I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Widowed Hugo Hass lives in a shack by the railroad tracks doing something for the Southern Pacific. His dog just died so he knows of a guy selling puppies at the carnival, so he gets all dressed up and there he meets a blonde floozy who scams him and when she finds out he's got $7,300 ($68k in 2015 money) she marries him. Soon tho, he goes deaf and she is non too happy having to take care of him. He goes into town to see the Doctor and a car hits him, he falls to the ground and when he wakes up he can hear again. He rushes back to the shack but before he can tell his tramp bride he hears her and hunky Steve, the guy who took his place talking about him. She calls him names to his face and smiles, he pretends he can't hear. Soon she scams Steve into believing he beat her and gets him to take the old guy out for some rail repairs and shove him off a cliff, but he can't do it, so floozy has had it and packs her bag and leaves. His old hobo pal comes in and he has a puppy for him and all's well that ends well. This is not film noir. Its just a nice easy to watch tale, original story done well.

Betty (Beverly Michaels) is a cheap dame down on her luck. When she finds herself broke and homeless, she decides very impulsively to marry a very ordinary looking older man, Hunky Horak (Hugo Haas). There certainly is no love involved in her part...she just knows this hard-working man has some money. Soon, this tramp is bored. After all, Hunky is a relatively dull guy and they're living in the middle of no where. To make things worse, Hunky loses his hearing and she is not about to take care of any guy with a disability. Unknown to her, he's in a traffic accident and regains his hearing. But instead of telling Betty, he keeps it to himself because he overhears her saying a lot of awful things about wanting to divorce him and how she never loved him in the first place! She also flirts again and again with Hunky's supposed friend...and all the time, Hunky just listens and absorbs it all and shows no sign that he understands her hellish comments. The audience just knows that sooner or later, Hunky is going to burst...but what will he do and when?!In many ways, this film plays like a reworking of "The Postman Always Rings Twice"...except that HE knows that's coming and he's at a huge advantage instead of the poor sucker in "The Postman". Fortunately, despite the very low budget of "Pickup" and the relatively unknown actors, it works well because of decent writing, direction and wonderful acting by Beverly Michaels. She's just awful...and in a great femme fatale way and does a dandy job in making this character thoroughly despicable. She is much more coarse and nasty than Lana Turner in the other film...delightfully so. As for the ending, it caught me off guard and the husband didn't do at all what I expected. Some might be disappointed but it was very entertaining and worth seeing.

***SPOILERS*** 50 year old railroad train dispatcher Jan "Hunky" Horak, Hugo Hass, had just lost his beloved dog "Nippy" who was tragically killed in a hit & run accident outside his house. With the help of his hobo friend "The Professor", Howland Chamberlain, Jan goes into town looking to buy a puppy and runs into sexy and leggy Betty, Beverly Michaels, who's on the balls of her a** looking to get some money to pay her back rent before she's thrown, together with her room--mate Irma(Jo-Carroll Dannison), out on the street. Taking advantage of the old guys loneliness and depression over the death of his dog "Nippy" Betty gets Jan to not only give her a a roof over her head three meals a day and a place to sleep but marries her in, what seemed like a few minutes, record time.Complications soon develop when Jan gets an assistant at the train station the good looking and Marlon Brando like, with a leather jacket & white T-shirt, Steve Kowalski, Allan Nixon, who soon hits on to Betty and begins a romantic affair with her. Jan who at first doesn't notice what's going on between Steve & Betty suddenly and unexpectedly loses his hearing that has both Steve & Betty's affair, at least the speaking part of it, get even more outrageous. That by them both telling each other how they love each other and what a jerk Jan is in front of him without him knowing what their talking about! There's also the fact that Betty knowing that her husband Jan has a fat bank account,$7,300.00, and plans to get her hands on it by causing him to have a fatal accident on the railroad track.***SPOILERS*** What unexpectedly does later happen is that Jan , after falling and hitting his head on the street, does get his hearing back but keeps it secret from both Steve & Betty thus finding out what the two have planned for him. It's in fact Steve who chickens out in the planned "accident" Betty is setting her husband Jan up for. This after Jan reveals that he in fact can hear which leads to a wild attack by Steve on Betty who, no surprise to us watching the movie, planned to leave him with Jan's money after he got knocked off. Jan now in full control of his life & destiny kicks the scheming and unfaithful Betty out of his house with Steve now sorry that he had anything to do with her back to both normal and his job as an assistant train dispatcher. In the end Jan gets rewarded for all the trouble & suffering he went through. That's by the "The Professor" who was keen to all that was happening, that's why he's called the "The Professor", brings Jan a new and cuddly puppy to make up for all he went through with the people, Steve & Betty, he dealt with in the movie.

It's pretty difficult to dismiss Haas as an 'sleazy, murky old guy' or 'The Bad Director' in his exile days (read US, later). He's trying hard and the pictures do have some bright moments, when you feel like as if it was a serious drama, or when you laugh hard. The problem is -- for some people -- that you get both in one package and that you might laugh at places where it wasn't intended. But I enjoyed this picture -- and I am not saying this only because of my hurt national pride or something.