The Killers **** (1964, Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Clu Gulager, Ronald Reagan, Claude Akins, Norman Fell) – Classic Movie Review 2394

Director Don Siegel’s complex and satisfying 1964 American neo noir crime film The Killers is the second Hollywood adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story, following the hit 1946 version The Killers.

Siegel’s film was thought so tough, with intense violence and strong sexual content, that Universal studios diverted it from its intended TV destination to the cinema screens after the NBC network said it was too violent to broadcast. It was to have been called Johnny North and would have been the very first made-for-TV movie.

The cinema lucked out. This splendidly stylish, tense and twisting thriller boasts a deeply fragrant cast headed by John Cassavetes as the car-racing hero Johnny North, Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as the title killers Charlie Strom and Lee, and Angie Dickinson as the femme fatale good-time girl Sheila Farr.

The film starts as hitmen Charlie and Lee enter a school for the blind and shoot dead the unresisting Johnny North. But Charlie wonders why North refused to run and why they were paid an unusually high fee for the hit.

In his final film role before entering politics, Ronald Reagan, cast against type, is splendidly nasty and seedy as Angie’s mobster sugar daddy Jack Browning, a man so nasty he even slaps Dickinson’s face, hard. Johnny North punches him back, on the mouth, hard. Reagan gives an amateurish, hammy B-movie performance that works ideally for his character and the film. It is the only movie with Reagan playing a bad guy, which he hated. Apparently he regretted doing the movie, particularly because of the scene in which he slaps Dickinson’s character. There is a lot of violence towards Dickinson’s character in the movie. But then there are a bunch of real nasty bad guys in the movie.

Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager are tremendous in scary, deranged performances as the cool, trendily dressed title killers, and Angie Dickinson is brilliant in a mesmerising turn as the devious femme fatale. Also Claude Akins is extremely special as Johnny North’s car-racing close buddy Earl Sylvester, bringing warm and humanity to a film almost entirely lacking elsewhere, while Norman Fell scores strongly as Browning’s mild-mannered associate Mickey Farmer.

Siegel wrote his own draft of the screenplay, which he handed over to Gene L Coon to work on as the final script of the story that this time is seen from the point of view of two killers, professional hit men. They decide to find out why their latest contract victim, the former race car driver Johnny North, didn’t try to run away from them but just stood there and took it when they came to shoot him. They try to find out who hired them and why and see if they can collect more money, the missing million dollars from the robbery of a US mail truck.

Tempted by the money, Charlie and Lee visit Miami to interview Johnny’s former mechanic, Earl Sylvester, who tells his story. Cue, in an unusual but successful and satisfying screenplay structure, the first of the film’s three long flashbacks, followed by those prompted by the confessions of Mickey Farmer and Sheila Farr Charlie and Lee as the truth finally outs.

The Killers is still vibrant, unnerving and exciting, thanks to Coon’s hardboiled screenplay, Siegel’s punchy direction and the involving performances from a unique team of players. Also notable in the cast are Claude Akins (as Earl Sylvester), Norman Fell (as Mickey Farmer), Don Haggerty, Robert Phillips, and Kathleen O’Malley.

The film is mostly made on studio sets at Universal Studios, California, but there is much flavoursome location work too (eg Riverside International Raceway, Moreno Valley, California, for the race track scenes; 23617 Mulholland Highway, Calabasas, for the fake roadblock; and 9956 Toluca Lake Ave, Los Angeles, for the final scene on the lawn of the still unchanged house).

The studio sets are cheap, shoddy and fake looking, and the rear-screen projection for the go-cart racing scene and the driving during the race is astonishingly bad, and ineptly edited into the entirely different quality location footage. But luckily this all adds to the deliciously tasty B-movie neo noir flavour of the movie. It is very much part of its charm and allure.

Virginia Christine, who plays Miss Watson, the blind secretary at the Sage Home for the Blind, played Lilly Harmon Lubinsky in the 1946 original. She was best known to Americans as Mrs Olson for her 21-year stint in Folger’s Coffee TV commercials in the 60s and 70s. She was born in the Iowa small town of Stanton, which converted its water tower to resemble a coffee pot in honour of its most famous citizen.

Adding considerably to the mood, the helpful score is composed by John Williams, then Johnny Williams, but the opening and end title music are excerpts Henry Mancini’s music from Touch of Evil (1958). The song ‘Too Little Time’, originally composed by Mancini with lyrics by Don Raye as the love theme for The Glenn Miller Story, is sung by Nancy Wilson.

Siegel followed Universal’s studio filming policy to shoot the last scene of the movie first. On the first day of filming, Lee Marvin arrived late and had been drinking but, because he had no dialogue, Siegel was able to shoot and use his scenes.

Right-wing Republican Reagan refrained from discussing politics when Democrat US President John F Kennedy was assassinated during filming, causing a delay in the production, since the other members of the cast were Democrats.

Siegel has a cameo appearance as a cook at a diner.

It was released in the UK as Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers.

Marvin received the 1966 BAFTA Film Award for Best Foreign Actor for this film and for Cat Ballou.

Marvin and Dickinson reunite for Point Blank (1967).

Angie Dickinson turned 90 on 30 September 2021. She began on TV before her breakthrough in Gun the Man Down (1956) and the Western film Rio Bravo (1959), winning the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year. In her six-decade career, she has appeared in more than 50 films, including China Gate (1957), Ocean’s 11 (1960), The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961), Jessica (1962), Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), The Killers (1964), The Art of Love (1965), The Chase (1966), Point Blank (1967), Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), The Outside Man (1972), Big Bad Mama (1974), and Dressed to Kill (1980).

The cast are Lee Marvin as Charlie Strom, Angie Dickinson as Sheila Farr, Clu Gulager as Lee, John Cassavetes as Johnny North, Ronald Reagan as Jack Browning, Claude Akins as Earl Sylvester, Norman Fell as Mickey Farmer, Virginia Christine as Miss Watson, Don Haggerty as Mail Truck Driver, Robert Phillips as George Fleming, Kathleen O’Malley as Miss Leslie, Ted Jacques as Gym Assistant, Irvin Mosley as Mail Truck Guard, Jimmy Joyce as Salesman, and Burt Mustin as Elderly Man.

It was Gulager’s first major film role, followed by the racing film Winning (1969) opposite Paul Newman, Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971) and McQ (1974) opposite John Wayne. Gulager’s final screen performance was as a book store owner in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 2019.

Clu Gulager (born 16 November 1928) died of natural causes at the Los Angeles home of his son John on 5 August 2022, aged 93.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2394

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