The Pusher

Another reviewer complained that this wonderful, moody and atmospheric film about heroin addiction was too "dreary.." I have to laugh at some of the comments I read here. New York City, circa 1958; a heroin kingpin sets up shop, and sets himself up in a posh penthouse apartment on Riverside Drive. His customers are mostly kids, many of them Puerto Rican immigrants looking to find their place in a new city, and they get hooked on the smack that Mario supplies them. Things start to get out of control when a Police Lieutenant's daughter gets hooked, while working at a shady nightclub in Midtown. The pusher himself, played by Felice Orlandi, is suitably sleazy and heartless, as he feeds off of the young people in the area, making himself rich while destroying their lives in the process. This film is remarkably realistic in it's depiction of both the business aspect and the addiction aspect of the drug culture. Beautifully filmed in shadowy, stark black and white, with New York City on display in all it's old time glory. Of course it's "dreary," and seedy, and downbeat. This title is very rare and i imagine a copy must be a real collectors item. It reminded me of the New York beat/jazz scene described in Kerouac's "On the Road," so much so, that I half expected William Burroughs to appear in one of those seedy Times Square bars shown in this film. This is a wonderful, lost movie that should be easier to find. Similar to "Hatful of Rain," another early 60's NYC heroin movie, although this one is better. "The Pusher" would make a great double feature with "Who Killed Teddy Bear," which is another 1960's study of the seedy underbelly of New York's times Square scene. A lost gem...

For some reason, "The Pusher" sat on the shelf for two years until it was finally released to theaters. I have no idea why, as usually this means the film is terrible...but there's nothing terrible about this movie. It's excellent...and holds up well all these years later.

The story is about a particularly vicious drug dealer. Not only does he sell heroin, but he doesn't like to leave any loose ends...which means he's more than happy to kill anyone...even his own clients or a cop! The problem is that the detective investigating doesn't realize that his own fiancee is one of the killer's clients. To make it worse, her father is a police lieutenant! Can the cops manage to notice that their lead to the killer's identity is right there in front of them?!

While the film is very realistic in depicting drug abuse, it's not a film noir movie. It focuses more on realism as opposed to sensationalism. Well worth seeing and never dull.

By the way, this film is John Astin's movie debut. He is only briefly seen near the beginning of the picture and barely says anything. I guess they had no idea he'd one day be a star.

United Artists dumped this lousy movie, understandably since it lacks any entertainment value. As the title suggests, there was exploitation movie material to be mined here, but one-shot movie director Gene Milford (whose day job was film editing) delivered a deadly dull stinker with a no-name cast.

Writing credits are strictly A-list: screenplay by Harold Robbins early in his career, from an Ed McBain novel by Evan Hunter. But they have no feel for the genre. It plays like a reject episode of TV's "Naked City" series, with on-location photography plus chintzy studio interiors.

Cops are played by Robert Lansing and John Astin, also having career off-days. Heroine (who is hooked on perhaps heroin?) Kathy Carlyle is good looking but an instant flop -her only other movie was a routine Charles Bronson war picture.

The title character played by Felice Orlandi is a bore -instantly one-note evil. Addiction then and now is a surefire formula for drama, but Robbins, unlike his future amazing success with so many hit novels like "The Carpetbaggers", comes up with nothing but dullness.

This low-budget, independent picture's most significant point of interest is its writing pedigree -- it's based on a novel by hard-boiled favorite Ed McBain, with a screenplay by the best-selling novelist Harold Robbins. This contributes to a very schizophrenic result. The influence of the former is obvious in the police procedural framework, with some interesting shot-on-location scenes in Spanish Harlem and other NYC locales. The latter's heavy hand is apparent in the overblown melodramatic scenes which especially mar the last couple of reels.

The story concerns a police detective who, while investigating the apparent suicide of a young Puerto Rican heroin addict, discovers that his middle-class daughter is involved in the same underworld. The parallels/contrasts between the white-bread girl and the poverty stricken ethnic types gives this exposé its main social significance -- presaging similar scenes in much more accomplished films like "Traffic". But of course, the good-girl-gone-bad scenario was a staple of old-time exploitation pix way back in the days of silent movies and Dwain Esper.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers, though competent enough for the most part, really have no sense of style or tension, and the film just staggers monotonously from sequence to sequence. It only comes to life during the scenes with a feisty Latin cabaret dancer (the boy's sister), and in the character of the slick pusher who lures the girls into a life of addiction and takes advantage of them in his Playboy-style bachelor pad. Though the subject matter was probably sensational at the time, most modern viewers will find the dramatic scenes clichéd and unsubtle, and the action scenes clumsy. The jazzed-up version of "Billy Boy" that reverberates on the soundtrack is a futile attempt at hipness.

The director was a top-notch Hollywood editor, but this was his only session at the helm of a movie. Watch for some absurdly intense, method-style emoting by the young actors playing gang members.

God damn the Pusher man. He's got the snazziest digs, wears the sharpest threads, snags the hottest dames, and makes it all look easy. As played by natty hipster Felice Orlandi (Renick in BULLITT), he's like a Bizarro World Hugh Hefner, albeit with a pocketful of smack. This guy is the personification of quiet cool -- that is, until he becomes the object of vengeance by a junkie's unrelenting father, who just happens to be a police lieutenant.

Based on an Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel, THE PUSHER is less a police procedural than a sleazy, heavy-breathing crime meller, which should come as no surprise since Harold Robbins wrote the screenplay.

Personally I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thanks to Robbins' unerring bad taste, the movie is lurid, lowdown fun, chock full of runny noses, twitchy mannerisms, overwrought withdrawals, and all manner of salacious misdoings. Unfortunately, thanks to first-time helmer Gene Milford, it also boasts the dullest, dreariest direction this side of an Edward L. Cahn opus. Hey, life''s full of trade-offs.

On the plus side, the film boasts evocative location photography by ace Big Apple d.p. Arthur Ornitz, a nifty score by renaissance music man Raymond Scott and attention-grabbing performances by Orlandi, Robert Lansing (as 87th Precinct regular Steve Carella) and Sara Amman, a five-alarm Latin hottie who performs a grind-till-you--lose-your-mind specialty dance that's worth the price of admission alone.