the audience applauded

That was an excellent one.

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

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is an effective, enjoyable low budget crime film shot in 6 days. It is carried by the handsome and charismatic Vince Edwards, in a role before he achieved TV stardom as Dr. Ben Casey in the early 1960s. I came across this completely at random on YouTube and it was a pleasant surprise. This is the type of B-movie that thrived on the youth-oriented, highly profitable drive-in movie circuit. I recommend this.

A B-movie and something of a small classic comparable to Melville's "Le Samourai" which it may have influenced. Vince Edwards in his pre-Ben Casey days is the young man who actually wants to be a contract killer and the movie is about his somewhat clinical initiation into the job. Superbly written by Ben Simcoe, brilliantly photographed in black and white by Lucien Ballard and with a terrific yet simple score by Perry Botkin this movie comes close to perfection. It was directed by Irving Lerner who up to then hadn't really done anything of note, (perhaps he was just waiting for the right material). Edwards is superb as the almost overly confident killer who comes undone when he has to kill a woman. It's a very simple picture, in which almost all the killings are kept off-screen concentrating instead on the killer's psychology and how he goes about his work. Never a commercial success it has now build up a considerable cult following.

While watching this I was trying to imagine what TV crime series might have been popular in 1958, because that's basically what this is -- a lesser episode of "M Squad" or "Highway Patrol" or something.Getting the story, such as it is, out of the way -- Ben Casey, I mean Vince Edwards, appears in a hoodlum's apartment and asks for a job as a contract killer. Edwards is really cool. "Why do you keep calling me 'sir'?", asks the hoodlum. "Because I respect you." Later, after Edwards proves himself by offing a couple of people, that respect doesn't stop him from knifing to death the guy who hired him, on the orders of someone higher up.Edwards is so good at what he does that Mr. Big sends him out to Los Angeles to take out the ex wife of a crime figure before the ex can squeal on him. Edwards is met by two men who are to squire him around and make sure he gets the job done -- Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine.But the contract killer is in no hurry. He's entirely sure of himself. He shows no emotion at any time except for an occasional sullen outburst against a sloppy waiter. He fishes and sees the sights, all the while "planning," though what he is planning is anybody's guess since he doesn't know who or where the target is.We've seen these professional, emotionless hired killers before. Allan Ladd in "This Gun For Hire." Lee Marvin in "The Killers." The kinds of self-possessed guys who might once have admitted to themselves that they'd been wrong -- but just to see wha6t it felt like. They never make a mistake until the end, when they must be killed.Edwards' character, though, is inconsistent. When he finds out (finally!) that the target is a woman he actually shows signs of distress. Because he doesn't want to kill a woman? No. It's because they're unpredictable, so for this job he demands double his fee. But at the climax, something prevents him from strangling the spiteful ex wife when he has the chance. Does his conscience REALLY stop him? Was he lying when he gave his earlier reason? There are some things man was never meant to know.He's inconsistent, too, in that for all his methodical "planning" and self confidence, he bungles the job -- twice. The first time he explodes a TV set in her living room but she escapes unharmed. How did he ever manage to plant an explosive device in a house surrounded by dozens of armed cops and FBI men? There are some things man etc.I don't want to go on too long about this because its not worth much attention, but let me mention one scene as emblematic of the film's failure of imagination and execution.Edwards visits the ex's ex maid to find out the target's daily habits. The elderly and sloppy maid is drunk. Now, this is a commonly encountered situation. Investigator has to pry information out of a wary alcoholic informant. See, oh, "Murder My Sweet," "Farewell My Lovely," "Malice", and "Coogan's Bluff" offhand. This kind of encounter gives the writer, the director, and the performers a chance to show some wit and class in delineating character. Not here. The scene is lighted with a high key and photographed flatly as on an old black-and-white television screen. The actress overacts. Edwards doesn't act at all.By the end, I didn't care who killed whom. I didn't care if the ex wife got it in the neck or not. It isn't simply that she was abrasive, nasty to everyone around her. In a similar arrangement, Marie Windsor mistreated everyone in "The Narrow Margin," yet I cared about her. It's that here the casting, like the acting, is almost inhuman. The only character I thought had more depth than a Petri plate was the whore that Edwards has sent up to his room.The music! I can't NOT mention the music. A lone guitar with an obstinate ostinato. It's cheaper to have one instrument even if it plays a simple tune that is ripped off from "The Third Man" and even if the tune, repeated repeatedly, is enough to prompt you to clean your ears with carbolic acid afterward.There are a few outdoor scenes, often with rear projection. Almost everything takes place on indoor sets with uninspired dressings. Nothing speaks of "place." Well -- Los Angeles can be like that, but even so, this film goes too far.That guitar! That TUNE! I can't get it out of my head! The voices are telling me to turn it off, but how??? Oh, sure, easy for THEM to say! Edwards might be able to do it -- the same way he inserted the explosives into the TV set in that fortress of a house. But we mere humans?

The gay lovers in "The Big Combo" are a fascinating touch. The relationship between Eli Wallach and Robert Keith in "The Lineup" is complicated and intriguing -- and plausible.But back then, homosexuality was still classified as a form of psychiatric illness. And in those two films, as well as in the one at hand, we have gay hit men. Are the portraits meant to include gay men in the mainstream or are they meant to suggest that one is the same as the other: being gay and being a killer? Please understand: I have no personal information about Vince Edwards. He was in the "Ben Casey" series before I had access to television and he became a star. Here, though he is the character of the title.And though he is not overtly gay, I have to think this movie was quite a turn-on for gay men in those repressed times: It opens with Edwards shaving while wrapped in a towel. We see him naked from the waist up, we see him in a bathing suit. Many times.And he is not only a hit man but he is also a loner. A meticulous loner. And he says on many occasions throughout the film that he dislikes women; that they have no place in the world.The movie itself is spare and fairly effective. If its equivalent were to come out today, it would likely play at Sundance.The primary female role is played as highly unsympathetic. She is also played as rather butch.So where does that leave us? More to the point, where did it leave the viewer in 1958? It isn't the sort of movie about gay men that came a little later in which they were either mocked or in which they committed suicide. But the characters are cold, soulless.That's kind of a broad generalization, isn't it?