Two Brothers and the Boring Woman They Love
The best thing about The Man Who Died Twice, a widescreen black and white 1958 film noir from B movie studio Republic, is the performance by Gerald Milton as Hart, one half of a pair of enforcers, in Los Angeles to secure a two pound bag of heroin for their boss from a different city. He and his partner, Santoni (Richard Karlan), comprise a duo of hit men; one of them, Hart, more psychopathic than the other. They're not the main characters, but the film gets interesting again every time they're on screen.
The movie's title gives away the surprise. In the first scene, a drug trafficker, T.J. Brennon (Don Megowan), gets pursued by cops on a curvy highway at night. His car flies off a cliff, there's nothing left to identify, but the assumption is made: T.J. Brennon is dead. Where's the heroin?
It's in the fancy apartment he shares with his nightclub singer wife, Lynn (Czechoslovak actress Vera Ralston). Narcotics cops find it without much difficulty. With the help of Brennon's cop brother, Bill (Rod Cameron), they piece together the connections between T.J. Brennon and his heroin network, which includes Hart and Santoni.
Lynn, for a while, is under suspicion and surveillance by cops hiding in an apartment across the street. She's the love object of Rak (Mike Mazurki), a bartender at the club where she sings. He has pictures of her all over his walls. I didn't share his fascination. I found Vera Ralston's performance
lifeless. I never once thought her character interesting. Joi Lansing or Adele Jergens would've been much better in the role, not only due to their beauty, but because they were capable actresses, Jergens in particular.
The film's tension slackens in some scenes. I didn't like it overall, but the two hit men give the movie its life. Hart and Santoni stay at a hotel. Right away, an old woman who lives there gives Hart a suspicious look in the lobby. He's spooked by her; later, he hears something outside the door, opens it to find a black cat--the old woman's as it turns out. He picks up the cat, opens the third story window, and places her outside on the sill. When he closes the window, Santoni, less cruel than his partner, at least when it comes to pets, gives Hart a hard time and makes for the window, but Hart insists he leave the cat out there. Right away this clues us into Hart being a sick fuck.
Later, Hart confesses in a quiet moment to Santoni that every time he calls his wife back home she's out. He's preoccupied with suspicions of his wife's infidelity. These aspects of his character, the cruelty toward the cat, his jealousy, have nothing much to do with the plot, but they illuminate a man far gone in the ways of casual violence.
Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Killers" has two hit men who remind me of Hart and Santoni, except that we don't know much about Hemingway's Killers. In the film, The Killers, based on that story, William Conrad and Charles McGraw play the hit men, but apart from their formidable screen presences, we don't know much about them. The Man Who Died Twice, an inferior film by far to The Killers, made up for that mystery with Hart and Santoni. It's too bad the rest of the film didn't shine in such a way. The two leads, played by Rod Cameron and Vera Ralston, are just blah. I found their characters uninteresting, the performers not using their screen time in any interesting manner.
Vic Neptune
The best thing about The Man Who Died Twice, a widescreen black and white 1958 film noir from B movie studio Republic, is the performance by Gerald Milton as Hart, one half of a pair of enforcers, in Los Angeles to secure a two pound bag of heroin for their boss from a different city. He and his partner, Santoni (Richard Karlan), comprise a duo of hit men; one of them, Hart, more psychopathic than the other. They're not the main characters, but the film gets interesting again every time they're on screen.
The movie's title gives away the surprise. In the first scene, a drug trafficker, T.J. Brennon (Don Megowan), gets pursued by cops on a curvy highway at night. His car flies off a cliff, there's nothing left to identify, but the assumption is made: T.J. Brennon is dead. Where's the heroin?
It's in the fancy apartment he shares with his nightclub singer wife, Lynn (Czechoslovak actress Vera Ralston). Narcotics cops find it without much difficulty. With the help of Brennon's cop brother, Bill (Rod Cameron), they piece together the connections between T.J. Brennon and his heroin network, which includes Hart and Santoni.
Lynn, for a while, is under suspicion and surveillance by cops hiding in an apartment across the street. She's the love object of Rak (Mike Mazurki), a bartender at the club where she sings. He has pictures of her all over his walls. I didn't share his fascination. I found Vera Ralston's performance
lifeless. I never once thought her character interesting. Joi Lansing or Adele Jergens would've been much better in the role, not only due to their beauty, but because they were capable actresses, Jergens in particular.
The film's tension slackens in some scenes. I didn't like it overall, but the two hit men give the movie its life. Hart and Santoni stay at a hotel. Right away, an old woman who lives there gives Hart a suspicious look in the lobby. He's spooked by her; later, he hears something outside the door, opens it to find a black cat--the old woman's as it turns out. He picks up the cat, opens the third story window, and places her outside on the sill. When he closes the window, Santoni, less cruel than his partner, at least when it comes to pets, gives Hart a hard time and makes for the window, but Hart insists he leave the cat out there. Right away this clues us into Hart being a sick fuck.
Later, Hart confesses in a quiet moment to Santoni that every time he calls his wife back home she's out. He's preoccupied with suspicions of his wife's infidelity. These aspects of his character, the cruelty toward the cat, his jealousy, have nothing much to do with the plot, but they illuminate a man far gone in the ways of casual violence.
Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Killers" has two hit men who remind me of Hart and Santoni, except that we don't know much about Hemingway's Killers. In the film, The Killers, based on that story, William Conrad and Charles McGraw play the hit men, but apart from their formidable screen presences, we don't know much about them. The Man Who Died Twice, an inferior film by far to The Killers, made up for that mystery with Hart and Santoni. It's too bad the rest of the film didn't shine in such a way. The two leads, played by Rod Cameron and Vera Ralston, are just blah. I found their characters uninteresting, the performers not using their screen time in any interesting manner.
Vic Neptune
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