Edited by Don Malcolm on 12/27/2024, 4:44 pm
For Americans of a certain age, Forrest Tucker will always be remembered as Sgt. O'Rourke on the sixties comedy series F TROOP, but he was a versatile actor, perhaps better suited for villains because at 6'4" he could project a sense of menace without having to do much emoting (and, as he noted himself, he wasn't close to a matinee idol looks-wise). Interestingly, he began his career as a singer!
There are two other crime/noir pictures in his filmography, both quite obscure...
--NIGHT FREIGHT (also 1955), where Thomas Gomez is able to channel his work in earlier noirs like JOHNNY O'CLOCK and THE WOMAN ON PIER 13 (our man Gord gives Gomez kudos for his villainy in his IMDB writeup); and
--COUNTERPLOT (1959), which has the distinction of being the only noir in the classic period shot on location in Puerto Rico. Brock Miller (Tucker) is there to clear his name of a bum murder rap, which turns into a very convoluted tale of folks vying to either help or hurt him, including an old flame (Allison Hayes, the B-movie version of Jane Russell) and his double-dealing attorney (obscure character actor Gerald Milton's finest hour). Tucker is more animated here than in FINGER MAN, and I'm in agreement with Steve Lewis at Mystery*File that this one gets better as it goes along.
Dennis Schwartz prefers COUNTERPLOT over HOODLUM EMPIRE, but the latter has made into home video release; I'd figure they're roughly comparable in the "noteworthy" department.
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