A Major Disappointment

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Not did actor Mark Stevens star in "Cry Vengeance," but also he helmed this brooding melodrama about revenge. If you haven't seen Fritz Lang's classic "The Big Heat," you probably won't spot the resemblance between "Cry Vengeance" and it. The premise is strongly reminiscent of Lang's film, except that Stevens and scenarists Warren Douglas of "Torpedo Alley" and George Bricker of "King of the Underworld" take "The Big Heat" premise a step further. Tough Frisco cop Vic Barron (Mark Stevens of "The Dark Corner") lost his wife and daughter during an explosion that left him scarred for life on the right-hand side of his face. Were this not enough of a tragedy, the villains who planted the bomb also planted enough evidence to frame Vic and get him a three-year stretch in San Quentin. Since this unfortunate episode, big-time criminal Tino Morelli (Douglas Kennedy of "The Texas Rangers") has left San Francisco and moved to Ketchikan, Alaska, where he is raising his pre-elementary school age daughter Marie (Cheryl Callaway) with the help Blue-Eyes (Mort Mills of "Psycho") his hoodlum henchman Johnny. As it turns out, Vic is getting out of San Quentin, and he is determined to wrecked vengeance on Morelli. Meantime, nobody in Ketchikan knows Tino's true identity. He is masquerading as an ordinary citizen and he has pretty young, Peggy Harding (Martha Hyer of "The Sons of Katie Elder"), fooled, too. Meantime, Tino's pals warn him that Vic has gotten out, and mobster kingpin Nick Buda (Lewis Martin) assigns psychotic killer Roxy Davis (Skip Homeier) to watch Vic. Vic and Roxy have a history and neither likes the other. What Vic doesn't know about is Roxy's secret, and Buda doesn't want Vic to find out about it. As soon as Vic gets out, he heads to a pawn shop and purchases a revolver. Vic's old pal on the S.F.P.D., Red Miller (John Doucette), tries to persuade Vic to give up his quest. Vic refuses to and learns Tino's whereabouts and flies up to confront him. Trigger happy Roxy follows him with predictable results. "Cry Vengeance" boasts strong performances, authentic locations, loads of atmosphere, and a strong backstory.

Mark Stevens was terrific in the earlier (and truer) noir, Dark Corner (1946), with not only the young Lucille Ball but also a masterful one- handed Martini pour. Cry of Vengeance, with Stevens in the main role and also directing, has promise but falls back on a dozen clichés: knocking out a tough guy with one sucker punch; confessing everything to a bartender; the ex-con revealing tenderness to a little kid with a broken doll; a character named Joey; and plenty of bleach blinds (Martha Hyer is, however, excellent). The sets, with flimsy doors and unconvincing wainscoting, are cheesy. Early on you'll note poor dubbing when an outdoor scene couldn't be miked. And Stevens is unrelentingly grim, evidently following his own direction that it wasn't necessary to allow nuances o show through. You could have directed and scripted a better version, and I'll state here that I could as well. Be sure to catch Dark Corner, with its fine performance from Clifton Webb of Laura fame.

Cry Vengeance (1954)Leading man Mark Stevens falls something short of a cult figure. He is director and first actor in four movies from 1954 (this one, his first) to 1963. He plays his roles as if he is in control, which he is, literally, from the director's chair. He's the hardened type, and here he is bitter bitter bitter, to the point that he is not quite a fully developed character and it's hard to get absorbed in his problem.The rest of the movie is functional. It doesn't lack interest--for one thing, it's shot in Alaska, mostly (the exterior shots)--and the supporting cast is middling to good, filling roles we've seen before from pretty girl befriending the unlikely hero to chatty bartenders to a sweet kid who turns the man around through her innocence. And the filming (William Sickner, a routine cameraman with nearly two hundred B-movies to his credit) and editing, likewise, are workaday...the job gets done, but it lacks some kind of richness or aura or plain old drama. Then to make it a little more disappointing, a couple of the main themes are taken a little too directly from earlier noirs, namely "The Big Heat" which came out the year before. The theme, established right away, is a cop who is out for vengeance against whoever killed his wife and child in a car bomb meant for him. Stevens plays this part with cold certitude. It's an interesting film in some ways, but a clunker in many others. Take it for what it was, and what it is.

Cry Vengeance owes a debt to the previous year's Fritz Lang film The Big Heat. It too tells the tale of an honest cop whose family was killed in a mob-engineered explosion and who sets out as a crazed vigilante seeking redress. But while The Big Heat sizzles, Cry Vengeance stays tepid, perhaps owing to its sub-Arctic setting.The star of earlier noirs The Dark Corner and The Street with No Name, Mark Stevens directs himself as the hate-twisted protagonist, just out of prison after being framed and losing his wife and daughter. (Stevens has aged visibly, and it's not just the scarred-face makeup his character sports.) Strong-arm tactics with plenty of karate chops elicit the information that the man he holds responsible has assumed a new identity in Ketchikam, Alaska. But not only is Steven's arrival expected, he's followed by a platinum-haired gunsel who's the real killer (Skip Homeier, who bears a resemblance to Lee Marvin, The Big Heat's sadistic torpedo).Cry Vengeance matches its predecessor in brutality but comes up short everywhere else. Muddy photography wastes the scenic north, while the bland dialogue lacks the epigrammatic edge that's one of the joys of film noir (no "sisters under the mink" insinuation here as in Lang's film). The plot, with its double-crosses, needs a more baroque approach to sell itself.On the whole, Cry Vengeance falls victim to the fatigue that, by 1954, was beginning to beset the entire noir cycle. Plots and characters amount, basically, to retreads. Joan Vohs, as Homeier's sozzled moll, couldn't have given this performance without Gloria Grahame's the year before in The Big Heat. With Stevens looking tired, too, it doesn't augur well for Cry Vengeance. But it holds distinction as the only film noir set in the Alaskan Territory, as Hell's Half Acre of the same year was the only one set in the Hawaiian (it wasn't until 1959 that statehood was conferred on both territories).