cult film freak: RORY CALHOUN WITH MARY COSTA & COREY ALLEN 'THE BIG CAPER'

Title: THE BIG CAPER Year: 1957 Rating: ***

By late 1950's Film Noir, the kind of beatnik jazz listened to by the criminals also provides the soundtrack, whether it's source music (played deliberately from a radio within the movie) or part of the overall score...

And the crooks are a lot stranger and eccentric, especially in THE BIG CAPER where Rory Calhoun works for James Gregory, whose boss-moll Mary Costa's planted with Calhoun to pose as a bland married couple in the suburbs... waiting to pounce on a bank job that's particularly lucrative for carrying money to deliver to the marine's Camp Pendleton in Southern California... but without the beachy establishing exterior since most of CAPER takes place indoors...

Paul Picerni and Roxanne Arlen in THE BIG COMBO

As the best scenes have the offbeat ensemble introduced, from an initially unassuming, overweight arsonist getting turned-on by fire, to REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE bully Corey Allen as a literally jazz-absorbed, blond-haired twenty-something with a kind of homoerotic penchant for punishment, especially from James Gregory as Flood: a name spouted over one-hundred times since, leading the heist that was Calhoun's idea, he's all anyone really talks about...

As the problem with this otherwise unique noir is two-fold: there's no heated chemistry between the boss's girl and Calhoun for their predictable hookup (and rushed guilt trip) to matter, and not enough tension leading to the titular CAPER — that ultimately goes in one jazzy ear and out the other.