Posted by Gary Deane
on 10/29/2009, 9:11 am
154.5.39.160
At Elliot’s Lavine’s suggestion, I had a look at two of director Edward L. Cahn’s more estimatible efforts, ‘Cage of Evil’ and ‘Guns, Girl’s and Gangsters’ (a few nights prior, I watched Cahn’s ‘Pier 5, Havana’, a much lesser piece of work).
Good call, Elliot. ‘Cage of Evil’ is a very serviceable early ‘sixties ‘bad cop’ post-noir, ‘B’ to its very core and proud of it. It's good enough for sure.
‘Guns, Girls and Gangsters’ is an even more engaging ‘good heist gone bad’ title that feels ripped straight from the one-time Pocketbooks Inc. catalog. Here Cahn remembers to move the camera and the whole thing rockets along like a monkey on a zip-line. Plus it has Lee Van Cleef as an escaped-convict-psycho-killer and Mamie Van Doren as a mesmerizingly pneumatic bar thrush (‘Give me room, men. I take deep breaths’). This one's better than good enough.
A pristine print of ‘G, G and G’ recently screened on ‘Drive-In Classics’, the Canadian cable channel. It’s out there.
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