bob.decker Bourgeois snobs who can't just enjoy a movie without trying to categorize it might have a hard time watching this picture without feeling guilty, but this low-budget effort has become a cult classic for delivering 80 minutes of fast-moving entertainment, and whether any of it makes any more sense in terms of a believable story is rather beside the point. What you get is a pretty smart script, a young Lee Marvin showing a comedic side for which his later work provided only occasional outlets, and future industry veterans doing the kind of great character work that results in long Hollywood careers. To pull this off on an Allied Artists budget and have people talking about it 55 years later is no small accomplishment. One is even led to assume that the very experienced Edward Dein and the others involved in putting this together knew exactly what they were doing.

Bolesroor Memory is relative. One spring, many years ago, a local theater would run a different old movie every week. One of them was Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" but I can't remember the rest, even though I loved them all. What helped to make the movies so great? The atmosphere in the theater, the time of year, walking back to my car through the mist, the sidewalks wet with melting snow, the promise of warm weather to come...I think everyone who calls "Shack Out On 101" a good movie must have their memories clouded the same way. This is a claustrophobic slipknot of a film which denies any logical categorization and somehow amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Lee Marvin stars as Slob, a greasy cook in a greasier diner owned by Keenan Wynn. Non-characters come and go, and the movie's only female Terry Moore seems to be involved with all and none of them. A communist spy may or may not be using this diner as a base of operations, and since the filmmakers don't really care you won't have to either. Half-hearted attempts at comedy are met with equally half-hearted attempts at drama, and predictably neither stick to landing.The movie is filmed in a stark, 50's television "playhouse" style (think early Twilight Zone episodes) and 95% of the story takes place in the single-set diner. One sequence with Lee Marvin laying across the lunch counter and lifting weights with Keenan Wynn demonstrates the subversive potential of the film, but we never get this close to Something again. Aside from an appearance by Len Lesser (Seinfeld's Uncle Leo- HELLO!) there is nothing going on here.Anyone who claims this is a sleeper or lost classic might be remembering an old girlfriend and a good night at the movies... honestly, you're better off at the caddy shack.GRADE: D

skallisjr 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.

goblinhairedguy When the producers at lowly but lovable Monogram decided to sell an upgraded product, they replaced their banner with that of Allied Artists. This AA release definitely retains that absurd old Monogram spirit. Is it a comedy/satire? A spy spoof? An anti-commie rant? An Ed-Woodian comment on twisted sex mores? A love story? All these things? None of the above? No one knows for sure. The late David Newman said it best in his seminal "Guilty Pleasures" article for Film Comment -- "at no time is it possible to get a handle on this movie." There's a scene where Wynn and Marvin attack a neon swordfish sign that is as nutty as any George Zucco and a guy-in-a-gorilla-suit nonsense from the studio's glory days. Lee Marvin's outrageous method-acting licks seem to come from another planet, and why is everyone so crazy about Terry Moore? Or are the boys really crazy about each other? Fans of Seinfeld be sure to look out for Uncle Leo when he was a young thespian -- and already doing the annoying shtick he later perfected in that series.