The (Red) Apes Have Taken Over :: A Beer-Gut Reaction to Edward and Mildred Dein's Shack Out on 101 (1955)

At a small ocean-side greasy-spoon well off the beaten path, the owner of this eatery barely ekes out a living. Minimally staffed by a world-weary waitress and a cantankerous short-order cook, what few customers George (Wynn) does get consists of an occasional long haul trucker and the staff of a government research center nestled somewhere up the road a piece. Well, wherever they come from, all these customers agree on two things: one, they'd all like a fling with the saucy Kotty (Moore), and two, Slob's cooking is awful.

But the thick-headed Slob (Marvin) couldn't care less what others think, and Kotty turns them all down flat. See, she's currently attached and swapping spit with one of those research scientists; a Professor Sam Baniston (Lovejoy), who's also trying to help her ditch this dead-end occupation and shepherd her into a cushier government job through the Civil Service exam.

And as we meet a few more kooky denizens of this diner, including a daffy salesmen named Eddie (Bissell) and a shifty-eyed fishermen (Lesser), things seem normal enough on the surface, but underneath something far more sinister is happening once the sun goes down and the kitchen closes for the night.

Seems several of those government researchers have up and disappeared without a trace, and they were all last seen eating at this very establishment. And not only that, but there are other transactions going on at the diner. Transactions that are off the menu and take place strictly under the table. And what are these clandestine transactions all about? Secrets. Secrets bought and sold that could bring about the end of the world as we know it...

In August of 1950, after the FBI ferreted out their spy ring, a Federal grand jury indicted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on 11 counts of conspiracy and espionage for allegedly passing on the secrets of the A-Bomb to the Russians. Later convicted on these charges in March of 1951, despite the couple's protests of innocence, the Rosenberg's, admitted Communists, were sentenced to death for this act of treason; a sentence that was eventually carried out in June, 1953. But this was not the end of it. No. Far from it.

History would show this notorious incident only added fuel to Senator Joe McCarthy's Stomp-A-Commie-Crusade; and Hollywood, already stinging from the whipping it took from the House Un-American Activities hearings in 1947, which resulted in the Black List, where countless artists and craftsmen suddenly became persona non grata to the studios, were eager to make nice with a series of Anti-Communist films --  I Married a Communist /The Woman on Pier 13 (1949), I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), Big Jim McClain (1952), and assorted shorts -- What is Communism? (1952), Red Nightmare (1957), to bolster the perception of Tinsel Town's unwavering patriotism to avert anymore governmental grievances. Even second tier studios like Allied Artists got in on the act; and Shack Out on 101 (1955) is a prime example of this type of output.

An Atomic-Paranoia-Sleaze-Noir, the separate ingredients of Patriotism and Red Scares in Shack out on 101 are clearly definable to your viewing palate as the film digests, but these morsels are essentially overwhelmed by a few more spicier ingredients thrown in with the best of intentions to make it all go down a little easier. For, not only did the married screen-writing tandem of Edward and Mildred Dein throw the kitchen sink into this seamy little potboiler (-- Edward also directed), but added the stove, the fridge, the cupboards, and all the above's contents into the mix as they tried to subvert this central theme under several layers of steamy romantic intrigue, oddball characters, and laugh-out-loud comedy.

Strangely, each element on its own works fairly well but kinda curdles when baked together. Sticking with the culinary metaphor, then, admittedly, the end results tastes kinda funny. Not bad, mind you. Just funny -- a bit off, maybe -- with each bite either too salty or too sweet or too bland that never reaches any sort of satisfying equilibrium. (Note to self: You are so talking out of your "You Don't Even like to Cook" ass right now.) Anyways...

Yeah, the soapy melodrama just never jives properly with the cloak and dagger stuff. The comedic elements work best, especially a few throwaway bits with George and Slob working out, and the resulting pissing contest over whose legs are in better shape -- a contest Kotty eventually has the last word on, and George and Eddie (Whit Bissell in a rare comedy relief stint) swapping tales and testing out some new fishing equipment.

Frankly, the whole plot feels like a hyper-condensed season of your garden variety soap opera, where said soap latches onto the latest headlines or hot-topic and folds it into one of its many subplots, with the viewer plopped down right into the middle of it, beginning with Slob's initial molestation of Kotty on the beach, whose tired reaction says this kinda crap happens all the time, and who only gets indignant when the grab-fanny cook spoils her latest batch of laundry.

Now, with a soap, you would have months and months to work this storyline -- hell, in some cases, years; here, we barely have an hour as a frustrated Kotty moves from man to man, looking and longing for love or some kind of stability, eventually sniffing out the nefarious truth behind Bastion and Slob's secret sea-shell swapping sessions down by the sea shore but doesn't quite grasp the stakes until it is far too late. For, unlike the Rosenbergs, here, not only are those Commie bastards stealing classified information from the research center through several stooges, they're actually kidnapping scientists and engineers and smuggling them out of the country through Mexico, destination Moscow, to unlock more Atomic secrets for Uncle Nikita.

Discovering her beau (and ticket out of this shack) is one of these stoolies, in perhaps not the wisest of moves, knowing they've killed several people already, Kotty's self-righteous snit-fueled tirade nearly gets everyone else killed as the mysterious Mr. Gregory, the man behind this nest of vipers, finally reveals himself, who decides it's time to cut bait on this operation and leave all the witnesses at the bottom of the Pacific.

Now, since everything that brought us to this point, and the climax itself, to the pat happy ending, is all carried out six and half miles somewhere above “over the top” an argument could be made that Shack Out on 101 should be considered a farce, which kinda makes sense, making it a nice subversive foil for this particular genre that was already fizzling out. And despite all these complaints and snarky observations, I'm happy to report the cast overachieves and makes all of these disjointed plot elements work.

As the Tomato, whom everyone wants to *ahem* sample, Terry Moore is a million miles away from her big screen break as the young ingénue in Mighty Joe Young (1949). She brings a solid “been there, done that, screw the lousy t-shirt” weariness to Kotty, who once more sees a way out of this funk only to have the door seemingly slammed in her face. The constantly blustering Keenan Wynn is great, too, as always, and plays well off the bumbling Bissell. But Lee Marvin steals the movie as the slovenly Slob, who isn't as slovenly and thick-headed as he lets on.

It also helps the film itself looks fantastic. Credit to cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who used the limited sets brilliantly, keeping things nice and dingy and sleazy, and who used the cramped and limited space in the diner to his advantage by having the camera ridiculously close to the action at all times, resulting in a seedy documentary feel that's about [--this--] close to crossing the threshold of cinéma vérité. Seriously. You can almost smell some Pine Sol wafting from the toilets and hear the grease popping on the griddle.

This would be one of Crosby's last stops before he hooked up with Roger Corman and the boys from American International Pictures, starting with Fast and the Furious (1954), and whose skills are kinda underappreciated in the success of both. One also cannot discount the efforts of editor George White, who also stitched together the similar docu-noir, The Phenix City Story (1955), and the noir to end all noir, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). And then there’s the music of Paul Dunlop, whose horn-heavy spazz-jazz riffs only amp up the proceedings even more.

After finishing Shack Out on 101, the Deins latched onto the wrong bandwagon with Calypso Joe (1957) -- yup, there was a time when most people predicted calypso music would have more staying power than rock ‘n’ roll, but then the couple were roped in by Universal and scripted the strangest, but surprisingly effective entry in that studio's resurgent monster movie movement with Curse of the Undead (1959), which throws a vampire into a western, making him an indestructible hired gun set loose on a range war. You wouldn't think that would work but, believe me, it does.

Thus, despite its haphazard structure and kitchen-sink narrative, Shack Out on 101 will surprise you when it's over and done. It shouldn't work either, but it does. Apparently, the film's original title was Shack Up on 101 but some muckety-muck at the studio didn't like the euphemistic connotation of "shack up" (-- some sources claim the objection came from Moore), and so producer Mort Millman made the change. Whatever the title, more folks probably need to see this gritty and dirty and highly idiosyncratic film.

Shack Out on 101 (1955) Allied Artists / EP: William F. Broidy / P Mort Millman / D: Edward Dein / W: Edward Dein, Mildred Dein / C: Floyd Crosby / E: George White / M: Paul Dunlap / S: Terry Moore, Frank Lovejoy, Keenan Wynn, Lee Marvin, Whit Bissell, Len Lesser, Frank De Kova

Watch Out For the Little Guys Because They Always Get You in the End :: A Beer-Gut Reaction to Roger Corman's Rock All Night (1957)

After trading barbs with a slovenly and obese drunk, whose volume and obnoxiousness was ruining the musical act on stage, a man, short in stature and temperament, is given the bum’s rush out of this nite club for causing trouble (-- he’s literally picked up by a bouncer after an off-screen dust-up and deposited on the street). Here, the ousted customer, his motor-mouth still running, manages to set the bouncer against the maître d' and his terrible French accent. All of this, of course, establishes how the man, whom everyone calls Shorty (Miller), has a giant chip on his shoulder, is keenly aware of the human condition, can instinctively read people and size them up in an instant, and then takes great pleasure using these skills to push some buttons and cut perceived loud-mouths and bullies off at the knees before punching them in the mouth. And if we didn’t know any better, one would think he was overcompensating for something.

Anyhoo, before those other two come to blows, Shorty moves on, finding refuge in a seedy little watering hole in the wall called Cloud Nine. The owner, Al (Morse), recognizes Shorty, serves him a drink, before returning to the conversation he was having with an overly morose reporter named Steve (Cutting), who constantly refuses to drum up any publicity for this dive; currently occupied by those three mentioned, along with a burly truck driver named Angie (Alcaide) and his brassy, ball-bustin’ date, Mabel (Cooper); a wannabe boxer, whose manager, Marty (Hoyt), refers to as The Kid (Dickerson). Marty sees a great future in the ring for his fighter, maybe even a shot at the title, but must convince both the Kid of this and -- more importantly, his wife, Syl (Morris), who begs him to abandon this career before any permanent damage is done in the ring; which leaves one last man at the bar, a racketeer (Karlan), there to collect this month’s protection payment from Al.

Then, interrupting all of this patented melodrama, in blusters a bowling-pin shaped beatnik going by the handle Sir Bop (Welles), dig, who tries to foist his latest in a long line of alleged musical sensations onto Al, hoping to earn a spot at this puny platform as the first step to super-stardom. Alas, Julie (Dalton), overcome by first time jitters, blows the audition rather badly. And while everyone else prods her to try again, Shorty pipes up and delivers a blistering but honest review of her shaky performance. Undaunted, Sir Bop promises to return with her backup band later to give her a much needed morale boost when Al agrees to give her another shot.

But just as things settle down again, another man rushes in (Nelson), who excitedly tells the others about a robbery and shootout he just witnessed where two mom and pop grocers were killed up the street -- not realizing the two felons who botched this caper beat him into the bar to avoid the swarming police dragnet. And once he recognizes them, the man tries to flee the premises only to be shot in the back by Jigger (Johnson), the obvious leader of this highly-strung duo, which is rounded out by his jittery partner, Joey (Haze).

And as these two nervously pace and wave their guns in everyone’s face, they hatch a plan to hole up in the bar, holding everyone hostage, until the heat dies down. And to pull this off, Jigger wants this place to appear normal, so they’re gonna needs some noise. And so, to set the proper atmosphere, he coerces Julie into singing again -- and to sing as if her life depended on it because, at the moment, it most definitely does...

When Charles B. “Chuck” Griffith left Chicago and moved to Hollywood in the 1950s, he had hoped to become a songwriter. But at the same time, his grandmother, Myrtle Vail, a former vaudevillian, actress, and a writer for radio in the 1930s and ‘40s, who started and starred in the soap opera, Myrt and Marge, for CBS radio (1932-1946), was trying to break into television writing screenplays. And so, Griffith started helping her write some scripts. And it was some of these same scripts that mutual friend Jonathan Haze passed on to Roger Corman, who liked what he read enough to commission the novice screenwriter to produce two westerns for him: Three Bright Banners and Hangtown; but both proved two ambitious, budget wise, for Corman to make at the time so neither were ever filmed. But when Corman was handed an “incoherent” script penned by Lou Russoff for the sci-fi *ahem* “epic,” It Conquered the World (1956), another American International Pictures five day wonder, he brought Griffith in to fix it. He had two days.

But coming from a radio background, Griffith was used to these kind of ridiculous time constraints and deadlines, and managed to salvage the script in less than 48 hours, ushering in a long collaborative career as Corman’s lone stock writer that would span the next two decades, resulting in quickly written cult faves like Naked Paradise (1957) -- which would be recycled later in both Beast from Haunted Cave (1959) and Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), Not of This Earth (1957), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), A Bucket of Blood (1959), and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

And while on the (poster) surface this would appear to be just another entry in the brief spurt of AIP’s rock ‘n’ roll exploitation vehicles like Shake, Rattle, and Rock (1956), Don’t Knock the Rock (1957), or even Hot Rod Gang (1958), after the spiffy opening coda featuring The Platters, Rock All Night (1957) actually owes more to the likes of The Petrified Forest (1936) or The Desperate Hours (1955), where other cinematic groups of innocent (and not so innocent) bystanders become hostages and pawns of desperate criminals and the resulting mind games of cat and mouse where winning equals surviving and losing means not.

However, Corman’s film was, indeed, initially intended to be another one of those spotlight showcase features; this time focusing on The Platters. What happened next? Well, after consulting several different and conflicting recollections from Corman and Griffith, I think we can piece together a fairly reasonable facsimile of what most probably went awry resulting in the film we actually got instead of the one we did not:

Seems songwriter and manager Buck Ram got wind that AIP was looking to cash-in on the rock’n’roll fad, struck a deal, and offered up several acts in his stable at a discount rate, including The Platters, the Eddie Beal Sextet, and The Blockbusters, in return for the sole rights to a soundtrack album for the impending feature. The AIP brass then looked to Corman to provide said feature to attach to this LP from the ground up. Thus, Rock All Night would be another one of those quick script turnarounds for Griffith, who was charged with taking these musical elements and cramming them into an already existing TV script Corman had optioned.

Thus, the majority of the script was actually based directly on an Emmy Award winning episode of the anthology series, Jane Wyman Presents: The Fireside Theater, called Little Guy, where Dane Clark played Shorty and Lee Marvin had the role of Jigger, which aired back in 1955. Corman saw the broadcast, found it interesting, and bought the rights to the original script by David Harmon, thinking it would make a great feature -- except the episode only ran for 24-minutes. Thus and so, Griffith reworked the script and added several characters and other elements to the storyline, moving the action from a saloon to a rundown nite club, where the featured acts would perform throughout this night of terror.

But complications soon arose when a last second scheduling error found their main attraction (The Platters) out on tour a week earlier than thought and therefore unavailable during the allotted five day shooting schedule. And so a panicked Corman informed Griffith on a Friday, two days before shooting was set to commence on Monday, that he would have to essentially blow up the script and start over, pushing all the musical performances to the front of the picture (-- scheduled to film later when the musicians became available as pickups), opening up the last two acts for some new characters and story arcs.

Now, I’ve never seen the original version of Little Guy but the IMDB details are solid enough to make me believe the characters and the whole subplot concerning Julie and Sir Bop was added wholesale over that hectic weekend by Griffith. According to an interview with Senses of Cinema, Griffith “cut up the screenplay with a pair of scissors” and started pasting in new characters as he rearranged things and then glued it all back together.

As written, both Corman and Griffith had hoped noted comedian Sir Lord Buckley would play Sir Bop. Lord Buckley was the creation of comedian Richard Buckley: “a hipster bebop preacher who defied all labels” according to musician Bob Dylan, whose gonzo style and speech patterns anticipated aspects of the beatniks (one could argue he was the original beatnik) and influenced people ranging from Lenny Bruce to Wavy Gravy. Buckley seemed game but once again scheduling conflicts prevented him from being in the picture; but he was amiably replaced by Mel Welles, a comedy writer for Buckley, who essentially imitated his boss in the picture to great effect. Welles even wrote up a Hip Dictionary -- a “Hiptionary” -- to be handed out in theaters to help translate his jive.

Making her screen debut, Abby Dalton was also cast in a hurry to play Julie. (Dalton would star in three more Corman pictures in ‘57.) But I do believe that’s Nora Hayes, another one of Ram’s clients, that she’s lip-syncing to. (This is backed up by the credits.) These changes also lent to a near alternative title for the film, Rock’n’roll Girl.

Mention should also be made of the wonderful performance of Robin Morse as Al; the dour, sour-puss bartender with an answer for everything. I love the barbs thrown between him and Richard Cutting, the reporter, on the woes of bartending. (Tragically, Morse would be dead within the year.) The rest of the cast was rounded out by Corman’s gradually cementing cast of stock players: Ed Nelson, Beach Dickerson, Jonathan Haze, Barboura Morris, Bruno VeSota, and even Russell Johnson before he took off on the longest three hour tour of ever, who actually makes for a pretty good heavy. And then there’s Dick Miller, who took the lead when Dane Clark also proved unavailable to reprise his role.

Like Griffith, Miller had wanted to be a musician after he got out of the Navy, playing the drums and guitar in his native New York, until he busted his guitar over someone’s head. In 1952, he followed his friend Jonathan Haze to California, who introduced him to Roger Corman (-- and I think it would be interesting to do a giant flowchart so see just how many people Haze managed to draw into Corman’s web). Corman then showcased him in several films; and while Miller appeared to be ready to breakout after a few cult hits, mainstream success always seemed to elude him.

I’ve often suspected there might’ve been some professional jealousy involved on that aspect. When Corman started getting some positive notices -- especially by the foreign press, a lot of them singled out Miller’s craft and constant scene stealing. And with Corman, I do believe there’s only room for one captain on that ship and Miller soon found himself shuffled into the background. But, that ship hadn’t quite sailed yet with Rock All Night, and Miller gives a tight and terse performance as Shorty; an oddball anti-hero that I honestly wouldn’t blame anyone if they went ahead and popped him in the mouth as he keeps riding Jigger, pushing him into confrontations with all the other men in the bar; the stereotypical tough guys -- the trucker, the mobster, the boxer, who all wilt from the threat of violence. And these men also get a venomous earful from Shorty for their perceived lack of guts. And yet, not matter how much he chides him, Jigger nor the rapidly melting down Joey can bring themselves to shoot someone who actually stands up to them.

Yup, only Shorty and Julie show any kind of backbone during this stand-off. Julie finding her voice, and Shorty showing only he has the guts to cash the checks his mouth constantly writes, backing down Jigger, taking his gun away, perhaps too easily, and then decking him with one single blow, officially bringing this crisis to an abrupt end. Meantime, all the other personal melodrama around them wraps up in a helluva hurry, too, as the cops take the felons away: the Kid quits the ring much to his wife’s relief; Al stands up to the extortionist and rats him out to the cops; and Julie officially pulls the plug on her singing career much to Sir Bop’s dismay. Besides, she can’t stick around to sing; she’s finagled herself a movie date with her new hero, Shorty. And together, they head off for a screening of King Kong, where a bunch of little guys knock a giant gorilla off a really tall building. Coincidence? I think not.

Released on a double-bill with Eddie L. Cahn’s Dragstrip Girl (1957), and only one of seven films Corman directed and produced in 1957, Rock All Night runs a scant 62 minutes but it might’ve been better served if it had reached the magic golden 70-minute mark. I checked the timer and from the cool as hell opening animated credits (courtesy of either Paul Julian or Bill Martin) to when Jigger guns down the concerned citizen, which marks the beginning of the plot proper, we’ve already reached the 42-minute mark. Before that, it’s essentially all padding as Corman gets the musical acts out of the way in the first half hour. And since he was pressed for time, Corman had the acts lip-sync to their music and, alas, in the finished film it never quite syncs up.

I already knew the Platters were good, but was pleasantly surprised by the rockabilly sound of The Blockbusters, who provided the catchy title tune. And once they’re all tucked away at the 35-minute mark after Julie bombs her audition, that leaves us about seven minutes to be introduced to everyone else before the shit hits the fan. And once that happens, it leaves barely twenty minutes for the second AND third act. And that’s why I think those extra eight minutes might’ve come in handy. Either that, or cut into those 35-padded minutes and give those second and third acts a little more room to breath as I felt Jigger’s capitulation to Shorty felt a tad rushed, robbing the film of any big emotional payoff. That, and the fact that Shorty, even though he is the designated hero, is still one massive dickhead. And if it was anybody but Dick Miller playing him, I probably would’ve been openly rooting for Jigger to just shoot him and let Al or even Julie be the hero.

Thus, the dissonance between the glacial pace of the first chunk of Rock All Night and the errant rocket ride of the final bite does take a bit of adjustment but the reward if you can pull this off is worth it, I think. I’m not sure if cinematographer Floyd Crosby gets enough credit for Corman’s early success. Crosby, who shot From Here to Eternity (1953) and won a Golden Globe shooting High Noon (1952), was never officially on the Hollywood Blacklist, but he did find himself on the unofficial “Greylist” which found him equally shunned by the major studios. But, he landed on his feet with Corman and would go on to long career shooting for him and several other minor studios like AIP or Allied Artists, adding a lot of visual weight to these no-budget wonders.

Here, with Corman’s usual hands off approach with his actors -- meaning getting out of their way and letting them do their thing with Griffith’s crackling and humorous script, I think it was Crosby who truly established the sparse, economical look and feel of films like Rock All Night or Machine Gun Kelly (1958). Here, Crosby maximizes the minimal locations (I believe there were two) as best he can, making a whole lot out of nothing, giving everything a nice noirish flare. Love the lighting when Julie is forced to sing from the shadows; or the staging when Jigger guns down the stranger as the man runs himself into a tight close-up as the bullets rip into his back before he falls out of frame. And this, I think, is what gives these early Corman films their frenetic energy.

Still, credit where credit is due as Corman was the one who pulled all of this together and put everyone in place to pull it off: Griffith on the script, Crosby on camera, and Miller in front of it. And it was this kind of no-budget, set-bound thriller like Rock All Night that kinda set the stage for future -- and more ghoulishly morbid, features like A Bucket of Blood and Little Shop of Horrors, where Corman took this kind of cheapskate filmmaking and turned it into a true form of art that, I think, started right here at Al’s place. 

Other Points of Interest:

Newspaper ads for Rock All Night at the Morgue. 

Poster campaign for Rock All Night at the Archive.

Rock All Night (1957) Sunset Productions :: American International Pictures / EP: James H. Nicholson / P: Roger Corman / D: Roger Corman / W: Charles B. Griffith, David P. Harmon / C: Floyd Crosby / E: Frank Sullivan / M: Buck Ram, Ronald Stein / S: Dick Miller, Abby Dalton, Russell Johnson, Robin Morse, Mel Welles, Richard Cutting, Jeanne Cooper, Chris Alcaide, Jonathan Haze, Barboura Morris, Beach Dickerson, Clegg Hoyt, Richard Karlan, Bruno VeSota, Ed Nelson