Allene Roberts | Through the Shattered Lens

He’s a bad seed, that Vincent Lubeck!

At the start of the 1951 film, The Hoodlum, Vincent (played by the legendary Lawrence Tierney) is rotting away in prison. Even though the parole board is considering whether or not to release him, things aren’t looking good for Vincent. The warden (Gene Roth) has taken it upon himself to attend the parole hearing and remind them of Vincent’s long criminal record. Vincent’s been in trouble for as long as he’s been alive. The warden says that allowing Vincent to walk the streets will just make the streets even more unsafe.

However, Vincent’s mother (Lisa Golm) swears that she’ll keep an eye on Vincent. She will give Vincent a place to live and she’s even arranged for Vincent to get a job at the family gas station, where he’ll be working under his brother, Johnny (played Lawrence’s younger brother, Edward Tienery). Moved by a mother’s tears, the board grants Vincent parole.

Big mistake. As soon as Vincent’s out of prison, he starts making plans to return to his old life. He has no interest in working in a gas station and he resents Johnny’s success. Vincent is the type of bum that steals his brother’s girlfriend, gets her pregnant, and doesn’t feel the least bit guilty when she jumps off a roof to her death.

Vincent’s also the type who always has a scheme going. For instance, it turns out that his brother’s gas station is right across the street from both the town mortuary and the bank! Soon, Vincent is hanging out with his old gang and plotting to rob an armored car. Vincent’s not going to let anyone stand in his way. Not the police. Not his lover. Not even his own brother. The only person that Vincent seems to care about is his sickly mother and, even then, Vincent doesn’t actually care enough to stay out of trouble.

The Hoodlum is a low-budget gangster noir. It’s only an hour long so it doesn’t waste any time. Instead, it jumps straight into its often sordid story. From the minute that Vincent gets out of prison, he’s greedily watching that bank and telling off anyone who looks at him funny. What makes Vincent an especially despicable character is that he’s not even good at what he does. If Vincent was some sort of criminal mastermind, you could at least get some sort of guilty pleasure out of watching him rob that armored car. Instead, Vincent’s an idiot who not only messes up everything that he does but who isn’t even smart enough to understand that he’s screwed up.

Fortunately, Vincent is played by Lawrence Tierney. Tierney was a veteran tough guy, an actor who played killers onscreen and who spent a good deal of his offscreen time sitting in jail. (Tierney had a bad habit of getting into bar brawls.) In the role of Vincent, Tierney is a force of pure, uninhibited destructive energy. When he glares at his brother, you feel the resentment. When he rushes at a security guard while holding a gun, you never doubt that he’s capable of using it. Tierney gives such a raw and angry performance that you can’t stop watching him. Vincent quickly overstays his welcome but Tierney remains a fascinating actor.

The Hoodlum is a short and brutal little movie, one that works best as a showcase for the intimidating talent of Lawrence Tierney.

Last week, I started on my latest project — watching all 50 of the movies included in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties box set! I started things off with Port of New York and then I was lucky enough to discover two excellent low-budget gems: The Black Book and Trapped.

And now, we come the 7th film in the Fabulous Forties box set: 1947’s The Red House.

The Red House takes place is one of those small and seemingly idyllic country towns that always seem to harbor so many dark secrets and past crimes. Everyone in town is friendly, cheerful, and quick to greet the world with a smile.

Well, almost everyone.

Pete Morgan (Edward G. Robinson) is the exception to the rule. A farmer who moves with a pronounced limp, Pete lives on an isolated farm and refuses to have much to do with any of the other townspeople. He lives with his wife, Ellen (Judith Anderson), and his niece, 17 year-old Meg (Allene Roberts). Pete and Ellen are extremely overprotective of Meg. Pete, especially, is always quick to tell her not to associate with any of boys in the town and not to enter the dark woods that sit next to the farm. He tells her that there’s a red house hidden away in the woods and the house is haunted. Going into the red house can only lead to death.

Despite Pete’s eccentricities, Meg is finally able to convince him to hire one of her classmates to help do chores around the farm. Nath (Lon McAllister) is a good and hard worker and soon, even Pete starts to like him. Meg, meanwhile, is falling in love with Nath. However, Nath already has a girlfriend, the manipulative Tibby (Julie London), who cannot wait until they graduate high school so that she and Nath can leave town together. When Nath starts to also develop feelings for Meg, Tibby responds by flirting with the local criminal, Teller (Rory Calhoun).

Though things seem to be getting better on the Morgan Farm, Nath eventually makes the mistake of admitting that, when he goes home, he takes a short cut through the old woods. Pete angrily forbids Nath from entering the woods. Of course, this has the opposite effect. Soon, Nath and Meg are spending all day sneaking away into the woods so that they can look for the red house.

Once Pete learns of what they’re doing, he decides to hire Teller to keep them from even finding and entering the red house. Needless to say, love, melodrama, murder, and tragedy all follow…

Despite the fact that the DVD suffered from a typically murky Mill Creek transfer, I enjoyed The Red House. It’s one of those films that is just so over the top with all of the small town melodrama that you can’t help but enjoy it. (If M. Night Shyamalan had been a 1940s filmmaker, he probably would have ended up directing The Red House.) Nath and Meg were kind of boring but Julie London was a lot of fun as Tibby. If I had ever starred in production of The Red House, I would want to play Tibby.

Plus, the film’s got Edward G. Robinson doing what he does best! Robinson was an interesting actor, in that he could be both totally menacing and totally sympathetic at the same time. He has some scary scenes as Pete but they’re also poignant because Robinson suggests that Pete hates his behavior just as much as Ellen and Meg. Robimson was a powerhouse actor, the type who could elevate almost any film.

And that’s certainly what he does in The Red House!