The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Almost last lap for the once-heroic Alan Ladd, with whom it is hard not to sympathise in his all-too-visible alcoholic decline.Cast as a rather improbable rocket scientist (a distraction, in fact), Ladd manages to run out of gas in a rough street at night, where some less-usual teen gangsters from genteel homes show their courage by challenging him five-to-one and beating him to pulp. Rod Steiger somewhat underplays the sympathetic but overworked cop, whose slow, deliberate detective work provokes Ladd into a manhunt of his own.Much of the storyline probably looked as implausible then as it does now, especially Ladd's single-handed trouncing of the armed gang-leader before deciding whether to perform a noble act of mercy.But the film is now mainly rewarding as a little black-&-white mirror of a vanished suburban life, just before the 60's became the 60's. Ladd's young wife, played by Dolores Dorn, is the vulnerable blonde in the perfect home that suddenly gets a mafia-style threat through the window. Ladd's investigations show us into other affluent homes too, with the mean features of Jeanne Cooper as one of the parents concealing their sons' guilt, Margaret Hayes cool and elegant as another. And when Dorn is unexpectedly flung to the floor, there is more erotic voltage in two seconds of her part-exposed thigh than in any of the yawn-porn that would soon become standard.

**SPOILERS** Out of gas in the seedy and non residential side of L.A aerospace engineer Walt Sherill, Alan Ladd, looking for a gas station is almost run down by a gang of drunken preppies. After giving them a piece of his mind the car goes in reverse and the well dressed and well spoken hooligans confront the startled Sherill who work him over where he ends up with a concussion and broken left leg. It's when Sherill gets in touch with the police that his young tormentors not only target him but his wife Tracey, Dolores Dorn, as well.The movie "13 West Street" is a lot like the Charles Bronson urban crime thriller "Death Wish" that was released 12 years later. In the film Sherill at first goes to the police and when he does't get the results that he wants goes on his own trying to track down and exact revenge against those who left him a crippled and later tried to both murder and rape his wife Tracey. Ulike in "Death Wish" Sherill goes after only those who did him in not just any street hood who gets in his way, using himself as a decoy, like Charles Bronson did in that movie.Trying at first to let the police track down and arrest his attackers Sherill gets impatient and hired a private detective Finny, Stanley Adams, to do the job. It turns out that Finny despite finding those who brutally beat Sherill tails them in his car losing control by driving some 80 to 90 MPH and ending up dead at the bottom of a ravine. The hoodlums themselves are lead by by this conceded and what seems like stuck up, on those who are law abiding citizens, spoiled brat named Chuck,Michael Callan.Chuck gets so carried away in tormenting both Sherill and his wife Tracey that even his fellow criminals try to distance themselves from him. Bill, Arnold Merritt, one of Chuck's hangers on gets so guilt ridden at what he did to Sherill that he's murdered by Chuck, who made it look like a suicide, in order to keep his fellow hoodlums in line and from talking to the police.Det. Koleski, Rod Steiger, who's on the case has so much trouble in keeping Sherill from going off the handle and ending up not only killing any of his attackers but even innocent persons who get in his way almost has Sherill arrested for his own good. Meanwhile Chuck, who wasn't all there upstairs to begin with, gets this bright idea to break into Sherill's house and show just what a man he really is by raping his wife Tracey which alerts the cops who catch him both red handed and with his pants down.Running back to mommy and daddy, who've been covering up for him all this time, Chuck is caught by surprise by a cane swinging Sherill who after breaking his head almost drowns Chuck in his parents swimming pool. Sherill has to thank Det. Koleski for coming to his rescue not that he really needed him but to stop him from killing Chuck and ending up behind bars himself.P.S With all the comparisons to the movie 'Death Wish" there is a scene in "13 West Street"that left me a bit startled. This happens when Sherill in his hospital room, with a cast and clutches, slips and falls on the ground and is unable to get up by himself. In pops this young man who at first you think is one of those who put him there in the first place. It turns out that the young man, Adam Roarke, is visiting his mom in the room next to Sherill who helps him up and gives him back his clutches. Adam Roarke looks so much like a young Charles Bronson that for a moment I almost thought that he was actually him!

Alan Ladd, in his second-to-last film, plays some sort of scientist in Los Angeles who manages to run out of gas...in his car alone...at night in a bad neighborhood. A pack of country club teenagers in a souped-up car jump him and bust a couple of ribs, bringing Rod Steiger's detective ("Juvenile Division") into the picture, but Ladd can't wait for the slow arm of the law to bring him justice and looks for the boys on his own. Adaptation of Leigh Brackett's novel "The Tiger Among Us" (a better title!), the movie is a bit overwrought and wild-eyed, though the mechanics of the story are gripping, if utterly unpleasant. Steiger looks a little sheepish here and is disappointing, but Ladd's non-present performance is the real shame; his face puffy and jowly, his lips thin, Ladd is barely even alert. He has a fairly intense role here, but the fading actor just walks through it. Some of the details about the case are very interesting (particularly the wealthy kids involved, and how they relate to their indifferent parents), but the promising set-up for the plot is let down by all the overripe melodrama. Still, a curious, watchable attempt at delinquent terrors, perhaps a precursor to "Death Wish". ** from ****

SPOILERS. Sounds like it might be a good unpretentious flick, maybe a noir, doesn't it? "Pickup on South Street," "Call Northside 777," "The House on 92nd St.," "13 West Street." It isn't, though. The story is simple enough. Ladd is driving home from work late at night and his car chugs to a halt on an ominously deserted city street -- the only good location shooting in the movie. He's a rocket scientist, so when he sees that his car is out of gas, he tries to restart the engine. (A rocket scientist, mind you.) At this point, the good part is more or less over. Ladd is set upon and brutally beaten by a handful of well-dressed white thugs. He recovers in the hospital but spends the rest of the film on crutches or canes. The police of course investigate, under the guidance of Rod Steiger, but they are too slow for Ladd. He becomes obsessed with finding these punks and begins poking his nose into the investigation. Each time he does so, the juvenile delinquest somehow become aware of it and threaten him over the phone, throw rocks through his window, or beat him yet again. And all the time Steiger (who underplays -- for him) threatens to throw him in jail for "interfering with justice." And in fact he IS thrown in jail. In the end, things turn out as you would expect them to in a routine crime drama like this.The script is full of holes, beginning with the unmotivated beating of Ladd by rich, educated kids. Not that it doesn't happen, but they're given no motivation before this incident, or afterward. One of the kids, who feels he might soon be queried about the beating, hangs himself because he's upset. Both Ladd and his assailant act in the worst possible way, as far as their self interest is concerned. Ladd, a middle-aged engineer on a broken ankle, is able to subdue an athletic high schooler armed with a pistol. Well, I won't go on. The direction is perfunctory. There isn't a shot after the first few minutes that couldn't have been done by following an instructional manual. Oh -- one thing, perhaps. The head thug, Mickey Callan, after throwing his buddies out of his car for reasons known only to him, forces his way into Ladd's house and confronts Ladd's wife, Dolores Dorn. He plans to shoot Ladd, then rape her, he explains. Then, upon thinking things over, he decides to assault her first, and he throws her to the floor, shredding her bodice in the process. (This is known as "ripping a bodice".) At this point the director has the good taste to give us a glimpse of Dolores Dorn's bra and stockinged legs as she writhes on the floor terrified. The acting. This is the sad part. Ladd by this time in his career was pretty well shot, and he looks and sounds it. Some of this is due to the normal process of aging, for which no one, thank God, can be held responsible. But he was also doing beaucoup booze and pounding a lot of barbiturates. He looks puffy, the way Clark Gable began to look puffy when he was drinking heavily. Both his voice and his mannerisms are slurred, so much so that at times he utters a sentence that seems to consist of nothing but one long vowel and no consonants. And he needs to be seen on cane or crutch to be believed. He wobbles and flaps frantically when he moves quickly, and when he walks slowly or stand still the image evoked is Frankenstein's monster. Dolores Dorn, alas, is no actress but is nevertheless sympatico. Not only because of her role as the patient and understanding wife but because her voice, unprofessional as it sounds, seems imbued with a kind of pathos. We feel sorry for her. She's also quite attractive in a not quite conventional way. Her skin seems to have a tawny quality that suggests she is naturally tan all over, and her pale blonde hair complements the tone exquisitely. Steiger engages in little of his usual bravura acting. He's a reliable cop, but almost always in the background.Sometimes a film of this kind can be redeemed by a supporting cast of seasoned and familiar players, but not here. A bartender has a prominent bit part. The guy looks like an overweight actor -- when one thinks of what John Ford would have done with a part like that, it brings tears to the eyes. Mickey Callan I admire, as I do all dancers, for being able to do things I would never have dreamed of trying with my own body. But he's merely pretty, and a poor actor in a dramatic role. (He was better at light comedy.)I don't enjoy being this negative about a movie like this. I've enjoyed the performers' work in other films. And I do feel sympathetic towards Ladd. But there is simply nothing to recommend this movie.