The Killer is Loose (1956)

Good movie but grossly overrated

A Masterpiece!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

As a huge fan of Budd Boetticher's Randolph Scott westerns, I really looked forward to this 1956 thriller. Though it certainly held my attention, the movie was a disappointment. The tension it managed to create early on as Wendell Corey escapes from a prison trustee farm really went slack--done in by a lousy script. Boetticher keeps things moving, helped immensely by Lucien Ballard's terrific black-and-white camera work. But I don't get the feeling the director was very interested, aside from the scenes focusing on Corey. Other reviewers have rightly praised the scary, yet oddly sympathetic, character that Corey creates here. It's just too bad the script was so perfunctory. Rhonda Fleming seems right as police detective Joseph Cotten's wife, Lila, but her role is so poorly conceived (and she becomes so annoying), that I lost all interest and sympathy for her. The other big negative is Joseph Cotten, at 50+, too old for the police detective. Even worse, you can't watch him without seeing Joseph Cotten; he doesn't create a character and his movements seem all wrong as a cop. Great 1950's LA locales, though. And worth catching for Corey's performance.

By the Mid 1950's the Stylish, Expressionistic, and Piercing Pictures called Film-Noir were Out of Favor because of the Less Pessimistic Persona of a Suburban Saturated Society that began to heavily Influence American Pop Culture.The Urban Environment was becoming increasingly more Lower Class and that generally is unattractive to Movie Audiences of the Main Stream who were now, more than ever, Isolating Themselves in a Coating of a Prefabricated Paradise.This Film was one that Transplanted the Noir Sensibility out of the City and in to Nice Homes with Lawns and Shiny Kitchen Appliances, TV sets, and Marital Myopia. But Uh-Oh, Not as Safe as it Seems. "The Killer is Loose" and He is about to Upset "Utopia".The Director's (Budd Bottechier) Edgy Style combined with a very Convincing Cross-Dressing, Catatonic who Talks to Himself and Viciously and Violently acts in a Detached, very Modern Serial-Killer Sociopathic Trance is Disturbingly Delivered and the Shadows in the Post-Modern Soul cannot be Illuminated by the Brightly Lit "Fenced" Community and all of its Electric Eccentricities.A Tale of Things to Come.

It's interesting to see what Boetticher was doing when he started his famous Western cycle. He didn't have a scriptwriter like Burt Kennedy or an unobtrusive composer at the service of the script. Harry Joe Brown was somewhere else. The studio-bound locales creak of the B-movie certainly and don't come close to matching his outdoor photography in the Westerns and the man-to-man showdown at the end was compromised in just about every way possible. This seemed to me just another studio assignment, over-scored, a script that needed tightening and most of characters we don't actually care much about. But Wendell Corey had his day here as a man who doesn't so much act as react to the surroundings and other characters. The photography from the famous Lucien Ballard was really quite ordinary. I'm glad to say I've seen it but not much more.Curtis Stotlar

Wendell Corey, mousy bank clerk plans the bank holdup and is holed up in his apartment where Joseph Cotton, good cop, goes to arrest him. In the confusion Cotton accidentally kills Corey's wife. Corey snaps and vows to get even with Cotton as he is being sent up to the big house. Fast forward three years. Corey is a trustee on a farm, kills a guard and a farmer and escapes to L.A. He's a totally psycho nut job by now and very, very effective portrays it. We find out he is bent no so much on killing Cotton but killing Cotton's wife, the very miscast Rhonda Fleming. Lots a neat action and very suspenseful 20 minute ending. Never even heard of this flick until saw in on streaming Netflix. Great L.A.exteriors and over-all production. See it if you can.