Right after a Sci-Fi genre defining DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51, Robert Wise challenged himself away from his studio comfort zone on this modestly budgeted indie, a ripped-from-the-headlines story of small town corruption shot entirely on location in Reno, NV. Even its interiors, offices & homes, found rather than built. Suggested by the Estes Kefauver’s organized crime investigations, ‘event tv’ of the day, John Forsythe stars as a local newspaper editor who’s been brushing off reports on civic back-dealing on gambling, the numbers racket and systemic graft between business, government & the police, but changes his tune when he sees outside mob players show up to intimidate, threaten, even murder townies & reporters who know too much about complaisant/complicit civic boosters. A prologue with Forsythe & wife Joan Camden racing big city hoods out of town on their way to testify at the State Capital, leads to an awkward transition for Forsythe to put his story on tape. His folksy manner underplaying the urgency of the situation. But little else misses in a film that, as others have pointed out, plays like a realistic precursor to the paranoid tone of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS/’57, here with the Mafia instead of Pod People as an implacable virus infecting the town. Yikes! Wise seems to be having a tremendous time of it, pulling sharp, efficient sets, compositions & staging out of his hat from real places without strain. Wise could often be a faceless moviemaker, but he was always (for better or worse) a pro.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, the Don Siegel original, please, as the remakes are big city affairs. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/invasion-of-body-snatchers-1956.html
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