Gun Grazy (1949)
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
Starring Peggy Cummins John Dall with Berry Kroeger Morris Carnovsky
87 minutes
With the recent gun control problems in the US, I don’t think parents would be too keen on letting their kids see the movie Gun Crazy.
The movie starts off with a robbery. A young teenager called Bart breaks the window of a “gun” shop on a rainy day and gets caught pretty quickly. He seems to have an addiction to shooting gun. Fortunately this boy doesn’t kill things (we learn this from a few flashback) because he knows it’s wrong. He had killed a baby chick when he was younger but nothing else ever since.
Well, the judge in the trial decides that Bart needs to go to reform school because a gun is something that he just “has to have”.
Many years later, Bart is a grown man. He doesn’t have a job and he still love them guns. After a stint with the army, he’s back in his hometown.
Bart goes to the fair with his friends and happens to see a show of a very charming lady, Annie Laurie Starr, who has some mighty impressive shooting skills. Bart challenges her to a shooting contest and wins, in captivating fashion.
After this they get married and start their robbing spree. Things go good for them at the beginning but towards the end it’s nothing but desperation.
The first thirty-minutes of this movie are a bit slow but after this it’s not stop Bonny-and-Clyde-style action for the final hour (though not as violent).
The main character Bart, played by John Dall, is a psychological mess. He wants to be a good guy but he’s in love with a wild girl that can only manipulate him. Once the crime-spree begins, he’s a tortured soul, knowing what they’re doing is wrong.
Peggy Cummins seems to be the star of this show. She knows how to mess her husband’s brain and it’s entertaining observing her psychopathic tendencies. Towards the end of the movie, she does a great job of acting by whispering in her husband’s ear (of course, this is ruined by the stage acting of John Dall). Also, I’m not sure how much attention this got back in those days, but many men in the audience were probably pretty aroused when she pulls on her stocking in a hotel room.
Some of the dialogue in this film is pretty amusing. I like how Annie insults her manager by calling him a “two-bit guy”. I don’t hear this insult floating around now a days. Bart is always telling his wife about how he wants to stop commiting these crimes and one of his memorably quotes is “I don’t wanna look at the mirror and see a stick up man staring at me”.
This movie has a sense of “campiness”. Bart’s character for the first half of the movie is of a “pure” hearted guy and I find it strange that he would go along with this scheme of robbing people... but it wouldn’t be a movie without a script like this.
There are some good action sequences filmed outside. Some of these robberies are filmed in the back seat of the car so the audience feels like a part of the robberies. This is quite exciting as it's all done in one take... and movies now a days don’t do this anymore (movies now a days are over-edited!)!
Overall I’m trying to figure out what the message of this movie is. Earlier in the movie Bart says that he could get a regular job... but Annie only wants a life of fur coats and lots and lots of money with the use of “guns”. Materialism... violence. The use of violence for a materialistic life will not last forever. Well, that’s the only message that I can think of. Email some ideas if you can think of any (for those who have watched this film).
This movie is put together well but I thought the script was a bit too corny, especially the role of Bart.
I’d give this movie 3 stars
