Only now does it occur to me... STORM WARNING (1951)

Only now does it occur to me... I never thought I would see Hollywood dancing legend Ginger Rogers being brutalized by members of the Ku Klux Klan...

...and that said tableau would not be "kitschy," but instead would function as a small part of a wider, more profound, and all-too-relevant whole. 

Stuart Heisler's STORM WARNING (1951) is a noir-ish message picture and a late entry into the "B-movies depicting the dangers of hate groups in America" genre, which includes films like BLACK LEGION (1937), NATION AFLAME (1937), and LEGION OF TERROR (1936).

Ginger Rogers plays a dress model who's passing through the small town of Rockpoint, USA to visit her newlywed sister (Doris Day). That the studio chose Ginger and Doris to portray key figures in a serious assessment of American hate groups (which is, for the record, not a musical in any way, shape, or form) feels like kind of an artistic coup. [If you'd asked me two weeks ago if there existed a movie where Ginger Rogers was bullwhipped by Klansmen, I would have been incredulous. Even now, I can barely conceive of the idea.] In any event, Ginger is in town for approximately three minutes when she witnesses the Klan murdering a journalist.

 

For a film about the KKK, the aspect of racial prejudice exists mostly as an implication; we only explicitly see the KKK harming white people who threaten to expose or destroy them. It is an obvious blind spot for the film, but as far as old Hollywood goes, the fact that they are willing to spend 93 minutes attacking a hate group instead of 165 minutes glorifying it (see: 1915's A BIRTH OF A NATION, among others) shows definite progress.

When she goes to tell her sister about it, she recognizes her new brother-in-law as one of the Klan murderers. Using a melodramatic framework that recalls the Blanche DuBois/Stella/Stanley Kowalski dynamic in a STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE,

Doris Day as the suffering, dutiful wife, darkened by the shadow of her abuser (Steve Cochran)...

a man who uses power dynamics and outright intimidation...

...to extend his sphere of abusive influence,  illustrated through Elia Kazan-esque theatrical blocking.

Ginger struggles between the ideas of spilling what she knows to the relevant authorities and lying to protect her sister's domestic purgatory. And did I mention that the relevant authority in this instance––the district attorney who's trying to destroy the Klan once and for all––is portrayed by none other than an eyebrow-indicating Ronald Reagan?

Facing external threat and familial guilt, Ginger stays quiet for a while, and the film takes advantage of her uncertainty to twist the knife; laying out an excellent case for why hate groups must rely on secrecy, the threat of violence, the silence of the good, and the indifference of the rational.

Here's a Klan member condescendingly explaining all the "good" they do:

And here's two Klansmen fearing what will happen if Ginger testifies:

And here's national press coverage illustrating the depth of the mistrust of outsiders and intellectuals, a sentiment that boils down to––"don't tell me what to do in my backyard, especially if they're lynching people in my backyard."

When Ginger refuses to testify and it looks like the case is all but lost, the locals cheer Reagan's defeat from outside the courthouse. Then we're privy to a stirring, Capra-style plea on behalf of rationality and tolerance:

All of this builds to a vivid conclusion, rife with madness and Klan imagery.

Films like this ought to be in the dust-bin of history, to be extracted for purposes of derision, at how uncivilized we used to be. They used to burn books? They used to collect in mobs and wear bedsheets and follow tyrants? They needed to be told that was wrong? What a quaint, dumb, superstitious and intolerant people! And yet STORM WARNING has outlived this movie-of-the-week shelf life. It says, in vanilla terms, and with the most vanilla stars imaginable––Doris Day, Ronald Reagan, and Ginger Rogers, for godssake!––the vanilla message that kindness and moral responsibility are American qualities, and that narrow-mindedness, harassment, lying, and intimidation are anti-American. But these days, that feels like a "contentious" message. The hoods have come off, and the Klansmen are emboldened to ply their poison trade by daylight, and under more innocuous flags. The image in the film that sticks with me is this; a fleeting shot of a child whose parent has dressed them up in Kiddie Klan gear:

This image, and the film that contains it, is a 66-year-old plea. To quote Ronald Regan's D.A.: if the good do nothing, "They're gonna rip up the old laws and make new ones. They're gonna do every rotten thing they can think of doing..."

Film Review: THE KILLERS (1964, Don Siegel)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 93 minutes.
Tag-line: " There is more than one way to kill a man!"
Notable Cast or Crew: Lee Marvin, Clu Gulager, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson, Claude Akins, Norman Fell, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Cassel, Robert Phillips.
Best one-liner: "Lady, I haven't got the time."

Loosely- very loosely- based on the Ernest Hemingway short story of the same name, Don Siegel's THE KILLERS was the third filmic adaptation of the work (following in the footsteps of Robert Siodmak and Andrei Tarkovsky), and was intended to be the very first made-for-television movie. Due in part to wanton violence directed toward women, the blind, and the defenseless, THE KILLERS instead made its debut theatrically. Much lambasted by critics- at least in comparison to Siodmak's '46 version- I'm here to give you 16 reasons why THE KILLERS is one of my all-time favorite movies, and is the only one that I can think of where the father of American independent film punches out Ronald Reagan over the honor of the star of BIG BAD MAMA. So without further ado–

#1. Clu Gulager. Well, actually, a lot of these will be Clu Gulager-related, but I just wanted to get the main thrust out of the way. This is the movie that turned me into a bona fide Gulager fanatic.

After I first saw it, I ran screaming into the streets, singing the praises of Mr. Gulager to nearly anyone who would listen. I researched his career. I saw the mainstream stuff like RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, THE HIDDEN, MCQ, and THE GAMBLER. I hunted down movies of his that exist only on VHS, from WONDERLAND COVE to HUNTER'S BLOOD to AMBUSH AT WACO: IN THE LINE OF DUTY. I checked out thirty or so of his guest appearances on television from AIRWOLF to MAGNUM, P.I. to IRONSIDE to KNIGHT RIDER to HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL to MURDER, SHE WROTE, where he played three different characters in three different episodes. I saw the Lázló Kovács-lensed short film that Clu directed which played at Cannes (A DAY WITH THE BOYS- presently available on the Criterion DVD of GEORGE WASHINGTON). I've awaited, with bated-breath, the decades-in-the-making Gulager family project FUCKING TULSA- AN EXCURSION INTO CRUELTY. In fact, all of you should read this piece about the Gulager clan (Clu, his wife Miram Byrd-Nethery (R.I.P.), his sons Tom and John, and daughter-in-law Diane Ayala) which first appeared in L.A. Weekly in 1997.

Anyway- back to the film at hand. As Lee, one of the eponymous 'Killers,' Clu cements his reputation as one of the premier character actors, his smarmy vicious calm etching him forever on the map of badasses in cinema. He's brutal, he's hilarious, and he's improvising up a storm. One could even say he's notable for being the only actor to hold his own aside Lee Marvin besides Gene Hackman in PRIME CUT, Mifune in HELL IN THE PACIFIC, and maybe that rocket launcher in DELTA FORCE. And so much of Gulager's business is happening in the background, drawing your attention in a should-have-been-star-making way, á la Steve McQueen's shenanigans in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.


Clu performs a blindness aptitude test on a visually impaired woman.


Clu swabs his dirty sunglasses with sweat from Norman Fell's dampened head.



Clu takes a swig of Claude Akins' third-rate hooch, then, in a dick move, looks for a place on the floor to spit it out. (In real life Clu was a teetotaler.)

More on Clu in a bit.

#2. Lee Marvin. A.K.A. The Terrifying Intimate Verbal Sadism of Lee Marvin.

Lee really knows how to get in your personal space. Not many actors do. In the contemporary era, Rutger Hauer and Jimmy Smits come to mind, and perhaps a few others, but I think this is a filmmaking technique/acting skill which has sadly gone by the wayside. He's not your garden-variety sadist. Somehow, Lee Marvin taps into that primal element– that basic human relationship between child and adult– and translates it in a manner which cements his status as an adult in a world that is somehow now solely populated by mere children. Take heed: perhaps if you do as he says, he will not dismantle your body with his bare hands.

LEE MARVIN MIGHT LICK YOUR EAR

Which kind of leads us to–

#3. The Shit-Eating Grins of Lee Marvin.

He is one of the few purveyors of shit-eating grins that doesn't draw one's ire. Generally, a shit-eating grin elicits contempt from an audience. Lee's shit-eating grins elicit a certain degree of respect and a great deal of fright. And speaking of grins–

#4. The way that ex-NFL player Bob Phillips clenches his teeth whenever he's doing something violent.


Is it intentional? Your guess is as good as mine. "Oh, he's doing it as he commits crimes so that his victims will not recognize him," you say. Well, no- because in the first photograph, he's in private- in the company of thieves, if you will. But it doesn't really matter. Suffice it to say- I like it.

#5. The bored, perpetually droning racetrack announcer. He just goes on and on. I guess it's background chatter for the whole scene and was probably designed as the 'glue' which holds together disconnected shots of stock footage, but it's so dull, ambling, and emotionless that it becomes... comedy gold.

Yes, we've got some great cars out here today. Some great cars. Great cars.

#6. The most simplistic heist map in film history. 'We'll go over it again– and again!" snarls Reagan, but when we finally see the map, it's this beaut:

As a side note on the heist– it involves setting up a detour for an armored truck, hiding the detour after it takes the isolated country road, passing the truck on said road, and meeting up with a faked car wreck further on down which makes the armored truck stop so that it can be easily robbed. A key plot element involves racer Johnny North (John Cassavetes) recruited as the driver, because only he can drive fast enough to pass the truck on the bumpy path . But I ask– why does it have to pass the truck? Isn't the staged wreck on the secluded route enough? Nevermind– this is getting too complicated. Let's go over it again. May I refer you to the map above?

#7. Rear-projection Go-Kart Madness! This one kinda speaks for itself.



#8. The hilarious dynamic between Gulager and Marvin. Their colorless banter– "I always liked Miami." –"Yeah, it's a nice place." The fact that Gulager is a hand-gripper-squeezin', push-up doin', carrot-juice swiggin', milk-quaffin' health nut and that Marvin is a heavy boozin', darkly broodin', shirt starchin' hardass. They don't have a whole lot going on in their lives. Being a hit man's not exactly for enterprising, visionary-types. But you believe that Gulager enjoys his work and that Marvin is tired. And that's all you need to believe.


#9. Claude Akins, who proves himself yet again to be one hell of an actor, finishes his sob story. Real fuckin' tears stream down his grimy, disconsolate grease-monkey's face.


And the camera tracks out to reveal:

Gulager and Marvin: bored as shit.

#10. The fusion of artsy, 60's cinematography and a world of stock, prefabricated sets. It's an odd juxtaposition, and for the most part, the film looks like ubiquitous 60's American studio TV work. But every once in a while, DP Richard L. Rawlings (DYNASTY, CHARLIE'S ANGELS) pulls out something worthy of Antonioni. Did Siegel set up these shots himself?


#11. A bit, wordless role by John Cassavetes crony Seymour Cassel (possibly best known now for his work with Wes Anderson).


#12. During the 'ole steam room torture' scene, Clu concludes things by stating the classic, groan-inducing one-liner, "Then there's no sweat, Mickey."


#13. The way Lee Marvin says "YOU WAIT!" Just wait for it, and you'll see what I mean.

#14. Ronald Reagan Eyebrow Action. The man is throwing around more eyebrows than Nicholson and Slater combined. It's all he does. Each eyebrow toss is worth a thousand words. Every single one of them is gold.





These freeze frames likely represent about 5% of the actual eyebrow action that Reagan delivers. He even raises some brow carpet at Gulager, as he pretends to crash cars on Reagan's scale model of a real estate development.


He should've been a school principal.

#15. The big punch out scene which I referenced earlier. It's probably the most premeditated slap I've ever seen. Angie Dickinson is going on about how she'd prefer to stick around near Cassavetes. "I like it here," she says. Reagan arches an eyebrow, exchanges a look with his buddies and announces, "Well, I can change that in a hurry!" He stands, winds up, and delivers a slap so hearty that I hit 'instant replay' at least half a dozen times.


But it's not over– Cassavetes gets into the fray, stage-punching Reagan, who, in the few moments prior to getting ghost-hit contorts his face into something resembling a background character from L'IL ABNER or at the very least, DICK TRACY. They don't make 'em like they used to.



#16. According to Clu Gulager, Lee Marvin was completely and utterly shitfaced when he filmed his final scenes. Of course, he still nailed his performance, and, if you believe Clu, which I always do, it's one of the greatest scenes in film history. And it never fails to evoke applause.

Amen.

-Sean Gill