Note: This is a movie that doesn’t ask for your approval - it demands your attention. It’s messy, moody, and weird. And in the pantheon of RKO B-movies, it deserves a place of honor, preferably somewhere between Out of the Past and The Narrow Margin, with a meat hook dangling nearby.
Bodyguard
1948 / 1:15
Tagline: “A Real ‘Who-done-it’
Thriller”
[internet archive]
I hesitate
to over-sell old movies like this one, a noir oddity that feels like it was
stitched together from the dreams of Raymond Chandler and the nightmares of a
union-busting plutocrat. It opens with a scene so absurd it could only be true:
a tyrannical dowager, imperious and upholstered like a Victorian fainting
couch, berates her nephew for hiring a bodyguard. She’s receiving death
threats, but she’s more offended by the bodyguard’s lack of etiquette than the
possibility of being murdered. This is the kind of Post-WWII existentialism-lite
where the absurdity is the point.
The
bodyguard, Mike, is played by Laurence Tierney, a man whose face looks like
it’s been carved out of granite. Tierney, usually cast as the heavy, gets a rare turn as the hero here
- but don’t worry, he’s still unpredictably violent. Mike is an ex-homicide
detective with a chip on his shoulder and fists that do most of the talking.
He’s got integrity, though, the kind that inspires loyalty in street kids and a
blonde girlfriend named Doris who records case notes on vinyl. Yes, vinyl.
The plot is
a tangled mess of class warfare, murder, and meat hooks – ah, good old meat
hooks - and it’s all delivered with dialogue that crackles. A young Robert Altman had a hand in the script, and you can hear his chortle
in lines like “It’s as cozy here as Grand Central Station” and a butler being
called “Dracula” with no irony whatsoever. The film doesn’t wink at you - it
stares you down and dares you to snicker.
Visually,
it’s a feast. Shot in black and white, the cinematography is rich with texture:
cracked glass, fringe, tassels, and shadows that conceal sprites, pixies,
goblins, oh my. There’s a scene in an eye doctor’s office that looks like it
was directed by hyper-caffeinated Fritz Lang full of coffee from South
Sulawesi. And the
Southern California setting is a time capsule - Los Angeles with streetcars,
arcades, and meatpacking workers in neckties. It’s surreal in the way only the
passing time can make something surreal, like visiting a place you’ve not been
to since childhood.
The film’s
best moments are its strangest: Mike playing catch with a disabled boy inside a
trailer, sailors picking a fight in an arcade because he’s nagging a clerk, and
Doris using a “Record Your Voice” booth to store evidence. On vinyl. These
scenes don’t advance the plot, but they deepen the world. They make it feel
lived-in, like a place where people love, work and belch even when the camera
isn’t rolling.
Tierney’s
Mike is a bulldozer in a trench coat. He impersonates cops, commits burglary,
beats up optometrists, and steals a police car - all in the name of justice.
The final fight scene, set in a meatpacking plant, is a ballet of brutality
featuring swinging meat hooks – ah, good old meat hooks. It’s the kind of
climax that makes you want to cheer and wince at the same time.
As for the Perry
Mason connection, June Clayworth played a small part as the neglected wife
of the deserving victim in the TCOT Fraudulent Foto, one of the most
noirish episodes of the series. Steve Brodie, a meatpacking toiler in this one,
was a political fixer in a great episode TCOT Witless Witness.
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