The Long Wait

It's worth every minute of the long wait in order to experience one of film noir's most indelible moments. A single, unforgettable set piece - stark, surreal, sensual and sadistic in equal measure. Opening with a crane shot, Anthony Quinn and Peggie Castle, battered and bruised by brutal bad boys (Gene Evans and Bruno DeSota), with no means of escape, seem about to bid a torturous farewell to the game of life. Castle, in particular, is stunning as the used and abused moll, bloodied and beleaguered, but demonstrating unquenchable defiance...... and it's not even the climax, which, when it arrives delivers an ironic twist, prior to the movie's playful romantic joker in the final scene.

Quinn is the ultimate three time loser. Following a horrific road accident, he temporarily loses the use of his hands, loses his memory and discovering that he is a murder suspect, stands to lose his life.

Fortunately, he hasn't lost his marbles. Moreover, having a head that's emptier than a hermit's address book, strangely works in Quinn's favour, quickening his thoughts, sharpening his awareness and heightening his survival instinct. His grim, relentless determination to clear his name, break the web of corruption which is strangling the town and find the killer, leads to close involvement with beautiful women of varied repute and to the bank where he was previously employed as a teller.

A sadly neglected and under appreciated picture, of genuine weight and substance, my one minor misgiving is that so momentous a movie be marred by so mundane a moniker. Still, at least it's better than: The BIG Wait.... Just!

Contemporaneous with the noir cycle came the rise of the cheap paperback, bringing lurid crime novels with provocative cover art to racks in drugstores and bus depots. Spearheading this pulp revolution were the scribbles of Mickey Spillane, several of which became films: I, The Jury; The Long Wait; My Gun Is Quick; and Kiss Me Deadly – the only indispensable title among them.

The Long Wait remains anomalous in that Spillane's thuggish protagonist, Mike Hammer, makes no appearance. Anthony Quinn hitches a ride in a car which promptly plunges into a ravine and bursts into flame. In the fire, he loses both his fingerprints and his memory. After two years working in an oil field, he's sent on a wild-goose chase to his home town, unaware that he's wanted for the murder of the District Attorney, who was prosecuting him for embezzling a quarter-million. His cauterized fingertips force the police to release him, but other parties want him dead. But he forges ahead with a two-pronged quest: to vindicate himself, and to find the girl he's told he once loved. She used to be called Vera – shades of Moose Malloy and Velma in Murder, My Sweet (Farewell, My Lovely) – but now she's...somebody else.

The four prime candidates for Verahood (Peggie Castle, Mary Ellen Kay, Shawn Smith and Dolores Donlon) become pasteboard targets at which Spillane can spew out his misogynistic venom. They're nothing more than scheming nymphos, throwing themselves at Quinn despite any prior arrangements they've made to insure their kept-women comforts. Inevitably they're terrorized and slapped around.

The movie's most visually arresting sequence (thanks to cinematographer Frank, or Franz, Planer) proves also its most sadistic: in an abandoned factory, lit with Expressionistic panache, Castle, bound with rope and under the muzzle of a gun, crawls across the floor to give Quinn a final kiss. Aficionados of film noir must, of course, grapple with the nettlesome problem of the femme fatale, the alluring but heartless Lilith who brings men gladly to ruin. But The Long Wait preserves an unregenerate, macho view of womankind that surpasses the merely dated or distasteful. It's a movie about the corruption of a small city that never questions the corruption of its own vision.

The Long Wait is directed by Victor Saville and adapted to screenplay by Alan Green and Lesser Samuels from the Mickey Spillane novel. It stars Anthony Quinn, Charles Coburn, Gene Evans, Peggie Castle, Mary Ellen Kay and Shirley Patterson. Music is by Mario Castelnuovo- Tedesco and cinematography by Franz Planer.

Johnny McBride (Quinn) is a amnesiac who manages to get back to his home town of Lyncastle where he hopes to unravel who he is. But pretty soon he finds himself in a quagmire of trouble and strife...

Every once in a while I come across an instance like this, where a film noir picture's reviews back upon its release were savage, and yet today the more modern noir lover is mostly positive about the pic. In fact IMDb's rating sits currently at 7.2, which as the site's users will attest to, is pretty good going. So where we at with this Spillane revamp?

The complaints back in the day about it being dull and boring smack to me of writers back then not exactly understanding the noir ethos, though it's noted that there is the odd modern reviewer sharing the same complaint. It's a film very much erring on the side of bleak and moody, dabbling in the complexities of the human condition, and it's done very well, though the screenplay is hardly minus plot holes and is full of incredulous set-ups.

We also have to buy into Quinn being catnip to the dames, four of them no less! But Quinn does angry and broody very well, and he gets to do lots of both here. The aura of a town paddling in its own muck is evident, the amnesia angle merely an excuse to keep things on the side of murky, for it's imperative that we feel Johnny McBride's confusion and mistrust, and we do. All of which is framed superbly by Planer's (Criss Cross) photography, which never misses a chance for shadows and low lights.

With salty villains and sultry dames, violence and choice dialogue, and a few superb scenes (one sequence in an empty warehouse is stunning), this is very much a noir for noir lovers to sample. But with that in mind, these warnings should be noted, that as is often the way in noirville, the ending is divisive and the overt misogyny could well offend. 6.5/10

One professional reviewer calls this film "meandering, actionless." I'd call it complex and psychological, with well-developed characters and some memorable dialog. It is quintessential film noir with a torrid romance thrown in. You have to suspend your disbelief to buy it, but you'll gladly toss it away and revel in the intensity of it's emotions and unexpected plot twists. It's not just a battle of wits with dangerous adversaries, it's a hero's quest for truth and a search for lost love. You're kept guessing as to the finish right until the end -- more importantly, you care how it ends. I saw it at least a half dozen times back in the 1950s and 60s. I'd like to see it again and discover if it's as good as I remember it -- or whether I was just a hormone-charged teenager with a crush on Anthony Quinn. ;-)

Mickey Spillane's "The Long Wait" stars Anthony Quinn, Charles Coburn, Peggie Castle, and Gene Evans.

Quinn plays Johnny McBride, who survives a horrible car crash but winds up with burned hands and amnesia. A clue leads him back to his home town where he, unbenownst to him, is wanted for the murder of the DA. And there seem to be people who don't want to ask too many questions. However, he learns one thing - a woman he knew back then, Vera West, who has left town, can tell him what actually happened.

Johnny also learns that rumor has it that Vera, to escape the bad guys, has had complete plastic surgery and changed her name - but she's back in town with her new identity. Johnny meets several women, but which one of them if any, is Vera?

Johnny proves himself a chick magnet as he becomes involved with each of these women, who work for a man named Servo - but Servo takes orders from someone else.

Unfortunately for the viewer, the potential Veras looked alike and it was hard to tell them apart. They weren't familiar enough to this viewer to be able to tell them apart.

The film has an amazing scene where a bound Peggie Castle crawls up to a tied-up Johnny, supposedly for a final kiss, but to get his gun. Stylish pulp for sure.

This is a real Mike Hammer type of story - dames, brawls, and misogyny.