Private Hell 36

Private Hell 36 refers to what Ida Lupino at age 36 was going thru because she looked like she was 46. Here she plays hotsy-totsy vaa-vaa-voom chanteuse opposite gum chewing police detective Steve Cochran, who was 37 at the time. Cochran's police partner is Howard Duff (Ida's real life hubby at the time). After a lot of time wasted getting to the real plot, Duff & Cochran stumble across a strongbox of $200k in hot $$$ from a NYC robbery-murder. Cochran stuffs his pocket with $80k, Duff is dumbfounded but soon it's too late and he is absorbed by his participation, so much so that he goes thru private hell for the rest of the flick because of the $$$ which Cochran has hidden in a small trailer he has rented in a trailer park. It's trailer #36. Duff's Private Hell. Trailer #36. Ge it? Little twists happen, Duff tells Cochran they must come clean, Cochran says sure nuff, they go to the trailer, Duff gets the dough, Cochran pulls his gun to blast Duff, but a voice calls out, shots are fired, people scatter, mild mayhem. Duff is wounded, Cochran's dead and the surprise ending is surprising. It's watchable, too much time at the race track and the villain has nice old Packaard which crashes down the usual ravine. I love old movies with car crashes cause they looked real back before every crash now looks like 100 megaton, 1,000 gallons of gas explosion and fireball visible from outer space. The film "Impact" has a nice old Packard too.

Moviecut—Private Hell 36

source: Private Hell 36

"Private Hell 36" (1954), directed by Don Siegel, is tough little film noir starring a reliable cast of familiar faces for film buffs: Ida Lupino, Steve Cochran, Dean Jagger, Dorothy Malone and Howard Duff. The plot isn't anything particularly special: two cops (Cochran and Duff) decide to take thousands of dollars from the suitcase of a dead counterfeiter and hid it in a trailer park. But then Cochran starts suffering with his conscience… The opening scene is the best when Steve Cochran stumbles onto a drug store robbery late night. Burnett Guffey's agile camera surveys the action with a cool calm and helps put everything into perspective. The jazz soundtrack composed by Leith Stevens purrs along nicely, as does Don Siegel's direction, which is far from his finest hour but still holds the viewer interested in the events portrayed. The acting, on the main, is good, especially Ida Lupino as a singer cop Howard Duff falls fall. This isn't a shining example of the film noir genre but it passes the time pleasantly enough.

This film is interesting because it stars the real life husband and wife duo of Howard Duff and Ida Lupino (who also co-wrote the film). However, they do not play husband and wife in the film, as Duff's movie wife was played by Dorothy Malone. Even more interesting is that Duff's child in the film is actually played by his own daughter, Bridget. It was directed by Don Siegel--a guy known for making strong lower-budget thrillers during this era. Duff and Steve Cochran are both detectives, partners and friends. However, all this is tested when they are investigating a case and find a suitcase full of money. It's a lot of money and Cochran takes much of it for himself--figuring no one would miss it. Duff is appalled...but says nothing. It seems that he just hopes that his friend will see the light and do the right thing. However, the longer he waits the more trouble he, too, will be in for not reporting this. See how all this is resolved in this very nice detective film. My favorite aspect of the film was Cochran's character. Duff kept waiting for him to do the right thing...but Cochran had no mental compass and simply had no problem doing the selfish thing! None of this heart 'o gold or seeing the light at the end for this guy--a major plus for the film. Good acting, a good script and nice action make this one a nice example of film noir. By the way, the dead guy in elevator looked a lot like Nikita Khrushchev the way they had him made up! It was, in fact, Chester Conklin--an old movie veteran who gained some fame as one of Mack Sennett's 'Keystone Kops'.

A standard movie critic's cliché is "Good cast tries hard but can't overcome the material." That is the case with bland 1954 cop drama Private Hell 36, but with the added debacle of Ida Lupino struggling to overcome her own lousy script! The dialog is particularly bad. What may have been a misguided attempt at give the characters' lines an every-day realism succeeds so well it is downright boring. Director Don Seigel blamed it on drinking and other misbehavior on the set by Lupino, her co-screenwriter and ex-husband Collier Young, who also produced, and dissipated co-star Steve Cochran. For all that it doesn't seem much worse to yours truly than Seigel's average output, which except for his magnum opus Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956), never rose much above mediocrity. Don Seigel has a worshipful following amongst devotees of the auteur philosophy that seems all out of proportion to his modest accomplishments. He was an auteur for whatever that's worth all right in the sense that the pictures he directed show his imprint. Unfortunately that imprint is boring, predicable, and lacking in artistry. Which describes Private Hell 36. With no sure direction the unusually competent actors founder. Cocharan sleepwalks through it. Conversely Howard Duff overacts to the blood vessel popping point. Poor Lupino seems to get more and more hysterical as the doings progress without her finding a line of her own writing into which she can infuse any drama. Beautiful, talented Dorothy Malone, miscast as cop Duff's drab housewife, stumbles through the proceeding with a "what am I doing here?" look. Only ever-reliable Dean Jagger, as the Police Captain, shows any life, and the picture perks up only when he's on screen. Even the cinematography by Burnett Guffey, who had just won an Accademy Award for his camera work in From Here To Eternity (1953), is bland and lacking artistry. Guffey and Seigel show little imagination in using the wide screen, simply centering the characters in the 1.85:1 frame or overusing giant closeups of faces. Others liked this picture, but yours truly and the grouchy old wife can't figure out why. She bailed out before the halfway point. Unfortunately oldblackandwhite is one of those self-flagellating types who has to watch on the the bitter end no matter how bad. Private Hell 36 is lifeless, draggy, talky, predicable and just plain bad. An awful waste of a talented cast and also a waste of whiskey if drinking a lot of same on the set is what Ida and her pals believed was the key to movie-making. Only for die-hard fans of Ida Lupino and rock-hard, desperate insomniacs. Others should avoid it as if it were and amateur barber friend with a new set of clippers.

It's nice to see the old Republic logo at the start of this. Seeing Ida Lupino is always a delight. Steve Cochrane was a handsome, effective performer who was underutilized. And Don Siegal was a great director of gritty noirs in the 1950s. Unfortunately, these parts do not add up to much of a whole. It's a standard rogue cop story that doesn't ring true. The duologue is very arch. Are we trying for Oscar Wilde here or are we making a gritty detective movie? Dorothy Malone is beautiful in that somewhat unusual way she had and she also acts well. Lupino seems either to have been allowed, or directed, to chew up the scenery. She is playing to the balcony. And saying that about one of my all-time favorite perfumers hurts.

Cop partners are tempted into stealing robbery loot, causing tension between them and troubles for their women. The crime drama may be a potboiler, but it's also redeemed by an effective cast. And that's despite one of the most obtuse film titles in Hollywood annals. Actually, the movie amounts to a Steve Cochran showcase, showing what that swarthy actor could do given the chance. Nonetheless, the competition's pretty stiff from Duff and Lupino, while Malone would have to wait a year for her break-through role in Battle Cry (1955). Cochran and Lupino do make a convincing tarnished couple, as another reviewer points out. At the same time, Cochran's devious cop amounts to one of the most unself-conscious performances I've seen from an actor. Note how at ease he is in the role, as if he really is cop Bruner. It's also director Don Siegel, a year away from his classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). His skills are especially apparent in that opening action sequence that hooks the audience right away. Also, the car-wreck scene is really well done—no stock footage there— including the smoothly executed thievery scene. However, the last sequence, in the trailer park, appears too abrupt and poorly staged, as though the production had run out of film or money or both. Kudos to co-producer Lupino who continued to be instrumental in turning out quality B- movies at a time when TV was slowing demand. Nothing memorable here, just a solid little crime drama with an expert cast.

Cops Cochran and Duff investigate stolen money from a robbery that involved murder. When a stolen bill is dropped to a nightclub singer the cops use her to identify the man who gave it to her. However when the thief is killed in a car chase the two cops, one with a family the other with an expensive girlfriend, decide to take the money and hide it in a trailer park (hence the title). But with time comes pressure from within and without to come clean. This film came from Ida Lupino's filmaker company and was co-scripted by her and she plays the nightclub singer who can identify the killer. She is good in the role and gets plenty of help from young director Don Siegel. This is pretty small beer by his standard but it's still a pretty good thriller all the same. Some scenes are brilliant - the opening robbery of a drug store for one, while others are just good. But the gritty story isn't as good as I was hoping. Overall a solid thriller from a good team of director and actors but it doesn't really have anything that makes it stand out from other crime thrillers of the same period.

Strolling home one night, Los Angeles police detective Steve Cochran interrupts a robbery in progress at a drugstore. He fatally shoots one of the perps and books the other. A marked $50 bill in the loot came from $300-grand robbery-homicide in New York. Cochran and his partner Howard Duff trace the bill back to the pharmacist, the bartender who passed it to him, and Ida Lupino, coat-check girl and part-time singer at the bar. She claims a drunk tipped her with it one night after she sang him `Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' five times; the cops don't quite believe her, but it doesn't matter. Cochran is falling for her, even though his cop's salary won't snare her the diamond bracelets she's after. Over the next week, they drag her to a racetrack where more of the marked cash is being uttered, in hopes that she'll spot her tipsy tipper. When she does, Cochran and Duff go off in hot pursuit. The getaway car hurtles down an embankment, killing the driver but leaving cash blowing around the ravine. Cochran pockets about $80-grand and turns over the rest, leaving Duff angry but not angry enough to break the inviolable code: Never rat out your partner. Cochran makes Duff an unwilling accomplice by giving him a duplicate key to a rented trailer where he's stashed the money; it's parked in slip #36. But then Cochran gets a phone call from a stranger who claims the cash is his and wants to make a deal.... Opening with an initial burst of two brutal robberies, director Don Siegel then slackens the pace but not the tension; he moves the story forward through character rather than incident. The square-rigger Duff tries to dissolve his guilt in alcohol, to the distress of his wife (Dorothy Malone, in too skimpy a role); Cochran and Lupino seesaw up and down, back and forth in their more volatile liaison. The fifth major player, Dean Jagger, as the detectives' canny superior, senses that their story doesn't quite add up. Written by Lupino and her ex-husband Collier Young, the movie departs from the usual formula by not making current spouse Duff Lupino's love interest; perhaps in consequence, Duff loses the cocky, ingratiating mien he often adopts, while Cochran runs off with the meatier role. Private Hell 36 stays lean and hard-edged (with help from cinematographer Burnett Guffey); it's among the better offerings from the latter years of the noir cycle.