Once in
a while, you run into a movie that captures you for reasons you cannot defend
aesthetically. “Hell Bound” is not a
very good movie. It’s not “Citizen Kane.” It’s not “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It’s not even Adam Sandler on a bad day. And yet, I’ve watched it four or five times
now (it’s on Prime, for free), and I return almost every day to watch a scene or
two. Every scene, in fact, has one or
more aspects that fascinate me, though the movie as a whole is silly.
It’s 1950’s
noir, and not only is it noir, it’s nasty noir.
It’s the kind of noir that makes you say, “Wait a minute. Why did the psycho villain protagonist kill that guy? It doesn’t make any sense to kill that guy,
does it? Was he just in a bad mood or
something?”
The
star (the psycho villain protagonist), is John Russell, an impossibly good-looking
guy who had been an athlete at UCLA and a decorated Marine in WWII. His biggest gig was as Marshall Dan Troop, the
star of Lawman, a cowboy drama from 1958 to 1961 that distinguished itself from
other cowboy shows by its complete lack of humor. “Gunsmoke” had a funny bit every now and
then. So did “Rawhide” and “Bonanza” and
“Maverick,” but not “Lawman.” The story
is that Russell insisted on it because he just couldn’t do funny stuff. Certainly, nobody asked him to in “Hell
Bound.”
The
girl who plays Paula is June Blair, who was born on October 30, 1936 (TMDB) or
October 30, 1932 (IMDb) or October 20, 1933 (Wikipedia). But though we don’t know when she was born,
we do know she’s still with us, living out her retirement in California
somewhere.
Ms.
Blair’s career took off after she appeared as the centerfold in the January
1957 issue of Playboy, which led to “Hell Bound,” which led to other roles,
which led to marrying David Nelson and appearing on “Ozzie and Harriet” in a
number of episodes. June was indeed a
babe, and she was lovingly presented in “Hell Bound” by the smitten and
perverted director William J. Hole Jr.
Mr. Hole was obsessed with June’s feet, and there are a number of scenes
in which June removes her shoes when she meets a guy or kisses a guy or gets
stabbed or drinks a glass of milk (one of the director’s other fixations is
milk-drinking). Virtually every time
June appears on the screen, we wind up looking at her tootsies.
By
which I do not mean to disparage the talents of director William J. Hole Jr. Yes, he has his quirks, but the guy knows how
to make a nasty noir movie. In
particular, the guy knows how to photograph a beating.
And
there are many beatings in “Hell Bound.”
Many. A surprising number. John Russell (who plays Jordan), is putting
together a caper in which he and a number of accomplices will steal a large
quantity of pure smack arriving at the Port of Los Angeles on an Asian
freighter, but his problem is that each of his comrades in crime is peculiarly
unsuited to perform the task he or she has been assigned. Jordan faces the thankless and unending job
of keeping everyone prepped to perform his or her role, and most of the story
is about his difficulties in doing so.
Jordan,
it turns out, is not one of those modern people-persons who motivate through
nurturing or hugs or compliments or building up the self-esteem of those team
members who might fall short of his expectations. No. Jordan
is not that kind of guy. He beats the
crap out of people. It’s how he secures “buy-in”
from his “stake-holders,” as we say nowadays.
He delivers beatings.
And
when I say “beatings,” I don’t mean “fights.”
There is no pushback from his underlings in the crime conspiracy (though
one of them does ask why it was necessary for Jordan to wake him up in order to
give him his beating).
I’ve
watched the beatings over and over again, (and I’m pretty much a pacifist as
most of you know). They are
beautiful. William J. Hole Jr. choreographs
the bejesus out of them. They’re like the
Swan Frickin’ Lake of noir-style violence.
And whatever you may think of John Russell’s somewhat wooden acting, his
background as an athlete serves him well in these sequences. I mean, you really wonder how anyone could
survive a slap in the face from him. And
then he gives some poor bastard a dozen more.
I would
be remiss if I did not mention my favorite scene of all, which features Dehl
Berti as Daddy, a super-cool drug-dealer having a drink of milk (of course), at
a burlesque show while a strung-out hophead is trying to buy dope from him. You may recognize Berti because he had a long
career as a character actor and may be the second-most well-known Chiricahua
Apache of all time (Geronimo was a bit more famous).
And
finally, there’s a bit of history for those of you who fancy that sort of
thing. A chase scene near the end is
shot in an L.A. trolley-car graveyard filled with the “yellow cars” that served
Angelinos from 1901 to 1963 until some evil capitalist (I’m a little foggy on
the conspiracy stories) shut them down and made everybody buy cars and drive on
freeways. Yes, “Hell Bound” has a little
of everything.
Copyright2020MichaelKubacki
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