The Girl Hunters

source: The Girl Hunters

Here is an unusual approach to a movie. The subject, Mike Hammer, is an All-American creation; a big city, hard-nosed private detective. Yet this film is made by British hands and features many British actors playing American (or in several cases, Americans who were living in England at the time.) Then there's the matter of the casting of the lead role. Instead of casting an experienced, name brand actor, the role was given to the creator of the character, author Spillane! All of this doesn't mean that the film isn't any good (though it isn't distinctly great either), but it's certainly unusual. Spillane plays the famed gumshoe who's been mourning the death of his devoted secretary by wallowing in booze. Old comrade (and Police Captain) Peters hauls him in to help question a shooting victim who says he'll only speak to Spillane. After some rough and tumble convincing, Spillane chats with the dying man only to find out that the beloved secretary may be alive after all these years! Spillane recovers from acute alcoholism with nary a headache and sets out to uncover the mystery of the missing lady. Along the way, he comes into contact with newspaper columnist Gardner (continuing the verisimilitudinous trend, he was one in real life as well), FBI agent Nolan, bar owner Farrell and curvy, bleach-blonde widow Eaton. Finally, he must engage in a knock-down, drag-out fight with an assassin and then face down the mastermind behind the whole convoluted plot. The film has decent, crisp, black and white photography and an emphatic (often overly-emphatic) musical score. It also has endless, meandering shots of Spillane walking, walking, walking to and fro up the streets of the city and driving, driving, driving in and out of the city. If all this was cut, the film would instantly take on a tighter, more effective pace. Spillane lacks the skill and charisma to truly tackle a leading role like this (it's also sometimes hard to swallow him as a chick magnet!) However, what he lacks in acting talent, he more than makes up for in authenticity and understanding of the character. He's like a less-effective Aldo Ray, but he does excel in the fight scenes and in some of the big mouthed repartee sequences. Eaton is deliciously sexy, though she struggles noticeably with an attempted American accent. She has a designer credited with her gowns, but she's seen most often in an array of skimpy (especially for the time) bikinis! (What's with her compulsion to swim 24/7 anyway?) Peters isn't bad, if a bit one note, and Nolan is very solid, as usual, as the worldly and weary agent. The film is stark and brutal, never more so than when Spillane has to take on the threatening and rather hard-to-pin-down (so to speak) assassin. It's more of a curio than a meaningful film (and it's predictable in it's outcome), but remains watchable anyway. The biggest disappointment of it is not so much it's amateurish lead actor but the fact that it doesn't even bother to properly resolve it's most key plot point! (It's no treat watching Spillane gnash Eaton during the love scene either!)

While never in the class of 'Kiss Me, Deadly', or even the original version of 'I, The Jury', 'The Girl Hunters' is an enjoyable detective movie featuring a surprisingly convincing portrayal of Mike Hammer by his creator Mickey Spillane. The film is well shot, mostly well acted and has a storyline that keeps you interested till the end. What lets it down is the intrusive and repetitive music and endless shots of Spillane/Hammer walking in and out of buildings/offices while putting on or taking off his trench coat. After a while both these elements become irritating, but not irritating enough to make you want to stop watching. Spillane is a suitably rough around the edges Hammer and is well supported by Lloyd Nolan as a helpful FBI agent and by the gorgeous Shirley Eaton as the only female character in the picture, the widow of a murdered senator. My personal favourite Mike Hammer film is the first version of 'I, The Jury' with Biff Elliott as Hammer. That film is pure noir and Elliott is excellent in the role. 'The Girl Hunters' tries hard and almost gets there, but noir was past it's sell by date and the old masters of the genre were mostly gone. This film gives a good facsimile and is very watchable, but do not expect 'The Big Sleep'.

I was shocked to see a movie with a writer actually playing one of his characters, especially one as iconic--or, at least, notable--as Mike Hammer. I can only recall Stephen King playing in some of his scripts, but even then he did not tend to be a major, featured character. His stories have soared most with great actors, writing, and directing behind them ("The Green Mile," "Shawshank Redemption," "The Shining," "Misery," and many others). Mickey Spillane is woefully short of King's humility, though. The movie has an intriguing plot, but is convoluted beneath the weight of bad acting and mostly wretched delivery. The dialogue is actually pretty believable, all things considered, but you can feel the crowd assembled on the screen is mostly amateurs. The amateurish feel coupled with the somewhat on-target dialog sort of coupled to create a more "fun" movie than what is probably intended and it stays thin on the noir-ish elements, which often seem clichéd in most movies anyway. Spillane is generally horrible as a supposed slick lady's man--which Stacy Keach carried off much more believably with his charisma and acting chops, if not looks, on television. Spillane's pretty dry and one-note as Hammer, but at least he doesn't tend to ham it up. In fact, I'm not sure he is capable of ham. Shirley Eaton is excellent as the eye candy and Hammer's love interest, but Spillane just butchers some of his lines with her; for example, when she asks Hammer if he loves her, Spillane lowly rasps in the back of his throat, "I think I do, baby." It's really a pretty lame attempt at being emotional. And, kissing together? Just horrible face-mashing and a real waste of such an exquisite beauty as Eaton's. Spillane just has no idea how to be expressive and believable; his face is just a pancake throughout the movie. It gives a certain "naturalism" to the movie, but probably not in a good way for someone that needs to be as dynamic as Mike Hammer. Though it would have been very easy to have it, there is almost no dramatic tension in this movie, just a series of pasted-together scenes that Spillane meanders through. On a highly superficial level it works--the basic pieces ultimately fit--but there's no elegance to the design, probably due to lack of presentation on the part of most of the actors. The story is good enough to be re-made as a true noir-ish exploit, but the acting and stylistic elements need a real working through.

This is not a film noir by any means, but a throwback to the dime detective novel that with several elements added became film noir in the 1940's. You'd almost classify it as film noir, but as somebody who often calls other similar themed films as noir cannot find that one element to put it in that category. As "The Big Sleep" is combination detective story/film noir, this is combination detective story/political thriller. Opening up with a drunk Mike Hammer (Mickey Spillane) passed out on a dark city street, this quickly moves to his rehab, return to his detective agency, and his return to a case involving the murders of his secretary and a senator that has baffled all who have tried to solve it. Hammer ends up all over this dark city in society, in waterfront dives, and involved with soft looking dames who know more than they are willing to share. Never leaving is that solo trumpet, haunting you as it practically becomes a character in the story. Often stagnant and slow, this lacks in star power but overwhelms you with detail and intensity. At times, it becomes very perplexing, taking a metaphorical side street but suddenly back on the main drag. Of the supporting cast, only veteran character actor Lloyd Nolan is familiar, playing opposite Spillane which is the type of part he played as Michael Shayne and other B movie detectives. The future Bond girl, Shirley Eaton, is a golden blonde vixen, making the most of both her sultry looks and mysterious character. This is new wave cinema at its finest at a time when the old style of Hollywood cinema began taking on new ideas to change with the times. If you're hunting for a masterpiece, this ain't it, but it will keep your brain on its toes and your eyes full front.

Right off Mickey Spillane is no actor. I didn't expect Bogart when I went into this and I didn't get it. But that's not to say he didn't do an admirable job. This film from beginning to end is very intriguing and has so many twists and turns it'll keep you watchin right until the end credits. I think from what I've been reading the most talked about parts are how did Mike Hammer figure out that "The Dragon" was a team...2 people. I myself didn't think of this in terms of teams but I did know not long after about the middle of the film that the girl was involved. The one scene that convinced me was where the supposed assassin, The Dragon, takes a pot shot and Mike and the girl at the poolside. First off, how does a guy miss anyone from 20 feet away? He's suppose to be this ultra slick/successful assassin and he can't hit anyone from 20ft. away? I knew then that she was involved. It was just a scare tactic. The biggest hole and issue in this film to me is the motivation. Why did this girl get involved in this commie spy ring? That's the whole problem in why I don't rate this film higher. I mean she was no more than 3 or 4 years old at the formation of this ring. How 20 years later did she get involved with it? Why did she get involved? They leave you without a clue. That was the answer I wanted...and didn't get it. Don't worry about Spillane's acting, it wasn't too bad. Give this a go and wait for the end. I's brutal. Even by today's standards. Not much blood but a lot of violence. This was definitely worth a watch. I wish they still made these PI films.

With people like Stacy Keach, Darren McGavin and Ralph Meeker acclaimed for their portrayals of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, why he thought it would be a good idea to play his creation himself we'll never know. Were not McGavin or Meeker available for The Girl Hunters. Mickey may have invented Mike Hammer, but that doesn't mean he can or should play him. That's what we got actors for. After this all I would say to him if he was still around is Mickey Spillane, stick to your own racket. After a secretary of his disappears and is presumed dead Hammer goes on a seven year bender. But he gets brought back into the game unwillingly when a dying shooting victim will only talk to him. As angry as that gets police detective Scott Peters he has to go along with it. Hammer is back in the game. It's all involved with the murder of a U.S. Senator as well. From the description he was a Joe McCarthy type character. Hammer gets to quiz Shirley Eaton who is the widow and high on the Washington, DC party circuit. The villains are of course those dirty Reds. I noted that the late Robert Fellows was credited as well as Spillane himself with the screenplay. Fellows was a rightwing sort and for a while a producing partner with John Wayne. I think this one was sitting around gathering dust since Joe McCarthy was in his glory days. It certainly is dated. Not much to say about the production itself. Nothing outstanding in it other than Spillane's horrible acting. If The Girl Hunters proves anything it proves Mickey Spillane was not Noel Coward, the best interpreter of his own work.

Few writers get the chance to play their fictional creation on screen as pulp novelist Mickey Spillane does with his brutal private eye Mike Hammer. The aptly named Hammer is more heavy lift than finesse and the square shouldered, squint eyed Spillane along with his clipped voice allows for a nearly adequate PI interpretation. It is his words however that fail the picture with insipid dialog and a convoluted plot whose main intent seems to be to unleash graphic violence with more than a dash of sadism. Private eye Mike Hammer is off the wagon and on the sidewalk when police pick him up for public intoxication. His gal Friday has gone AWOL and probably dead and he can't shake the pain. When he finds out in the tank she may be alive he dries out and the plot thickens up with assassins an FBI agent and a doll or two. The marketing is clear on this shameless turkey from the erroneous title to the gratuitous violence and dolls in bikinis that must have dominated the trailer and lobby cards. Hunters is not without it's flashes of suspense and dark humor but they are brief and sometimes unintentional.

Yeah, pals, I'll bet this is a dream of many writers, to portray his or her favorite character on the screen. I imagine Agatha Christy would have loved to portray Miss Marple, and Dashell Hammett possibly would have picked The Continental Op to portray. That off my chest, I feel kindly toward this film and was glad for the opportunity to see Spillane as Hammer. I can't say he was terribly good, but one can at least say that his portrayal was interesting, and I don't mean that as a put-down. It was also good as always to see Lloyd Nolan still around and adding to the film. This sure isn't the best Mike Hammer film, but I found it worth a look and imagine you will too.

It's a coherent narrative, I guess, and it's not insulting to anyone's intelligence or basic sense of morality. It's just an assault on one's aesthetic apparatus. My eyeballs felt coagulated after half watching this junk and half snoozing through it. Mickey Spillane plays Mike Hammer, a character he created in some pulp fiction novels of the early 50s. They achieved a certain notoriety at the time. When Private Eye Mike Hammer plugs a beautiful babe in the belly at the end of "I, The Jury," she gasps, "Mike, how could you do this?" And Mike snarls, "It was easy." Well, you don't have to be a literary giant to write hard-boiled pulp fiction. It has a long, if mostly undistinguished, history. Dashiell Hammett gave us a couple of good stories, most notably "The Maltese Falcon." Sam Spade went down in history. Hammett had a fascinating detective story to tell and lots of local San Francisco color. You can still order the Sam Spade Special at Jack's Restaurant, and there is a bronze plaque on the street corner where Miles Archer was killed. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe brought a touch of street poetry with him in his anfractuous adventures in Los Angeles. "Her hair was the color of gold in old painting." And, "She gave me a look that I could feel in my hip pocket." I could never follow Chandler's stories and neither could Chandler but what the hell. Mickey Spillane was different from these earlier stars. He didn't have an interesting story to tell and he'd have to look up "poetry" in the dictionary. The novels were just forgettable junk, like most of the stories in the pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s, with titles like, "Somewhere a Roscoe" and "The Dead Blond." The movie is about as good as his novel -- or it would be if author Mickey Spillane did not play his own hero, Mike Hammer. The guy is bulky and squinty eyed and shapeless. He has the voice of a really bad teacher of algebra. Not even the glossy Shirley Eaton can compensate for his presence or for the absence of an involving narrative. It has something to do with his finding his secretary, Velda or Velma. The story begins with Hammer as an abject drunk picked up and beaten by the cops, but it's impossible to tell the difference between Hammer as drunk and Hammer as reinvigorated private eye. The sound is scratchy, the photography wretched, and the musical score infinitely repetitive -- a bluesy trumpet with four notes in its repertoire. The director seems to know what a loser he's got here because he makes no attempt to dress up this dreck. Hammer enters a seedy saloon on his quest and you can tell it's seedy because somebody is playing a honky tonk piano in the background as if this were Dodge City. The good part is I awoke refreshed and alert after that brief nap.