Hollywood After Dark (1961) Transitional /Quasi Sexploitation Noir.

aka, 

"Walk The Angry Beach"

Written and Directed by John Hayes. Cinematography by Vilis Lapenieks, Music by Bill Marx

The film stars Anthony Vorno as Tony, Rue McClanahan as Sandy, John Barrick as Tom, Paul Bruce as Nick, Ernest Macias as Ernest, Lea Marmer as Mrs. McVea, Leslie Moorhouse as Shakespearean, Doug Rideout as Fitz, Joanne Stewart as Patti. 

"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (thelastdrivein.com)

The Story

Tony an ex Navy frogman runs an auto wrecking yard. The clues we get for location is that the yard was remembered as being located next to a city pound. 

Scrap metal

Anthony Vorno as Tony

There was a dog pound on Sherman Way in The Valley (a lot of Los Angeles's scrap and auto recycling yards were there). But there was another dog pound in South L.A.  at 3612 11th Ave, where this one was more likely shot. 

Believe it or not I actually ran a wrecking for a stretch in Montana back in the 80s, for a family member who had suffered a heart attack. Basically we usually paid $100 for a pickup, $50 for cars. We usually pulled the high demand items, generators, alternators, starters, batteries, and carburetors, The rest was a U-Pick type of operation. 

We grouped the cars by manufacturer for customer convenience. Into GM land went the Chevys, Buicks, Olds. Into Mopar land went Chryslers, Dodge and Plymouths, FoMoCo had the Fords, Mercurys, Lincolns.  AMC land had Nash, Rambler, we even had a Studebaker section, lol. When the hulks were picked over we smashed them flat and stacked them in piles. When we got a flatbed load of scrapped cars we took them to Tacoma, Wash.

Anyway, getting back to our tale, Tony seems to be a complicated type of guy. He reads books in his spare time when not pulling parts or dealing with customers.

Tony gets approached by two part time mob stickup men. Nick and Tom. You can spot that these guys ain't there to by parts. When Tony asks if he can help them. Nick tells him they were interested in some junk and "man you got lots of it." 

Paul Bruce as Nick

lots of junk

John Barrick as Tom

Nick tells Tony that he heard about him and this place and from Tommy, who had stopped in a few months ago when he needed his car fixed. 

Nick goes on to explain that he heard that he was in underwater demo during the war and they got a job in mind for him that's worth $10,000. Tony asks if it's illegal, and could he tell a cop friend about it. Nick tells him yes, it's illegal, but his part has very little risk. 

It's Illegal but your part has very little risk

Nick continues on and tells Tony he knows he's not making a lot of money, he knows the dump where he lives, and also knows he doesn't have a wife. Tony isn't buying the pitch. 

Nick tells him to think about it but make it quick, he's got to the end of the week ,and then asks him if he likes stip shows. He tells Tony that if he changes his mind to come see him at the show.

Tony a bit pissed, tells them both to get out. Tommy wants to start a fight, but Nick calls him off. He again tells Tony to think about it. 

A few days later. We cut to the strip joint. Sandy Smith a wannabe actress who finds work as the shows newly hired stripper is off stage complaining to Tommy. He tells her that it's Nick who wants to see her.

Tony shows up at the sleazy hole in the wall theater. Nick is out so Tony sit in his office waiting for Nick to get back. The place looks like a converted garage, sheetrock dividers, with a slapped together stage, and sewn together sheets for curtains. 

While Tony is sitting in Nick's office, Sandy Smith  comes in to complain. She heard from Tommy that Nick the owner is complaining about her "art." She starts in on Tony thinking he's Nick. She lays into him telling him that ok she'll take off more clothes but she won't do any bumps and grinds. 

Tony plays along. He tells her that she is probably like every girl who comes to Hollywood looking to make it big. Tony tells her he knew somebody like her who thought that all she had to do was stand at the corner of Hollywood and Vine and someone would notice her. Nothing happened. 

Sandy starts crying and Tony feels like a heel. He tells her he has really nothing to do with the show.  About this time Nick shows up and seeing the two together asks Tony if he likes what he sees?

Tony. has however, now become smitten with Sandy and to make it up with her as she is leaving, asks her for a date to go to the beach. She tells him that she has a room at Hollywood Center Motel on Sunset Blvd.

Tony goes back and discusses the small illegal job with Nick.

While Nick and Tony are going over details we get a strip routine from an African American  stripper 

The date, the next day with Sandy goes well for Tony, She has a small canvas cabana that she sets up for changing and they go swimming, and walking on the beach

During their date, Sandy discloses that she has a reading with an agent the next day for a part. When she mentions that the reading is at a dinner date with the agent, rather than in his office, Tony gets dubious about it the whole deal. He's very suspicious. She tells him not to worry, she knows about casting couches and she assures Tony that believe it or not most parts won at cocktail parties. 

She goes on the date. Tony shadows her. 

Sandy goes to the agents apartment. Tony starts stewing. The agent puts on music, brings out the booze. Sandy gets drunk dances with the agent, and despite all her asurances to Tony, she gets felt up and loses her panties. 

Tony staked out in a backyard watches as sometime later with her dress half on she shakily walks down the outside stairway. The agent, who apparently hasn't gotten enough, follows her down telling her to come back.

It goes Noirsville when he runs into Tony.  

Noirsville

First off, if all you've ever seen of this is film is the blurry, zoomed, and cropped into a widescreen Youtube streamer, that makes the cheapo production even worse looking, you need to see it in its original academy ratio and on a good print. 

That brings it up to a 6/10 and it plateaus there. We're now in the late 50s early 60s under the influences of the "Beat Generation." It's shot guerilla style on the cheap. Film Noir by the very people who were deemed the "bad guys," the "others" and basically "weirdos." Though, in this film, there are no beatniks, the only beat influence is in the percussive jazz music by Bill Marx.

With the crumbling of the MPPC, the evolving obscenity laws, and the competition from TV closing down Hollywood B productions, many theaters were losing patrons. To get butts off couches and into theaters, theater owners were buying cheap offbeat independent films with often taboo and deviant storylines. If it was similar to the East Coast / Times Square M.O. all a film like this had to do was play two weeks to make all of its money back.

Back then the intended audience was of course Angelenos and the surrounding burbs. The robbery planned is of "the gate" for the Santa Monica Amusement Pier.  A site that most folks in the area were probably familiar with. What's not explained in the film is the reason the heist was planned the way it was. 

So not knowing anything about it, here is what I can surmise. I've been to Santa Monica but only within the last 10 years and not on the pier. The old amusement pier originally on concrete piles was replaced by creosote treated wooden piles  Now, I'm just guessing, but the pier must have had just one access gate that closed off everything at one end. We get a shot of the armoured car driving onto the pier rising  over the beach. Once the gate was closed only authorized personnel would be admitted which explains the heist and the reasoning behind using Tony's underwater scuba experiences. 

Rue McClanahan and the rest of the cast are adequate. We get a few real strip routines (just topless) from roughly three professional strippers, the 'Sexploitation." ingredient. These sequences may be actual inserts as the obscenity laws were constantly fluid.  From future TV star Rue we get some gyrations and a topless sequence but it's a bare back only shot. Later during her seduction by the agent, if it's indeed Rue we a bit more but never her face. 

These low budget, old films, shot guerilla style, are valuable for the almost inadvertently archival footage they contain, We get shots of the pier, some of the Hollywood Center Motel, views of the beach and the canvas cabana's, the outside signage of some long forgotten strip show, etc., etc., and even a short chase scene.  Worth at least a watch and entertaining enough.