Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

THE BIG OPERATOR (1959)

Low-grade tabloid fodder with Mickey Rooney as a corrupt union boss who’s got to turn a couple of tool & dye guys (Steve Cochran & Mel Tormé) before they testify against him. He plays nice (job offers & raises); he plays long game (buttering up the wives); he plays strong arm (Mel gets canned, Steve threatened); he plays vicious (beatings, human torching). But nothing works until he kidnaps Cochran’s boy (young Jay ‘Dennis the Menace’ North). It’s mostly tv talent behind the camera, with an OTT jazzed-up score and some nice b&w CinemaScope location lensing between the violent encounters & flatly lit interior sets. Plus, a decidedly weird mix to the cast with Jackie Coogan, Mamie Van Doren, Charles Chaplin, Jr. & Jim Backus. (Backus gets to fight it out in an action scene!) Rooney, looking unusually trim & fit for the period, is plenty effective, just don’t expect the nuances of Cagney or Eddie G. But Cochran gets the best bit bringing a carful of honest union guys to rescue his kid by remembering (and retracing in reverse!) every sound he heard while blindfolded during what must have been a 45 minute drive. It might be one of those Marx Bros. routines with Harpo pantomiming ‘clues’ for Chico to decipher.

DOUBLE-BILL: For a serious take on this sort of union/city politics corruption, Francesco Rosi’s Naples-set HANDS OVER THE CITY/’63 with Rod Steiger is pretty hard to beat.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Speaking of Italian pics, two years before, Steve Cochran had the lead in Michelangelo Antonioni’s IL GRIDO/’57. Now this. He must have had some crazy agent!

No comments: