Written by James M. Tate / 6/19/2016 / No comments / adventure , film noir or melodrama , forties , lawrence tierney
LAWRENCE TIERNEY CINEMA PRESENTS 'KILL OR BE KILLED'
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OVERALL MOVIE RATING: ***1/2 |
This includes, going in reverse: deadly piranha, mistreated jungle labor, the beautiful yet put-upon wife of an eccentric German land developer and one of the few things befitting the Noir template...
Though this is more a suspenseful adventure... is that our hero, Lawrence Tierney, in one of his BODYGUARD and STEP BY STEP style nice guy roles as opposed to the DILLINGER, DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE and BORN TO KILL villain, epitomizes the particular genre but usually as a human monster, not pawn or, as in this particular case, Wrong Man.
He gets to sing and dance with a gorgeous blonde till discovering he's not getting paid. Of course a loud argument arises – and soon enough the boss is killed by a wraithlike stranger who makes out the window in seconds flat, and it sure seems like Tierney's Robert Warren is the killer...
He becomes a hunted man, shot at by natives hired by local mobster George Coulouris: the very actor detested by Orson Welles in CITIZEN KANE and later double-crosses Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in PAPILLON. His nefarious Victor Sloma is as sleazy as his name, with hair wisp back, all frazzled as if having driven a motorcycle through a dust storm – a classy henchman of an even classier yet sinister, downright creepy German, Gregory, whose wife, in a boat heading to the river locale, falls for Tierney's Robert, hiding the desperate tough guy inside her cloistered room with all the trappings of high society. In this role, Margaret O'Brien's aunt, Marissa, is pretty in a wife-next-door manner, and she and Tierney have chemistry that makes their romance matter on a personal basis – without her he'll be caught, and without him she'd never learn what kind of man she really loves.
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A primal adventure with shades of Film Noir at 1950 |
Of course, with such a low budget made so very long ago, it still works seeing only blood in the water, or, for the most part, hearing a piercing scream from their victims, which, at one point, comes to pass during a pivotal clash between Tierney and Coulouris: win or become killer fish food. Overall, when it comes to acting, Tierney's usual monotone works well enough to make him a hero to root for with an edge to keep him alive, without anyone by his side.
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