Powerful

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good movie but grossly overrated

This is probably the worst acted and worst scripted film I've ever seen rated this high. The dialogue is laughably bad and the acting is without exception execrable. Now, if people are saying this is so bad it's good, then I get it. If they're actually saying this has any subtlety or depth as a real drama, they're a bit cracked.

Between classics They Live by Night (48) and Bonnie and Clyde (67) featuring male female duos on the run from the law is this outstanding B entry; also worthy of classic status. Joseph Lewis's Gun Crazy is pulp at its best.Young Bart Tare ( Rusty Tamblyn ) is so gun obsessed he resorts to stealing one in his small town and immediately caught sentenced harshly to a reformatory. Flashing ahead to adulthood he returns to home after a stint in the army as a weapons instructor and hooks up with his established pals. They take in a carnival where he becomes smitten with sideshow Annie Oakley, Annie Starr (Peggy Cummins) with both sharing a passion for guns. Sexy Annie unlike Bart is cold blooded however and with him under her spell they begin to pull armed robberies and establish a body count.Highly stylized and featuring a florid use of cinema language Joseph Lewis made a pocket masterpiece with Gun Crazy that features one of the finest and coldest noir femme fatales in history played by Peggy Cummins. Homicidal and into the next big rush she softens only once and even that is with passion. Unapologetic from start to finish she dominates the film while leaving the playing field littered with men (subserviently played by John Dall, grovelingly and snidely rich by Barry Kroeger) emotionally destroyed by her allure and others by her aim.In addition to brilliantly framing and informing Starr's character Lewin along with master cinematographer Russell Harlan offers up a series of fine tracking shots in which one in particular puts you in the back seat of a getaway car in essence making you an accomplice to a bank job. Harlan had six Oscar noms in his future but he would never shoot a scene as memorable.Well edited and to the point Gun Crazy's pace is also enhanced by it's clipped dialogue and tight composition establishing suspense in no time, surrendering occasionally to mawkish devices but nearly throughout it is a smoothly well made economical work. It is the archetypal B that A directors have been making the past 25 years with millions more and an hour longer and getting rave reviews yet paling and failing in the face of this black and white treasure.

I discovered Gun Crazy around 1985, I was twenty and was fan of film noirs, having seen all the classics in the Action theaters in Paris. And then appears that incredible Gun Crazy. At that time, I studied Cinema in university, having a B movie section, and Gun Crazy was the main movie studied.Gun Crazy is well remembered for being a Bonnie and Clyde story with the hold-up shot in long take. In fact, there are a lot of sequences brilliantly shot, especially another hold-up or the kid shooting sequence. The director Joseph H. Lewis was a master in shooting sequences in long takes placing the camera at the heart of the action, see the virtuoso intro in "The Undercover Man". But he never achieved any more masterpieces than "Gun Crazy" and "The Big Combo". Too bad. The rebel lovers are played by Peggy Cummins and John Dall, their meeting is unforgettable : as J. H. Lewis says in an interview, "you are like dogs in heat".The french DVD box of Gun Crazy is outstanding, with the book written by Eddie Muller, telling the origins and the shooting of that cult movie with lot of rare pictures and documents. And explaining the difference of the titles "Gun Crazy" and "Deadly is the Female", as well as on the posters, the "Gun Crazy" poster being more wild than the "Deadly is the Female" too classic.I saw the movie "Persons In Hiding" with a story close to Bonnie and Clyde. Patricia Morison is terrific as a strong, nasty and sexy woman like Peggy Cummins in "Gun Crazy". Hold-up scenes are shot and edited in the same style than later in "Gun Crazy" (but there isn't the long take hold up). And we hear twice the expression "gun crazy". That movie is from 1939, the novel "Gun Crazy" was written in 1940.For me, "Gun Crazy", with its special characters played by inspired casting and shot masterfully by Joseph H. Lewis, is one of the very best in Film Noir. Far more better than many other cult classics.

Joseph H. Lewis directs this tale of a gun-obsessed twosome. Bart Tare(John Dall)is attracted to guns as a child and ends up stealing one. He loves shooting at targets and not wanting to harm a living thing. But his gun play will end up having him put in reform school. He serves his time and as a young adult, he meets a beautiful sharpshooter Laurie Starr(Peggy Cummins)at a carnival. The two gun freaks run off to get married and then commit a string of daring robberies across the country. The money is good; but the blonde babe with a gun is more obsessed with killing. The couple find themselves in over their heads and forced to stay on the lam. The talk of splitting up and going separate ways just doesn't pan out. It seems only just that Bart and Laurie be together forever. Stark and more than a bit brutal for its time. The beautiful Cummins dominates each scene she is in. Cinematography is marvelous and stunning. Film Noir worth watching more than once.Other players: Berry Kroeger, Trevor Bardette, Harry Lewis, Anabel Shaw, Stanley Prager and a young Russ Tamblyn.