Monday, December 19, 2011

(NOIR) Born to Kill - 1947 ***



I can't say that this was one of the best noirs I have seen but it did have something going for it, and that was the roaring passion of Laurence Tierney and Claire Trevor.

Tierney plays a psychotic con man called Sam who likes killing people when they get in his way. He also has a weird and slightly homosexual relationship with his roommate Marty (played of course by Elisha Cook Jnr) as well as knocking people out left, right and centre if they annoy him. He becomes jealous after finding out the person he is seeing has another boyfriend and promptly 'does them both in.' Que Helen Trent (Trevor) who finds the bodies and doesn't tell anyone, oh except when she goes off to her sister's and casually lets it drop in a conversation. She also becomes fascinated by Sam despite the fact that she is engaged to be married and Sam is a thug and hooligan. Helen's sister is rich and so Sam goes after her, marrying her on a whim a short time later whilst being attracted to Helen. They don't think anything of having a grope in the kitchen in the middle of the night with the light on and the door open.

Things get sticky after a detective is put onto watching Marty and makes Sam believe that Helen is trying to double-cross him when all she wants is to double-cross her sister. This ends with a shoot-out etc, and I'm not telling you anymore. I'e probably told you too much already.

I love how Cook Jnr pops up in mostly all the 40s noir films that I see and nearly always plays the same character, he's like a staple of the film.

A good movie, worth a watch but not a classic.

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