Very Cool!!!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I remember seeing "Hell on Frisco Bay" at a matinée in the mid 1950's. At the time, I thought it was dead boring.I guess there was no way an action-orientated 10-year old was going to appreciate scenes of people standing around chatting in fairly ordinary looking rooms, and even at that age I could tell that the fight at the end used a lot of rear projection. Although I can now appreciate other things about the film, back then I felt it could have been called "Mild Disturbance on Frisco Bay".Alan Ladd gave a typical low-key performance as Steve Rollins, a cop sentenced for murder who is paroled from prison looking to clear his name and seek revenge on the man responsible for the crime. But he is embittered and suspects his wife, Marcia (Joanne Dru), of unfaithfulness.Alan Ladd was an actor we knew well in those days. He was a little guy who carried himself with the confidence of a big guy, and his stillness actually dominated the screen. His movies, which included plenty of westerns, were the sort that usually had us lining up on Saturday afternoons. Along with George Montgomery and Audie Murphy, my peer group knew him better than Marlon Brando – "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "The Fugitive Kind" would have had that audience rolling Jaffa balls down the isles in no time at all.Edward G Robinson plays Victor Amato the mafia-like controller of the San Francisco waterfront – he's nasty to friend and foe alike. He's a different kind of godfather who lives quite modestly, but it's all about power for him.Joanne Dru was a gorgeous-looking actress. Apparently she had a stormy private life that belied the stoic, long suffering character she plays in this movie. I was sorry to read that she had such ill health towards the end of her life – lymphedema for God's sake – getting old sucks."Hell on Frisco Bay" had good location work around San Francisco for the exteriors and some of the dreariest studio sets for the interiors where the camera work was of the set it up and stand in front of it variety.The film doesn't really hold up against the avalanche of good crime movies and television series made over the intervening decades, but the stars are unique, and I must admit, I still have a soft spot for Alan Ladd's movies.

The original title for "Hell on Frisco Bay" was "Hell on the Docks." Apparently, either Warner Bros. or Alan Ladd, whose company, Jaguar, produced the film, thought the title wasn't colorful enough or specific enough about its location, so "Frisco Bay" was substituted just prior to the film's release. I have a few stills with the original title printed on them.This film, like others produced by Ladd in the 1950s, including Delmer Daves' Western, "Drum Beat," has not appeared on DVD because, according to a Warner Bros Archives Edition executive, the Ladd estate has not permitted its release."Drum Beat" just appeared on Turner Classic Movies in its original CinemaScope format, but it was shorter than its published length of 111 minutes by at least four minutes. No US DVD release is imminent.

In Hell on Frisco Bay Alan Ladd who also produced this film plays an ex-cop who's served five years on a manslaughter rap for which he was wrongly convicted. Of course as in the case of noir films he's on a mission to find the real killer and clear himself.It doesn't take him long to sniff out a trail that leads to San Francisco underworld boss Edward G. Robinson. Robinson is easily the best in the cast. He's as malevolent as he was in Little Caesar or at least in Key Largo. It's not that Hell on Frisco Bay is a bad film, but it's all so routine for Alan Ladd. He would not transition into character roles as he hit his forties. His legion fans which were gradually dwindling by this time still wanted their guy in action hero parts.He's not terribly animated here. I wouldn't have been surprised if he was ill during the making of this. In a way that might have helped the believability factor. Five years in jail would have given him a certain prison pallor to his complexion.Alan Ladd liked having friends around and the cast here is filled with players who were close personal friends and/or co-workers from his Paramount days. They include, Anthony Caruso, George J. Lewis, Peter Hansen, Perry Lopez, William Demarest. Look for young Rod Taylor as a contract killer and Jayne Mansfield in her screen debut as a bimbo.Joanne Dru plays the estranged Mrs. Ladd and was probably grateful to be in a modern setting. Paul Stewart gives a memorable performance as Robinson's chief henchman along with his lady love Fay Wray who played a former movie star who was keeping company with Stewart. Their relationship with Robinson is the key to the story.Cinemascope and noir usually don't mix, but in this case with the final scene being a police chase and fight with speedboats across San Francisco bay, cinemascope helped greatly.Fans of both Alan Ladd and Edward G. Robinson will enjoy this film.

Edward G Robinson dismissed this one with a passing comment in his autobiography and it's not hard to see why. He exudes menace in the classic 'Little Caesar' manner and his interplay with the underrated Paul Stewart does have a touch of real quality. However, Cinemascope is not a process designed for urban thrillers and the wide open spaces rob the film of any sense of tension or claustrophobia. The greatest weakness, however, lies in Ladd's robotic performance. His boredom is evident throughout and the lacklustre supporting cast do little to help. In the end Robinson is left out on his own, gat in hand, the true professional giving it all he's got.