Continuing this curious Mike Hammer/Johnny Liddell detective amalgamation of Spillane and Kane series.
Johnny Liddell debuted in 1944, and did a stretch that eventually totaled 29 novels. About 400 plus short stories also appeared in various Pulp Magazines. Liddell evolved from an Acme Detective Agency OP into a private dick, having an office on West 42nd Street. Kane was able to enhance the reality of his tales with the input of his brother Vincent Kane. Vinny was a NYPD plainclothes detective. Where Hammer is hyper hard boiled, Liddell is almost as nasty.
Mike Hammer evolved out of the character Mike Danger, a spec comic book/strip creation in 1946 that author Spillane and illustrator Mike Roy were hoping to sell. When that fell through, Spillane reworked the material into the novel
I, The Jury.
In the this series Mike works alone.
Disc Two
- Death Takes an Encore - A stew bum visits Hammer and confesses that he shot a man dead six months ago. He's agitated because he just saw the same man die again in a car wreck.
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| He's already dead I killed him six months ago |
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| The morgue |
Some Manhattan location shots, Ted de Corsia (film noir veteran) curiously plays Pat Chambers in this one episode.
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| The babe |
Of course the requisite hammer-tomically correct babe is present. Directed by Richard Irving, written by Frank Kane, DOP William Bradford. This was more of a Straight Crime episode with a few noir flousishes. 7/10
- Lead Ache - A top freelance news reporter is shot dead and Hammer investigates why. Raymond Bailey (The Lineup (1958) and remembered most as Banker Drysdale from the Beverly Hillbillies is a newspaper editor.
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| death of a reporter |
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| The editor (Raymond Bailey) with Mike |
Gun play, a Taxi Dance Ballroom, a Taxi Dance cuttie (Joi Lansing, Finger Man (1955),Terror at Midnight (1956), Touch of Evil (1958)), a foreign pimp, Dan Seymour (To have And have Not (1944), Key Largo (1948), The Big Heat (1955) an undercover reporter, add in white slavers, three hammer-tomically correct babes. This episode is a sort of riff on the subject matter of some of the sleazier pulp fiction paperbacks dealing with taxi dancers and the dive joints they worked.
The heavy sleaze factor tips this one into a favorite. Hammer connects a match book with The Great White Way Dance Palace on the cover to dime a dance tickets found in a coat pocket.
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| 50 Beautiful Girls |
He investigates the dance barn gets it on with a just got in town Montana girl going by the stage name of Jackie LaRue. Jackie is looking to make it in show biz. She is extremely hammer-tomically correct.
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| Jackie LaRue (Joi Lansing) |
The racket is that the "spotlight dance" is sold to their stable of 50 women, the majority, small town girls wanting to make it big in the city, as a way that a woman can get seen by producers and directors. It's all BS of course, the "spotlight dance" is like a white slave market for pimps and brothel owners. They get a good look at the merchandise in the spot. The racket is run by female pimp Miss Carla (Doris Dowling who appeared in The Blue Dahlia (1946) and Bitter Rice (1949)). Miss Carla gives off, depending on your tuning sensitivity towards Noirsville, a bit of a "lezbo/dominatrix aura. Mike waits for Jackie to take her home. She never shows. He checks her apartment the next day and finds out she left last night. Mike convinces a newswoman Barbara Lake (Doris Singleton) to go undercover as new meat for the racket.
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| Tailfins |
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| Doris Singleton |
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| New Meat |
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| Doris Dowling White Slaver |
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| Dan Seymour the Eastern European pimp |
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| A Spotlight Dance |
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| Girl fight |
This time Mike breaks up the sale of Barbara to Rozenka (Seymour) an Eastern European pimp. Poor Jackie we find out was sold to a pimp named Martinez. Looks like she'll have to blow and bone her way back to Montana. Directed by Richard Irving, written by Frank Kane, DOP Jack Mackenzie. A café au lait noir, one of those noirs that get their darkness more from their subject matter than from the strength of it's visuals Noir-ish Crime. 9/10
- Overdose Of Lead - Constance Towers (The Naked Kiss (1964)) plays a showgirl/singer/stripper, sort of a dry run for her Sam Fuller "artistic" stripper role Cathy in Shock Corridor (1963).
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| Constance Towers |
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| dressing room |
She's getting blackmailed over "pictures" that can end her career. Carl "Killer" Davis a wrestler makes an appearance as a bodyguard. Directed by Boris Sagal, written by Fenton Earnshaw, DOP Jack Mackenzie. Straight Crime. 7/10
- A Grave Undertaking - Mike is hired to retrieve blackmail letters. The letters are phony the money was really to pay off kidnappers. The kidnapped husband was played by Frank Albertson (Nightfall (1956)) When the burlesque dancer who collected the ransom from Hammer is double-crossed, she asks Mike to help her.
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| Guns ablazing |
But she is killed. Mike scopes out the dead woman's friends and co-workers pro bono to get his own brand of revenge. Three hammer-tomically correct babes Peggy Converse (Railroaded! (1947) Borderline (1950)), Faye Spain (Teenage Doll (1957), The Crooked Circle (1957), The Abductors (1957) God's Little Acre (1958), and The Beat Generation (1959)), and Rebecca Welles (Juvenile Jungle (1958). Directed by Boris Sagal, written by Fenton Earnshaw and Frank Kane, DOP Jack Mackenzie. 7/10
- A Shot In The Arm - A junkie Vivian (Jacqueline Scott (Charley Varrick (1973)) tries to kill her pusher Joe Sale (Herschel Bernardi (Stakeout on Dope Street (1958), The Savage Eye (1960)), a photographer.
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| Herschel Bernardi |
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| Jacqueline Scott |
Some nice twists and a drive through 1958 vintage Times Square below.
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| Majestic Ballroom Dancing (a taxi dancer joint on left) the Automat on rt. |
Directed by John English, written by Richard Deming and Fenton Earnshaw, DOP Jack Mackenzie. Straight Crime nothing special save for the short Times Square sequence 6/10.
- Stay Out Of Town - A crooked Pennsylvania County D.A. Dayton,(James Westerfield, Undercurrent (1946), The Chase (1949), Side Street (1949), On The Waterfront (1954)) frames an innocent man for murder.
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| Fly Speck, PA |
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| Gloria Talbott is hammer-tomically correct |
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| Gunfight with Dayton (Westerfield) |
His sister asks Mike to investigate. H.M. Wynant, plays Moran a crooked police detective. 5th Street Los Angeles fills in for downtown Fly Speck, PA. Gloria Talbott (Crashout (1955)) plays Judy Rogers, this weeks hammer-tomically correct babe. Directed by Boris Sagal, written by Frank Kane, DOP Jack Mackenzie. Straight Crime, 7/10.
- Beautiful, Blue And Deadly - While waiting for his car to be serviced at a combo garage/used car lot, Mike gets involved with recently widowed Susan Reed (Nita Talbot, Caged (1950), On Dangerous Ground (1951), and countless TV programs (where she played a sex pot).
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| Nita Talbot |
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| hammer-tomically correct |
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| Robert Ellenstein lt. |
Berry Kroeger (Cry of the City (1948), The Dark Past (1948), Act of Violence (1949), Gun Crazy (1950)) plays Oliver, Robert Ellenstein (Rogue Cop (1954), Illegal (1955), The Garment Jungle (1957)) plays Arthur Phister. All are very interested in a Jag sports car that's been impounded by the police ever since Susan's husband was shot dead in it. Apparently a key to a safe deposit box with a lot of ill gotten gains is hidden in it. Oliver wants the key. Straight Crime, 6/10. ......To Be Continued
The heavy sleaze factor tips this one into a favorite. Hammer connects a match book with The Great White Way Dance Palace on the cover to dime a dance tickets found in a coat pocket.
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