A Powerful First Scene, and Then...
John Reinhardt's For You I Die (1947) starts out strong, ends melodramatically, and in between is a so-so low budget film of the noir variety.
Two escaped convicts, Matt Gruber (Don Harvey) and Johnny Coulter (Paul Langton) rob a gas station. Gruber had killed a prison guard, forcing Coulter, who happened to be a bystander, to accompany him in his escape. Coulter had only one year left in prison. He's embittered by Gruber's recklessness. The first scene shows them hiding in a storm drain while police search nearby. Once the heat passes, Gruber's overbearing violent personality comes into focus. He browbeats Coulter, who wants to give himself up.
The camera's positioned inside the storm drain looking out, the two men silhouetted as they argue. The circularity of the drain's opening surrounds them with darkness and gloom; a place of muck, sticks, and stagnant water. Gruber convinces Coulter to make his way on foot to a trailer camp run by an old woman whose daughter, Hope Novak (Cathy Downs, who in profile looks like Elizabeth Taylor), was mixed up in Gruber's criminal past.
Finding the camp, with its roadside cafe, Coulter meets a blonde woman (Jane Weeks) as she's getting dropped off. She claims to be Hope, but her name is Georgia. She gets perverse pleasure out of fucking with Hope, as well as Coulter, whom she wants to use to get herself to the fun of the big city, San Francisco.
Hope knows Coulter's identity, but Georgia holds her knowledge of Coulter's status with the law over Hope's head, getting the latter to do additional kitchen and maid's work.
Coulter, meanwhile, spends his time in an almost constant uneasy state of mind as he waits for Gruber, who planned on committing more robberies and stealing a car. Gruber is convinced that Coulter wants to go with him; that Hope wants to resume her life with him. Hope, though, falls in love with Coulter, but Coulter would rather run away with Georgia to spare Hope trouble with the law.
After the opening the film never matches the intensity or promise of the first scene in the storm drain. In that scene, Gruber's edgy menace dominates; what the greater part of the film lacks is Don Harvey's accurate portrayal of dark masculine meathead cruelty. After the first ten minutes he doesn't appear again until the final ten. In his second appearance, he's once again the most interesting character, although Jane Weeks as Georgia is also good, depicting a petty, duplicitous bug.
Parts of the film work well, the rest is one step above humdrum.
Vic Neptune
John Reinhardt's For You I Die (1947) starts out strong, ends melodramatically, and in between is a so-so low budget film of the noir variety.
Two escaped convicts, Matt Gruber (Don Harvey) and Johnny Coulter (Paul Langton) rob a gas station. Gruber had killed a prison guard, forcing Coulter, who happened to be a bystander, to accompany him in his escape. Coulter had only one year left in prison. He's embittered by Gruber's recklessness. The first scene shows them hiding in a storm drain while police search nearby. Once the heat passes, Gruber's overbearing violent personality comes into focus. He browbeats Coulter, who wants to give himself up.
The camera's positioned inside the storm drain looking out, the two men silhouetted as they argue. The circularity of the drain's opening surrounds them with darkness and gloom; a place of muck, sticks, and stagnant water. Gruber convinces Coulter to make his way on foot to a trailer camp run by an old woman whose daughter, Hope Novak (Cathy Downs, who in profile looks like Elizabeth Taylor), was mixed up in Gruber's criminal past.
Finding the camp, with its roadside cafe, Coulter meets a blonde woman (Jane Weeks) as she's getting dropped off. She claims to be Hope, but her name is Georgia. She gets perverse pleasure out of fucking with Hope, as well as Coulter, whom she wants to use to get herself to the fun of the big city, San Francisco.
Hope knows Coulter's identity, but Georgia holds her knowledge of Coulter's status with the law over Hope's head, getting the latter to do additional kitchen and maid's work.
Coulter, meanwhile, spends his time in an almost constant uneasy state of mind as he waits for Gruber, who planned on committing more robberies and stealing a car. Gruber is convinced that Coulter wants to go with him; that Hope wants to resume her life with him. Hope, though, falls in love with Coulter, but Coulter would rather run away with Georgia to spare Hope trouble with the law.
After the opening the film never matches the intensity or promise of the first scene in the storm drain. In that scene, Gruber's edgy menace dominates; what the greater part of the film lacks is Don Harvey's accurate portrayal of dark masculine meathead cruelty. After the first ten minutes he doesn't appear again until the final ten. In his second appearance, he's once again the most interesting character, although Jane Weeks as Georgia is also good, depicting a petty, duplicitous bug.
Parts of the film work well, the rest is one step above humdrum.
Vic Neptune
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