len Lesser (that is, Uncle Leo from "Seinfeld"), who even then boasted his trademark whiney voice.George (Wynn) owns a diner by the beach, and is in love with pretty blonde Kotty (Terry Moore) – who inadvertently rejects him in the cruelest possible way, explaining "I love you like your mother does." Kotty is going steady with Sam (Frank Lovejoy), a scientist and seashell-collector who is collaborating with diner chef Slob (an extremely greasy Marvin) to pass on government secrets to the Russkies. Nothing in this film sits comfortably: the characters all hate each other, and spend a lot of time yelling about it, and the plot – like most films spy films of the era – is largely incomprehensible. But it has its charms, as curious as they may be.

The 50's don't come any goofier than this. It's like Senator McCarthy and the Three Stooges stole 50 bucks and decided to commit a movie. But Lee Marvin steals the show in a performance that puts him in the Commie Dishwasher Hall of Fame. When he's not serving up Timex hamburgers, checking out his "pec's", or slobbering over waitress Terry Moore, he's relaying atomic secrets to the Russkies. And here I thought Stalin's boys only spoke in whispers and worked in libraries. Actually this is a Marvin showcase. Watch how effortlessly he moves from laughs to menace and makes you believe both. That weight-lifting scene with Wynn is some kind of screwball classic. It looks improvised to me, like someone said, "Hey, we've only got 3 pages of script! Turn the camera over here." And when Marvin strangles himself in pursuit of "a Really big neck", I heard gym doors slamming all over the city. There must be a story behind this one-set wonder, but it can't be any weirder than what's on screen. I'm just wondering when the outpatient Dein's were due back for further therapy. Anyway, it's an overlooked chance to catch one of our greatest actors in perhaps his most offbeat and unsung role.

SHACK OUT ON 101, Edward Dein's 1955 minimalist masterpiece of Cold War weirdness remains, over 50 years later, one of Hollywood's strangest concoctions.A dilapidated seaside beanery just north of San Diego is the setting for this outré noir tale about a group of disparate folks who become either directly or peripherally involved with Commie spies and stolen microfilm. The unforgettable cast includes Keenan Wynn as the diner's proprietor, a man obsessed with his "pecs" and always at odds with Lee Marvin as Slob, the animalistic short-order cook who's obsessed with va-va-voom Terry Moore who drives all the guys wild as the put-upon waitress who seems to only have eyes for Frank Lovejoy, "the professor" (of what we're not exactly sure) and Whit Bissell as the annoyingly chatty salesman who wanders in and out of the picture whenever a couple of uninterrupted minutes of bizarre banter is required. This is not a normal film in any true sense of the word. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense and, apart from aligning itself with the then current trend of pseudo patriotic, anti- communist espionage films, it isn't easy to guess what was really on the minds of those who produced this delirious little oddity. At times hilarious (possibly intentional, possibly not) and grimly somber, SHACK OUT ON 101 defies rational description and should most definitely be experienced at least once, or in the case with some of us, as often as humanly possible.

This is one not to take seriously. I saw it a few yeas ago, but when it first came out, I missed it because I thought it was some sort of sexploitation film.There is this greasy-spoon diner near a military facility, and those at the diner may or not be involved in either espionage or counterespionage. Just what's going on is a tad murky.I can't say the film is a "must see," but I feel enriched for having seen it.(Spoiler) Some of the dialogue is priceless. My favorite is when Slob is advised, "Get back to your greasy griddle, Slob." In context, that alone is worth viewing the film.