oldblackandwhite A standard movie critic's cliché is "Good cast tries hard but can't overcome the material." That is the case with bland 1954 cop drama Private Hell 36, but with the added debacle of Ida Lupino struggling to overcome her own lousy script! The dialog is particularly bad. What may have been a misguided attempt at give the characters' lines an every-day realism succeeds so well it is downright boring. Director Don Seigel blamed it on drinking and other misbehavior on the set by Lupino, her co-screenwriter and ex-husband Collier Young, who also produced, and dissipated co-star Steve Cochran. For all that it doesn't seem much worse to yours truly than Seigel's average output, which except for his magnum opus Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956), never rose much above mediocrity.Don Seigel has a worshipful following amongst devotees of the auteur philosophy that seems all out of proportion to his modest accomplishments. He was an auteur for whatever that's worth all right in the sense that the pictures he directed show his imprint. Unfortunately that imprint is boring, predicable, and lacking in artistry. Which describes Private Hell 36.With no sure direction the unusually competent actors founder. Cocharan sleepwalks through it. Conversely Howard Duff overacts to the blood vessel popping point. Poor Lupino seems to get more and more hysterical as the doings progress without her finding a line of her own writing into which she can infuse any drama. Beautiful, talented Dorothy Malone, miscast as cop Duff's drab housewife, stumbles through the proceeding with a "what am I doing here?" look. Only ever-reliable Dean Jagger, as the Police Captain, shows any life, and the picture perks up only when he's on screen. Even the cinematography by Burnett Guffey, who had just won an Accademy Award for his camera work in From Here To Eternity (1953), is bland and lacking artistry. Guffey and Seigel show little imagination in using the wide screen, simply centering the characters in the 1.85:1 frame or overusing giant closeups of faces.Others liked this picture, but yours truly and the grouchy old wife can't figure out why. She bailed out before the halfway point. Unfortunately oldblackandwhite is one of those self-flagellating types who has to watch on the the bitter end no matter how bad. Private Hell 36 is lifeless, draggy, talky, predicable and just plain bad. An awful waste of a talented cast and also a waste of whiskey if drinking a lot of same on the set is what Ida and her pals believed was the key to movie-making. Only for die-hard fans of Ida Lupino and rock-hard, desperate insomniacs. Others should avoid it as if it were and amateur barber friend with a new set of clippers.

Dfree52 Co-screenwriter and star Ida Lupino wrote this tale of ambition with former husband (and producer) Collier Young. One of the costars is Howard Duff, her current husband, though in the film he's married to Dorothy Malone and his LA detective partner Steve Cochran is Lupino's love interest.***CONTAINS SPOILERS****The plot revolves around a cache of stolen, marked bills that begin turning up in LA, a year after being lifted in New York City. Lupino plays a down on her luck lounge singer in a class B type bar, who'd been tipped a marked bill by a boozy customer. She reluctantly agrees to go on stake outs at various racetracks with the boys; she also resigns herself to the affections of Cochran.After some time she spots the bad guy leaving the racetrack parking lot, a car chase and crash ensues and at the crash site, bad cop Cochran pockets some of the loot, to the dismay of good cop partner Duff. Cochran uses the singer's longing for a better life and diamonds as his motive. Then comes clean and admits to wanting a better life for himself.I won't divulge the ending, but good does triumph over evil.The movie is quite well directed by Don Siegel, though both co-writers and producers (Filmways was Lupino's studio) were said to have given him fits. Not being under a major studio's restraints a few things got passed by the censors. One is a scene with husband and wife (Duff and Malone) conversing in their bed, not the standard separate twin beds all movies showed at the time.Another is the Lupino-Cochran relationship. Frankly, he generally treats her like dirt, part of his character's ambition; part of her knowing that she's fraying at the edges. She's still attractive, but for how long? She's not desperate, but how far away is she from it? He's abusive and it seems to turn her on.Not great, but entertaining.

Martin Bradley This taut, low-key and highly effective B-movie film noir was an early example of a style that director Don Siegel came to perfect in his later films. Although dealing with robbery and murder it's at its most effective in the small scenes of domesticity between the central characters, a crooked cop, his partner and the women they are both involved with and there are good performances from Steve Cochran, Howard Duff, Ida Lupino and Dorothy Malone in these roles. (Lupino co-wrote the movie with producer Collier Young). Excitement is generated from not knowing exactly which way the characters might go and from the degree of complexity that both the players and writers invest them with. The denouement is a bit of let-down, however, with things tidied up too quickly and too neatly. Still, it's a commendable effort.

David (Handlinghandel) It's nice to see the old Republic logo at the start of this. Seeing Ida Lupino is always a delight. Steve Cochrane was a handsome, effective performer who was underutilized. And Don Siegal was a great director of gritty noirs in the 1950s.Unfortunately, these parts do not add up to much of a whole. It's a standard rogue cop story that doesn't ring true. The duologue is very arch. Are we trying for Oscar Wilde here or are we making a gritty detective movie? Dorothy Malone is beautiful in that somewhat unusual way she had and she also acts well.Lupino seems either to have been allowed, or directed, to chew up the scenery. She is playing to the balcony. And saying that about one of my all-time favorite perfumers hurts.