Gun Crazy

(Joseph H. Lewis, US 1950, 87 min., 35mm)

The day after Dalton Trumbo appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, the opportunistic King Brothers, producers of Poverty Row films, gave him a call. The brothers and Trumbo all knew that, because of the situation Trumbo found himself in, the producers could get an excellent writer for only a fraction of what he would normally cost. What resulted was Gun Crazy, now considered a noir masterpiece and a searing examination of a confluence of sex and violence. Bart Tare (John Dall), gun-obsessed even as a youth, has recently returned from WWII. His life takes a sudden turn when he meets up with carnival sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins), a disturbed woman with a lust for crime. The spree they embark on is darkly manic, tinged with a kind of sexual energy rarely seen in the Code era.