Phil Karlson’s 99 River Street is a crackerjack ’50s crime film that jazzes up its wrong man scenario with a “one crazy night” structure: it’s less interested in doom and injustice than in staying light on its feet, bobbing and weaving from gambit to gambit and payoff to payoff. I can’t say it deserves a place in the upper-echelon of mid-century crime films, but it’s so resolutely entertaining that it made me use the word “crackerjack.” I don’t think I’ve ever said that before in my life, but nothing else seemed to fit. We’re in uncharted waters here.
John Payne stars as Ernie Driscoll, who had a bright future in the ring before a bad bout damaged his optic nerve. Any more blows to the head, and he could lose the vision in that eye. Now he’s a cabbie, and his wife, the icily disdainful Pauline (Peggie Castle), doesn’t miss a chance to let him know this isn’t the life she signed up for.
Ernie starts off his night the way most hapless schmucks do: revisiting the footage of his professional disaster, helpfully broken down second-by-second. Then he moves on to daydreams, and Pauline’s not impressed by those either.1 But the third item on the agenda is bound to be a winner, right? His supportive boss at the cab company has tipped him off to a surefire cure for all his marital problems: kids! Nothing could possibly go wrong!
Ernie averts that disaster only by stumbling into another one. When he goes to surprise Pauline with a box of candy and a “let’s make a baby” Hail Mary pass, he finds her kissing Victor (Brad Dexter).
And Victor—unbeknownst to Ernie, at least initially—is a ruthless, amoral thief who’s been using his wife as a lure in an off-screen jewel heist … one that resulted in a dead body. Victor’s now on a mission to clean up loose ends and make sure he turns a profit, and he’s just tagged Ernie as a convenient patsy. A frame-up is in the works.
But also, Linda (Evelyn Keyes), Ernie’s aspiring actress friend, drags him away from his troubles with a frantic need of her own: could he help her get rid of a dead body? But also Victor’s fence is now interested in doing some clean-up of his own. But also one of his employees has gone rogue and wants to buy the jewels himself, and he thinks Ernie is Victor’s accomplice. But also the cops are now looking for Ernie too—on two separate charges from two separate parties. The night is crisscrossed with glittering lines of schemes and pursuits, and all Ernie and Linda can do is improvise their way through it.
Ernie is also getting blindsided with revelations every couple of minutes: this is not a comedy, but I kept cracking up during it at the night this guy was having. He’s like Sideshow Bob with the rakes! The movie’s high energy—coupled with the budding romance between Ernie and Linda—gives away that this is too sunny to be proper noir, but honestly, if this poor bastard’s luck kept up, he’d end the film tapping a white cane on his way into the gas chamber for another murder he didn’t commit. Then someone would stick their foot out and trip him.
There’s a grim edge to 99 River Street, though, and that means that parts of it are maybe less palatable than they would be in true film noir. Ernie is a supposed everyman getting socked in the jaw by life, but he’s especially getting socked in the jaw by women: even “the good one” uses him and has to spend some time waiting out his fury and contempt. His reaction is understandable, given what she puts him through, but the setup for Linda’s betrayal is so jaw-dropping in its contrivance—and so frustrating in its vision—that it’s hard to miss that all of this happened just to produce that reaction, just to make Ernie seethe about how women are heartless liars and manipulators. (He’ll get over it, but still.) When Pauline says that Ernie has a bad temper, that he broods and then explodes, it feels at first like she’s saying it to make sure Victor takes her with him on his big getaway. But it turns out that she’s right: Ernie can be a violent dick, and the way that’s resolved isn’t entirely satisfying. It never causes any problems, never alienates any of his loyal allies. He just learns that he deserves better, darn it, and he needs to stand up for himself! Through beatdowns, if necessary! And he mostly knew that already! That’s just not as heroic as the movie paints it, and it would go down more smoothly if it were more aware that some of Ernie’s problems are truly his own.
But while I don’t like a fake-out that makes me think a movie is going to be more empathetic to women than it actually is, I’m in a weird position there, because also, I love the scene where that happens, the same scene that immensely aggravates me. It’s a little bit of a slap in the face, but it’s also a wild, hilarious development that’s another burning coal heaped on Ernie’s head in this stealth dark comedy. It makes me laugh, even as I can pick out a thousand problems with it (on top of everything else, it doesn’t fit in all that well with the plot). And despite the iffy portrayal of the film’s women, there’s a nice, genuine scene later where Ernie mourns the dead Pauline and tries to see things from her point of view, and that—plus a key line at the end—helps a lot. Both Castle and Keyes shine here, too.
So there are definite problems here, but there’s also a lot to enjoy, especially if you like pile-ups of competing characters and schemes, and you know I do. The acting is solid, and there are a lot of great faces here. The runtime flies by. There are better hardboiled films, both famous and underseen, but … crackerjack. It’s crackerjack.
99 River Street is streaming on Amazon Prime.
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Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
Skips the bulk of the review since I just figured out what I am watching tonight.
I was scrouging around streaming services trying to pick a movie for Saturday night, and this was a great fit. I know contemporary reviews said it was sordid–and I can see what they were talking about–but it has so much energy that it never really feels that way to me.
Prime has the best supply of half forgotten 50s B movies around, even better than Tubi.
What did we watch?
A night of TV classics…
The Practice, “Betrayal” – John LaRoquette’s first appearance as the narcissistic gay Jewish sociopath Joey Heric, who kills his lover, blames another lover, and manipulates the system and his own lawyers to get the best immunity agreement ever. LaRoquette is brilliant here – he wins the show’s first Best Guest Star Emmy (and his fifth overall) – and Kelley’s script is sharp, sardonic, and dark. There is a second plot involving Jimmy and a client who’s a sex worker that is functional, but the joys of this one are entirely from the sociopath and a world that exists for him to outsmart. Our guest judge is once again Philip Baker Hall.
Frasier, “The Ski Lodge” – Roz wins a weekend at a ski lodge but can’t possibly enjoy it pregnant so Frasier takes everyone else instead. Including Daphne’s swimsuit model friend. Plus let’s not forget the gay ski instructor. Hilarity in the form of a French farce ensues. And it is indeed hilarity, this show’s capacity for farce as revved up as everyone’s sex drives. This is more or less the middle of the show’s run and I daresay this might be its comedic peak.
MLB on TBS – I lasted four innings before Brian Anderson’s rather repetitive discourse, abetted by Jeff Francoeur’s grasp of the obvious, drove me away. I’ve heard Anderson many times since getting access to the TNT Sports stream and usually he’s a lot sharper than this.
LaRoquette would later take on the regular role of a senior partner in Boston Legal‘s final two seasons, with no reference or even similarity whatsoever to his role described here. You don’t really see any of that kind of indifference to continuity-breaking casting on TV anymore.
While it was quite common in the 70s, as Gillian will no doubt attest to making her way through Rockford.
“I lasted four innings before Brian Anderson’s rather repetitive discourse, abetted by Jeff Francoeur’s grasp of the obvious, drove me away” is delightfully Frasier-esque in its phrasing.
Larroquette probably could’ve won even more Emmys had he not requested to be removed from consideration after winning four in a row for Night Court.
I haven’t watched Frasier in a while, but “The Ski Lodge” stands out in my memory as a brilliantly executed farce.
The X-Files, “Shapes” and “Darkness Falls”
“Shapes” is weak–a by-the-numbers werewolf plot with a dash of cultural appropriation, i.e., this uses the word “manitou” for added zest but doesn’t seem to have any actual idea what it’s talking about. It would be nice to have American Indian characters on the show in a plot that didn’t (pretend to) use their culture and theology as the investigative focus of the episode; it’s the classic problem where you only get a non-mainstream cast, even for an episode, when there’s a “reason” for it. Let an alien crash-land near a reservation, I’m begging you!
That aside, it’s nice to see Michael Horse, and there’s some genuine creepiness to the doctor talking to Mulder about finding Parker’s blood in his son’s stomach.
“Darkness Falls” is much better. I love the dramatic setup here with all the tensions among the players–the logging company executive no one likes, who is desperate to turn every conversation into an excuse to rail against “ecoterrorism” (giving you flat tires is not terrorism, buddy); Titus Welliver’s (!) “monkey-wrencher,” whom the more sympathetic characters kind of agree with but can’t trust; the park ranger who has to make peace between everybody; and, of course, Mulder and Scully, the outsiders. The horror idea of needing to stay in the light to keep the mummifying prehistoric wood mites off you is unsettling and effectively used–love the shots of that failing light bulb–and I loved some of the crawling, swirling green mist, even if it did look a little like someone overdid it with the airbrush feature on MS Paint. (The almost scalded/peeled look of the wounds at the end is great, too–unconventional and disconcerting.) I also like the old-fashioned horror of a trespass awakening something: violate nature by cutting down too ancient a tree, reap the whirlwind.
There’s exactly one good use of Native American symbolism on X-Files, and it’s in, I think, the second season opener, when a guru tells Mulder he is not to leave his house, change clothes, or bathe for three days, so I can take the image and say “Me after a week at work”.
“Darkness Falls” owns. Classic X-Files.
when a guru tells Mulder he is not to leave his house, change clothes, or bathe for three days, so I can take the image and say “Me after a week at work”.
See, that I can get behind.
Cruel Intentions
A guy discovers he’s not the unfeeling robot he thought he was. My weekend taught me I need to fit more bad movies into my day, and I only had ninety minutes, so I tossed this on; this proved to be a mistake from a bad movie perspective, because it’s actually quite good once it gets past the first few scenes. It has a deliberately wooden dialogue approach, almost like a middling play with characters dramatically moving around and declaring things, but this is almost part of the story – Sebastian has a self-image as a distant and cynical player completely in control of his environment, and he realises through his schemes that this isn’t true. It’s simple and goofy and the process was fun to watch.
Justified, Season Two, Episode Five, “Cottonmouth”
“You wanna make a living in this business, you gotta know ya ABCs: Always Be Cool.”
This show has successfully trained me; as soon as Michael Mosley’s character enthusiastically laid out a clever plan with one big neat trick, I knew pretty much how it was going to turn out. The show doesn’t so much zig as it does draw much attention to the direction this is going; I was deeply amused by the absolutely reckless gun safety violations going on all episode, and Mosley’s character seems violently loud during the actual robbery even by this show’s standards.
I love Boyd most when he’s like this – detached, calm, focused. It’s a good counter to Raylan’s charm coming from his easy-going good humour. Boyd is at his most powerful when he absolutely believes in himself and his mission, and now he’s simply accepting that he’s not just a criminal but a Criminal. It’s not so much that you can’t fight fate as you can fight the direction you want to go in, but you’ll end up getting what you really want anyway.
Meanwhile, I didn’t expect Jimmy Earl Dean to come back, in spirit if not in actuality. Raylan’s half of the plot is still him mostly just observing (with one notable exception); what we get is more shading in of Mags’s empire. Her brutal, unnecessary punishment of her son comes off less as a tactical move in order to create a particular outcome and more of a ritual she’s acting out. I’ve read that authoritarianism, both in parenting and in politics is generally tied into a) lower intelligence and b) this kind of fucked up ritual, an extension of power enacted for no reason.
Biggest Laugh: At this point I have to specify biggest non-Art laugh. “Well, I admit, it was terse.”
Top Ownage: Raylan’s fight with the Jesus ATV guy.
I watched Cruel Intentions as a teen and liked it well enough, but something always seemed strange about Phillippe’s performance. Not bad, just weirdly mannered, and it wasn’t until many years later that I watched Dangerous Liaisons and realized he was doing an impression of Malkovich. Would that they’d been able to get Alan Rickman as intended.
The Rehearsal S2E2 and S2E3 – The former has a dizzying and even sad interrogation of communication, conflict resolution, autistic affect (when the one contestant says Fielder has a different “aura” compared to other “judges,” what he means is that Fielder’s flat voice and tone, no matter how nice he is, puts people off, which is infuriating), a whole setpiece with a Nazi-esque Paramount+ Germany (bigger people in tiny chairs is inherently funny), how women have to placate creepy and sexually aggressive guys, and a subtle but powerful suggestion that reality TV dehumanizes people the way concentration camps did, by giving them numbers and judging their fates almost arbitrarily. Then the latter is so funny and insane that I will not divulge what happens except I’m really glad I went in knowing nothing about the episode.
Notes: The pilot who has been banned from all the apps keeps verbally digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole the longer he talks. Erasing Nathan For You’s Anti-Semitism episode and keeping Hitler specials on streaming is bugfuck crazy. “I always found sincerity overrated because the people who are better at performing it just get more rewards” is an incredible retort to DFW’s lament about irony in culture and the limits of his argument, namely that sincerity can become absolute bullshit in a spectacle society. It’s a very neurodivergent point of view: I AM sincere but I am not performing the sincerity, I am merely living it out. I can suggest inauthenticity and still be sincere.
Hahaha these two episodes might be my favorite of the season, just far more bugfuck insane than anyone could’ve predicted and in the way that’s why I watch Nathan Fielder.
Free Leonard Peltier – This is a strong, enlightening documentary whose only problem is a title that would next to half a dozen other Free_______ titles on the shelf like a paperback mystery series. There’s plenty of people who need freeing, Peltier among them, but when your conflict pits a group called AIM against one called GOON I propose a better title can be found. Because sadly the government screwing over a Native American civil rights leader for half a century isn’t surprising, but the details of the shootout and the following court cases were unfamiliar to me and the movie steps through them with a savvy combination of archive footage, re-enactment and lo-fi special effects. The archival stuff especially is an astonishing illustration and does just what you’d hope it would for a documentary, making the memories of the interview subjects come alive on screen.
Inspired to speak my mind to a largely uncaring world, albeit on a less pressing subject than an innocent man spending his life in prison, I want to implore filmmakers to stop bending to the marketing buzz and describing every tool they use as “AI”. “AI” was used to clean up audio of an old interview, that’s great, it’s a new way of scrubbing and enhancing sound. “AI” was used to generate vehicles and figures onto aerial footage of the shootout location, very helpful, it’s a method of making animated effects. These are good uses of so-called “AI,” just don’t speak of it like these things were made by a self-sufficient all-powerful God machine rather than actual human beings using some clever, if environmentally devastating, software. Nobody credits a word processor for writing a book.
Magpie Happy Hour! – Topics included 70s sci-fi, Richard Dreyfuss, how to measure time, World Cup preparations, daytime gameshows, 90s pop groups (including some acapella performances by a certain Captain), All-Time Top 5 musicals (is Wayne’s World a musical?*), and several other things after I stopped jotting notes. Good times!
*no
The happy hour sounds like it was great. I hope I can gin up my social skills to attend next time. (I should enlist one other non-regular attendee to give myself cover.)
If last night is any indication you should tequila up your social skills.
I was definitely in full-on not afraid of the fucking police mode by the end.
The more the merrier! Topics tend to come and go quickly, so it’s easy to jump in at any point.
I thought about specifically bugging you to join last night, but that felt a little too rude and aggressive. You should, though! We’d love to have you. And if you can bring someone else, all the better.
<3 I'll do my best to make it next time!
You should!
My “Don’t Let Go” is unimpeachable.
I can’t believe I spent so much time arguing whether Wayne’s World was a musical with someone who thinks the goddamn MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour is a children’s program.
Babylon 5, start of Season Three – very bellicose opening credits now! Coupled with a Star Trekkian change in active setting, interesting. There are also scenes with just bad guys plotting, another odd vibe. As expected/feared, a loathed secondary character is now in the main cast, ugh. But unexpected is an even more loathsome addition, a cool rebel and love interest for Ivanova (girl you have to do better), a fifth-rate Cary Elwes who hilariously looks like a tenth-rate soap opera-ass Andor:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTUtm0yLnwMRJoYSIMxqpYG01soWiCUR4LFMs6miri89w&s=10
I think this film doesn’t get enough credit for Phil Karlson’s direction. It is somewhat documentary, having a stark and raw feel in a narrative filled with constant reminders of the difference between fiction, wish fulfillment and real life. The eye injury plays into this with several characters stuck in the past unable to see the reality around them. There are so many rude awakenings with this which are ironic and funny. The Phenix City Story is more of a docu-drama based on a true story. It’s a sleazy and nasty piece of work. Interesting and varied filmography from Karlson.
I’ll have to check out more Karlson. I’ve only seen this and Kansas City Confidential, but as you said, there’s a lot of clever direction in this: I especially love how the theater “confession” is framed.
“Crackerjack” is a word I’ve only heard used in movie reviews. I don’t think any casual movie-goer has come out of a movie and described it to their partner as “crackerjack”.
“This picture’s gangbusters, y’see, it’s crackerjack! It’s the bee’s knees!”
NARRATOR: This dame came into my office all hysterical about a new talkie…
PSA: Dave “do your research” Shutton has an article ready for tomorrow morning, so I am going to delay the week in TV until Sunday this week, and next week I’ll move into the Thursday slot. (So I get a one-week reprieve from cramming in Wednesday night TV!)
I need to start saving up some Mr. Show quotes to stick on these articles ….
Keep ’em coming, Gleep-Glop!
OK, I have watched this, and I liked it but the run time didn’t really fly by for me. This is definitely of a muchness, and there are points where paradoxically everything happening at once somehow gets my attention span to waver. But I always like Payne and the sheer B-movie-ness of it is oddly winning. But there’s a happy ending so definitely not noir.
I can see that–I’ve definitely had times when a too-fast pace wound up not giving me enough time to care about anything or feel its significance. Obviously this stayed on the right side of the line for me, but I get how it could feel too busy.
But there’s a happy ending so definitely not noir.
Right? I’m so baffled by various outlets categorizing this as noir! Hardboiled, sure, but not true noir.