Shack Out on 101

Moviecut—Shack Out on 101

Shack Out on 101 is directed by Edward Dein and Dein co-writes the screenplay with Mildred Dein. It stars Terry Moore, Frank Lovejoy, Lee Marvin, Keenan Wynn and Whit Bissell.Music is by Paul Dunlap and cinematography by Floyd Crosby. An isolated diner on California's 101 highway provides the backdrop of for nuclear secrets, spies, federal agents and sexual boiling points. What a wonderful hot-pot of the weird and wonderful world of the era's "red scare" momentum. Often inserted into film noir dictionaries or "commie" thriller paragraphs, the truth is, is that it's a film very much of a kinky oblique niece section of film making. This is the kind of picture that will either have you utterly giggling away with a knowing sense of enjoyment, or conversely have you annoyed and possibly thinking you should have spent your time some place else. It's low budget stuff that's mostly confined to the diner of the title, but Dein brings a joyous combination of genuine menacing thrills and sequences that make you feel you have stepped into another movie (witness the whole snorkel wearing sequences). Moore is a sensuous treat as the waitress babe right in the middle of things who is making every male on the premises unscrew their brain and lob it into the dep fat fryer. There's a slight touch of misogyny in the air, but the female half of the Dein film making duo ensure it's actually kept in check. Marvin steals the pic, where we get an early glimpse of what we would come to know as a dominant screen presence. Moore would speak very highly of Marvin, which obviously goes against the grain of the character he plays (Slob!), and Marvin and Wynn would form a friendship that lasted their lifetime. These are nice tid-bids form what is a love it or hate it film. So go on, watch it and see if you can pigeon hole it. I loved it. 9/10

Bourgeois snobs who can't just enjoy a movie without trying to categorize it might have a hard time watching this picture without feeling guilty, but this low-budget effort has become a cult classic for delivering 80 minutes of fast-moving entertainment, and whether any of it makes any more sense in terms of a believable story is rather beside the point. What you get is a pretty smart script, a young Lee Marvin showing a comedic side for which his later work provided only occasional outlets, and future industry veterans doing the kind of great character work that results in long Hollywood careers. To pull this off on an Allied Artists budget and have people talking about it 55 years later is no small accomplishment. One is even led to assume that the very experienced Edward Dein and the others involved in putting this together knew exactly what they were doing.

Shack Out on 101 (1955) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Insane cult movie starts off as some sort of bizarre comedy before turning into an over-dramatic, Red Scare film. Terry Moore plays a waitress at a rundown shack that seems to get the same customers night after night. Her boss and restaurant owner (Keenan Wynn) has a crush on her but she belongs to a Professor (Frank Lovejoy). The cook, Slob (Lee Marvin) has his own plans for the waitress and might be hiding a few more secrets. Okay, I had heard a lot of good things about this movie but you never know what you're going to get we you check into a cult film. I found there to be some rather funny stuff early on but I thought the second half really fell apart as we get into more drama. The drama never worked for me because it was rather confusing trying to figure out what the movie was trying to do. For the life of me I couldn't understand why the first half had so much trashy humor only for it to disappear and turn into a warning picture. I still can't figure out what the bad guys were trying to do to begin with. What works the best is all the insult humor and some of it is downright hilarious. The insults thrown at Marvin's Slob character gets the most laughs because he fits the part so well. Marvin clearly steals the film and his great performance is enough of a reason to watch the movie. Lovejoy is pretty bland in his role but Wynn is great and matches wits with Marvin quite well. Moore is easy on the eyes but delivers little else. Whit Bissell turns in a nice supporting performance. In the end, this remains a must see due to Marvin's performance but I wish they'd kept the entire film like the first half.

Memory is relative. One spring, many years ago, a local theater would run a different old movie every week. One of them was Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" but I can't remember the rest, even though I loved them all. What helped to make the movies so great? The atmosphere in the theater, the time of year, walking back to my car through the mist, the sidewalks wet with melting snow, the promise of warm weather to come... I think everyone who calls "Shack Out On 101" a good movie must have their memories clouded the same way. This is a claustrophobic slipknot of a film which denies any logical categorization and somehow amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Lee Marvin stars as Slob, a greasy cook in a greasier diner owned by Keenan Wynn. Non-characters come and go, and the movie's only female Terry Moore seems to be involved with all and none of them. A communist spy may or may not be using this diner as a base of operations, and since the filmmakers don't really care you won't have to either. Half-hearted attempts at comedy are met with equally half-hearted attempts at drama, and predictably neither stick to landing. The movie is filmed in a stark, 50's television "playhouse" style (think early Twilight Zone episodes) and 95% of the story takes place in the single-set diner. One sequence with Lee Marvin laying across the lunch counter and lifting weights with Keenan Wynn demonstrates the subversive potential of the film, but we never get this close to Something again. Aside from an appearance by Len Lesser (Seinfeld's Uncle Leo- HELLO!) there is nothing going on here. Anyone who claims this is a sleeper or lost classic might be remembering an old girlfriend and a good night at the movies... honestly, you're better off at the caddy shack. GRADE: D

What a crazy and terrible film this is! It's watchable because it's so random. When Lee Marvin's character's name is Slob, you know a film is worth watching. And when Slob just happens to be the biggest scientific threat to America EVER (this is one of the Cold-War fright films) masquerading as a greasy spoon cafe cook, you just can't stop watching the film! Best line-- "Go and clean that greasy griddle, Slob", said to Marvin, who looks like he's about to pour piping hot coffee on anyone's face in every scene. The film is impossible to follow, with customers at the grimy 101 shack striking up random conversations with each other about nothing in particular. Terry Moore is the waitress who every man in the film wants to jump. The film has an AWESOME opening scene with a scantily clad Moore lying on the beach, and Marvin in the background with his ear to a shell. And he tries to jump her there and then!! There's also some inane stuff about weight-lifting and trying on flippers next to the counter. Hard not to recommend, even if it is awful.

Talk about Perception Clues!!! I think Marvin's talking on a cell phone (it's a shell he's listening to); I think he's giving More CPR, and he's kissing her without consent!!! Some great lines that show how paranoid we were about the Red Menace; I suppose they were referring to communism when they were speaking of the kind of stupid spies. Keenan Wynn does a jam up job as the spurned (but nicely) boss who just doesn't give More 'that spark'. It's obvious Lovejoy does and you feel Wynn's pain as he witnesses the magic between them. I'm a woman and even I could feel the chemistry Terry More was putting out way back when...even in black and white. Marvin matches her in lusty acts, words and looks, but she's not buying. The director did a great job with the action in that little shack, and from a historical perspective, it's fun doing a walk down Paranoia Lane. It's hard to believe that anyone could have thought we would be sucked in to that communism trip......but the cruelty shown those who were attracted to the beautiful ideas in that theory somehow gave more credence to what is an impossible idea in reality. Just as Nietche's Superman ideas of those who can 'live above the law' were hogwash insofar as reality is concerned, so too communism. But this movie helps you feel the country's fear of these folks out to overthrow our government in some kind of muddled way ...though you're never sure who'se selling, who'se buying and what is the product? For you Terry More and Lee Marvin fans, it's a must. Or for a view of our recent History, it's also fun.

When the producers at lowly but lovable Monogram decided to sell an upgraded product, they replaced their banner with that of Allied Artists. This AA release definitely retains that absurd old Monogram spirit. Is it a comedy/satire? A spy spoof? An anti-commie rant? An Ed-Woodian comment on twisted sex mores? A love story? All these things? None of the above? No one knows for sure. The late David Newman said it best in his seminal "Guilty Pleasures" article for Film Comment -- "at no time is it possible to get a handle on this movie." There's a scene where Wynn and Marvin attack a neon swordfish sign that is as nutty as any George Zucco and a guy-in-a-gorilla-suit nonsense from the studio's glory days. Lee Marvin's outrageous method-acting licks seem to come from another planet, and why is everyone so crazy about Terry Moore? Or are the boys really crazy about each other? Fans of Seinfeld be sure to look out for Uncle Leo when he was a young thespian -- and already doing the annoying shtick he later perfected in that series.

Allied Artists, formerly Monogram Studios released this Cold War dinosaur on the American public in 1955. Shack Out On 101 tells the story of a greasy spoon diner that from all appearances looks like a greasy spoon diner, but in reality is the headquarters of a Communist spy ring. The diner is strategically located near an atomic facility that's on the Pacific Coast highway nearby. Early on in the film, it's revealed that Lee Marvin the short order cook in the place is a spy. The question is, who else is working with him? Terry Moore whose blood is red, white, and blue catches on that all is not right with Marvin who keeps trying throughout the whole film to nail her and not for the Communist cause. You have professor Frank Lovejoy from the atomic facility, diner owner Keenan Wynn, salesman Whit Bissell, fisherman Frank DeKova and a few others come in and out of the Shack Out on 101. Which of them are Americans and which are Communist traitors? It's a really good group of character actors who got together for this one that played the bottom of many double bills. Of course Lee Marvin was not yet a leading man so he only is fourth billed behind Frank Lovejoy, Terry Moore, and Keenan Wynn. If it was not for the campiness of the whole film, Marvin's career and the rest of the cast's careers might well have gone belly up after this one. Today's audience will split a gut laughing at the prospect that the evil Communists would be operating from a diner on the Pacific Coast Highway. It's why Shack Out on 101 gets as high as a five star rating.

The shack out on Highway 101 just north of San Diego is an oceanside greasy-spoon hung with nautical bric-a-brac like a Red Lobster franchise. It's also the regional headquarters for an subversive spy ring and the claustrophobic setting for one of the oddest fish spawned during the Red Scare paranoia of the post-war years. Keenan Wynn owns the joint, with short-order cook Lee Marvin and waitress Terry Moore as his live-in help, an arrangement as uncomfortable for Moore as it is convenient for Marvin, who can't keep his hands or lips off her. Regulars include Frank Lovejoy (as an unspecified 'professor' romancing Moore), salesman Whit Bissell, an old fisherman making 'deliveries' right off the boat, and a couple of drivers for theAcme Poultry Company who come in for coffee and cherry pie. In this entrepôt big wads of cash get traded for tiny slivers of microfilm. And operatives losing their nerve or asking too many questions get dead. Few of those movies which the studios felt constrained to issue in testimony to their rock-solid Americanism were much good (and audiences shunned them like week-old mackerel). But they shared an utter lack of humor and a suffocating tone of moral urgency. This one is more perplexing. The prevailing tone remains light, at times veering toward farce, to an extent that the very real possibility presents itself that the whole thing is a very sly put-on. One morning when Wynn and Marvin, stripped to their waists, engage in some weight-lifting, Wynn insists that his chest muscles be referred to as 'pecs.' Marvin retorts 'I'm very happy with my pecs,' whereupon they call in Moore to judge which of them has the better legs. In another scene, Moore, lighted through the holes of a hanging colander, looks like she contracted some exotic contagion. But then the movie shifts abruptly into cloak-and-dagger episodes right out of B-movies of the international intrigue genre. Towards the end, the heart sinks as it becomes clear that the movie means us to take it seriously. But serious about what? Never is the word 'Communist' uttered.