Stubs - The Killer is Loose

The Killer is Loose (1956) Starring Joseph Cotten, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey. Directed by Budd Boetticher. Screenplay by Harold Medford. Based on the novelette The Killer Is Loose by John and Ward Hawkins in The Saturday Evening Post (13 Jun 1953). Producer: Robert L. Jacks Run time: 73 minutes. Black and White. USA Drama, Police, Suspense, Film Noir

In 1953, when Twentieth-Century Fox bought the rights to John and Ward Hawkins’ story The Killer is Loose, they intended to have Orson Welles and Victor Mature star with plans to start shooting in October. Those plans went awry, as that film was never made. In 1954, Robert Goldstein and Robert L. Jacks purchased the rights from 20^th Century for their independent production company Crown Productions. Rather than Orson Welles, Wendell Corey got the lead and Joseph Cotton got the role originally meant for Mature.

 Bank Loan Manager Leon Poole (Wendell Corey) is not happy to see
Otto Flanders (John Larch) from his days in the Army.

The Killer is Loose opens with a rather typical day at the local neighborhood teller. Bank Loan Manager Leon Poole (Wendell Corey) is helping a customer who has missed a payment. He is polite and effective but gets cut down to size when Otto Flanders (John Larch) enters and immediately recognizes him as the corporal from his war unit whom he used to call “Foggy” because of Poole’s bumbling mannerisms. Poole is not pleased to see his old sergeant.

Poole tries but fails to stop the robbery.

Poole is distracted by a robbery taking place at the back of the bank. When the thief makes a run for it out the front door, Poole tries to stop him and is knocked out. Poole is treated as a hero.

Witnesses are questioned at Police headquarters.

When Flanders is questioned by detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotten) and his partner, Chris Gillespie (Michael Pate), at the police station, he praises Poole’s courage.

 Detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotten) monitoring wiretaps.

Later, Sam, Chris, and Sgt. “Denny” Denning (Alan Hale) monitor several wiretaps, and they hear the robber calling his accomplice. Denny accidentally exposes the wiretap and the call is ended quickly. However, they have enough to trace the call to Poole’s apartment and head over there.

Police get some bad information from the building's management.

They’re told by the building’s management that Poole’s wife (Martha Crawford) has left the apartment and Poole is alone. However, they find that Poole has barricaded the door. When they try to enter, he shoots through the door, hitting Chris in the process.

Sam fires at a figure in the dark, thinking it's Poole.

This prompts Sam to rush the door and break it down. The lights are out in the apartment and someone enters the room. Instinctively, Sam fires at the figure, which turns out to be Mrs. Poole. When the lights come on, Poole, who has been cowering in the opposite corner of the room, is grief-stricken. His wife was the only one who understood him and was willing to stand behind him no matter what. Poole cradles his wife and carries her into the bedroom, not understanding why his wife was killed.

Sam accidentally kills Poole's wife (Martha Crawford).

After his trial, where Poole is found guilty and sentenced to three, concurrent, ten-year prison terms, Poole glares at Sam’s wife Lila (Rhonda Fleming) and vows to Sam that he’ll get revenge.

After the trial, Poole threatens revenge in front of Sam's wife Lila (Rhonda Fleming) in
front of Chris Gillespie (Michael Pate) and his wife (Virginia Christine).

A few years later, the prison warden compliments Poole on his exceptional good behavior. That earns Poole a transfer to the state honor farm, where he works in the fields.

After a short time there, a farm guard (John Cliff), believing Poole to be a model prisoner, assigns him to accompany another guard (Stanley Adams) on a special trip into the city. Neither realizes that Poole has smuggled a handmade weapon into his uniform, the business end of a hoe he’d been using in the field.

As they drive down a deserted road, Poole manages to distract the guard and kill him. He dumps his body by the side of the road and continues down the road to a nearby farmhouse. Using a machete he finds, Poole murders the inhabitant and steals his clothes and truck.

In the intervening years, Sam has taken a desk job at Lila’s insistence. When he learns about Poole’s escape, he scoffs at the idea that he is the prime target for Poole’s vengeance.

Sam knows Lila will be looked after.

He tries to shield his pregnant wife from the truth of Poole’s disappearance, but she guesses, and once again urges him to quit police work for his own safety. As soon as Denny and another officer arrive to guard Lila, and to eat her home cooking, Sam goes to the office. There, Chris fills him in on the details of the manhunt, which is now focusing on a store from which Poole stole a gun the night before.

Sam tries to keep the truth from Lila.

There is a roadblock, but Poole gets through using the identification of the farmer he killed. The highway patrolmen feel bad about it, but their mistake is understood.

Later in the day, Sam is informed that Poole’s first cellmate revealed that the convict used to talk incessantly about killing Lila as revenge for Sam killing his wife.

Now convinced that his wife is the target, Sam suggests that he serve as “bait” to lure Poole into the open. He proposes that they hide Lila at the Gillespies’ house while he remains home with only a covert contingent of police watching the house. While Sam’s superior is proud of him for suggesting the plan, he is worried about getting Lila out of the house without letting on that she is in real danger.

To Lila’s delight, Sam suggests that they take a vacation and asks her to pack bags for both of them. She’s happy until in the car, she deduces that they are headed to the Gillespies', and there, despite the warm ministrations of Chris’s wife Mary, Lila realizes that Sam is returning to the house alone.

Feeling frustrated, Lila gives Sam an ultimatum; either leave town with her now or she will leave him.

Sam tries and fails to convince her that he cannot leave the most dangerous work to other men. With her still angry, Sam leaves and heads back home.

Meanwhile, Poole, exhausted and hungry, buys a raincoat to cover his farming clothes and wanders to Flanders’ house, which is an address he knows. There, he finds Flanders’ wife Grace (Dee J. Thompson) alone. He forces her way inside saying he needs to wait for her husband. When she recognizes him, she tries to run, but he forces her to prepare him food instead.

Poole waits for Flanders to return home.

While waiting for Flanders to return, Poole recalls to Grace how her husband, then his sergeant, humiliated him during their assignment in the South Pacific.

Flanders tries to get Poole to surrender and gets killed for the effort.

Flanders comes home from work soon after, and upon noting Poole’s fatigue, tries to persuade the convict that he is too weak to continue. Poole, declaring that his wife was the only person ever to believe in him, shoots Flanders, causing Grace to collapse to the floor.

Poole then takes Grace’s raincoat and the family car and drives toward Sam’s.

At the same time, Mary finds Lila packing to leave. Angered at her behavior, Mary reveals that Sam is only trying to protect her from Poole. After Mary reprimands Lila for thinking she is better than any other policeman’s wife, Lila leaves and tries to hurry to Sam’s side.

Unable to find a taxi, Lila boards a bus, but is frightened by all the men on board. One even sort of looks like Poole.

Sam, who is communicating via radio with Denny and Chris’s nearby surveillance teams, soon hears that Lila has disappeared and Poole has killed Flanders. The police update him as every pedestrian and car passes by.

Poole, now looking like a woman in Grace’s raincoat, walks down Sam’s street, but then disappears around a corner. Sam is suspicious, especially after Lila is spotted approaching on foot.

Denny cannot tell if the second woman is Lila, but soon the first “woman” begins tailing her and Sam is sure that Poole is stalking his wife. However, if the police shoot at Poole and miss, he will have a clean shot at Lila, so Sam orders them to do nothing until she reaches his house.

He hopes that she will walk by the house so Poole will come in alone, and Lila does pass the front door. But she stops and makes a run for the door. Poole jumps forward, and Chris’s men come out of hiding with guns blazing. Moments later, Poole is dead, and Sam leads Lila back into their home.

Shot in only fifteen days, The Killer is Loose was released on February 6, 1956. Given the speed of production, it is a little surprising how bland the film seems. As New York Times’s film critic Bosley Crowther points out in his review. “A couple of first-rate actors, Joseph Cotten and Wendell Corey are caught in 'The Killer Is Loose,' a third-rate crime film…”

While Joseph Cotton is a great actor, he seems somewhat detached here. He never seems to react with any real emotion and it does diminish his performance. A one-time model, Cotton worked on Broadway before hooking up with Orson Welles, at first on the Mercury Theatre on stage, and features in such films as Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and Journey into Fear (1943). He would also work with Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

After signing with Selznick, he was loaned out for Gaslight (1944) at MGM. He would go on to star in such films as Duel in the Sun (1946), The Farmer's Daughter (1947) and Portrait of Jennie (1948), before being reunited with Welles in The Third Man (1949).

This is not one of his better performances.

Wendell Corey was a bit of a surprise. Perhaps best known for roles as Janet Leigh’s milquetoast boyfriend in Holiday Affair (1949) and as Lt. Thomas Doyle in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), here he plays against type. As Poole, the psychotic killer, there is a real chance for him to show his range. While he puts more into his acting than Cotten, you still get the idea that he is somewhat detached from the performance.

Overall, both actors don’t really show too much of the emotions you would think the situations would call for. It’s not clear if this is due to direction or not. Director Budd Boetticher is best known for his low-budget Westerns in the late-1950s starring Randolph Scott. I will admit to being unfamiliar with Boetticher’s work, The Killer Is Loose must not be one of his better outings. Not only does he not get strong performances out of his leads, but the story seems to lack much excitement. The closest it comes is when Poole shoots Flanders. The suddenness of the action really gets your attention, but the film falls back into its rather lackluster story.

Rhonda Fleming was no stranger to film noirs.

The female lead is played by Rhonda Fleming, known in her days as the "Queen of Technicolor" because she photographed so well in that medium. Discovered while still in high school, Fleming was signed by David O. Selznick and first appeared in In Old Oklahoma (1943). Her big break came in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), in which she played a nymphomaniac.

No stranger to film noirs, Fleming appeared in the classic Out of the Past (1943), and as the femme fatale opposite Dick Powell in Cry Danger (1951). You can tell it’s a film noir because a main character almost always makes a near-fatal mistake. Lila’s decision to leave the safety of the Gillespies and go to Sam, despite his wanting her to be safe, qualifies.

The role of Lila doesn’t really give Fleming a lot to do.

Of all the supporting actors, two are the most recognizable to anyone who grew up in the 1960s. Like his father before him, Alan Hale Jr. went into acting. Hale is almost a dead ringer for his father, most famous perhaps for his portrayal of Little John in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Hale Jr. is perhaps most famous for his role as the Skipper on the long-running Gilligan’s Island TV series. He seems to bring life to his character as a policeman turned detective.

While few of the film roles Virginia Christine played were memorable, there was perhaps no more iconic commercial character than Mrs. Olson, whom she portrayed in a series of Folger’s coffee commercials that ran in the 1960s and 1970s.

Seeing them in the film isn’t enough to recommend it. The Killer is Loose doesn’t have a good enough payoff to make up for it being a rather “third rate” film noir. There are far better examples of the genre out there with better acting and a better story.