Cast:
Corey Allen (Duke), Warren Oates (Boots), Kate Manx (Ann Carlyle), Jerome Cowan (Ed Hogate), Robert Wark (Roger Carlyle), and Jules Maitland (gas station owner) Directed by Leslie Stevens (#862 - Incubus)
Review:
"There is nothing wrong with being a hack writer. I would point with pride to the inspired hacking of Shakespeare, Michelangelo—you can go through a big list. As a playwright, I achieved the rank of night clerk in a hotel at 22, night-ward attendant in a New York psychiatric hospital at 25 and the exalted status of copy boy for Time magazine at 28. These jobs paid my room rent while I was writing plays."
You might know that Leslie Stevens had created the original The Outer Limits show that ran from 1963 to 1965. Well, there were a few other things in between all of that, as one expects from the son of a Navy admiral. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II but found more interest in writing that saw him do his first play off Broadway in 1954. A number of his plays were turned into movies: The Lovers (1956) became The War Lord in 1965 and The Marriage-Go-Round (1956) was made into a movie in 1961. Stevens became a screenwriter with Arthur Penn's The Left Handed Gun (1958). And then, well, here he became a film director with Private Property (1960). The movie was made at the house of Stevens (alongside a vacant one adjacent to it) that was done in ten days for roughly $59,000 that apparently had moments where they stop shooting in mid-sentence. Stevens, alongside Stanley Colbert, who produced the movie, dubbed themselves "America's only authentic New Wave filmmakers", and it should be said they got some talent behind the camera with Ted McCord and his camera operator Conrad Hall (as one does when needing someone to shoot underwater). The movie was thought by a few folks as disturbing, and in a time where people seemed to actually care what the Catholic National Legion of Decency said about movies (they called it "highly suggestive" in dialogue, sequences and music, and I guess that means they watched the movie with one eye open), the movie couldn't even get a Production Code seal and therefore no national distribution. Apparently, future US president John F. Kennedy (and his wife) saw the movie in 1960 and apparently was depressed by the film*. However, the movie did have appreciation in Europe and therefore made roughly $2 million in its time. For a number of years, the movie was believed to be lost before being discovered and restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, so nowadays you have a pretty good chance of being able to see the movie if you look for it in the right spots. Stevens directed three further features: Hero's Island (1962), Incubus (1966; that was the movie filmed in Esperanto), and Three Kinds of Heat (1987) prior to his death in 1998 at the age of 74. A remake by Chadd Harbold was released in 2022.
For a movie with basically three people in it, you really can feed the sordidness on screen that sees one's space slowly get smaller and smaller. Sure, it doesn't have gore or nudity, but you can feel the grime all the same for a movie that has a fascination for such strange psyches that make up the lead duo. And this with such an interesting trio of actors, if you think about it. Allen became more known as a TV director in this decade (having peaked in film with a key role in Rebel Without a Cause [1955]) and Oates was only just burrowing out of television roles before getting meatier roles. Manx appeared in only one other movie with the aforementioned Hero's Island before her sudden death in 1964 at the age of 34. And for 79 minutes, you get a really dreary movie in the simmering that comes through in such carefully shot moments. It probably helps that with Manx's character, she is mostly seen as being trapped in the illusion of suburban happiness and a listless life filled with such little color to begin with (one might wonder the psychological implications that come from directing one's spouse in their own house about them having a listless life before muggers come about*). Its more of a performance to experience to be trapped by more than anything, which goes hand-in-hand with the stupor that comes with seeing Allen or Oates interact against her (which is more "at her" than "with her"). in that regard, Allen is pretty spooky in the strange little ways he enters Manx's life (to say nothing of the observations made about her to Oates that aren't different from looking at meat). Oates is appropriately awkward enough in that chained (of sorts) dynamic with Allen that might as well have been culled from Of Mice and Men. Sure, it probably doesn't have as much tension as it might need to really hold up a fairly standard climax (crime doesn't pay when folks kill each other off, suffice to say), but it is a curiosity that probably deserved better than to be forgotten for so long, that's for sure. As a whole, it is a fairly decent movie, one with authentic spirit to make a sordid tale and stick with it that might be worth acknowledging by checking it out late at night.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
*Lyndon B. Johnson probably got a chuckle at that pansy being disturbed at something the Catholics didn't like. What, this isn't me being political about the movie, I just think JFK sucks when compared to LBJ, I thought this was a normal thing?
*Hey, remember Billy Jack (1971), the movie where Tom Laughlin directed a scene where a woman (played by his actual wife and co-writer on the film, Delores Taylor) gets raped?
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