Naked Alibi (1954) Reviews

• Why Isn't This Good Film Noir Available?

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  Two great film noir actors - Sterling Hayden and Gloria Grahame - star in this movie. Hayden is excellent as a tough cop bound-and-determined to get a killer than has been turned free (Gene Barry). Barry is very good as the criminal who falsely claims "police brutality." In that respect, this movie was ahead of its day as that term became widely used two decades later. Overall, this a good film noir that's a bit different from the normal fare, but certainly not different when it comes to great noir photography and good suspense. Where is the DVD of this film? (In fact, where was the VHS, in the first place?)

• There She Is Again, Gloria Grahame

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  This is worth watching because Gloria Grahame is in it. But otherwise it is a rather disappointing noir. Gene Barry certainly manages to be very menacing and volatile as the bad guy. Sterling Hayden is rather wooden as the tough cop. But Gloria Grahame, though she is not particularly good at shimmying when she sings, keeps our attention with her pouty lip, her doubtful look, her slumbering voice, her worldly-wise fragility, and all those other qualities too numerous to mention which are irresistible about her. So consider this 'a minor Gloria Grahame picture' and it is at least able to entertain, if not to enthrall.

• Gloria is "a shaking' that thang" - A hot tamale in Tijuauna

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  Director Jerry Hopper with Stars: Sterling Hayden, Gloria Grahame, Gene Barry, Max Showalter, Marcia Henderson and Chuck Connors. Story is Al Willis (Barry) is picked up for drunk & disorderly conduct without ID and is in an interrogation room at the local Police Station being questioned about some robberies. A detective lieutenant (Showalter) is questioning the belligerent Willis. A scuffle results in Barry smacking Showalter in the head with an ashtray and threatening the cops that he will get even, the two other cops in the room subdue him just as Chief of Detectives Conroy (Hayden) walks into the room. Willis is identified as a good citizen and owner of a bakery, he apologizes for being drunk and is let go. Sometime later Showalter is gunned down in the street at a police call box. Conroy remembers Willis's threat and hauls in him in after a brief chase. Conroy (who has a reputation for brutality) develops a hard-on for Willis convinced that he is the killer, but Willis and his lawyer pull strings and Willis is released. All hell breaks loose when the other two cops in the interrogation room are killed by a car bomb and Conroy is photographed attacking Willis. Conroy looses his job but becomes obsessed with "getting" Willis stalking him around town. Willis getting un-nerved decides to leave town and his wife (Henderson) and child to take a vacation away from Conroy. Up to this point the film effectively has you sympathizing with Willis against loose cannon Conroy, but when Willis ends up in "Border Town" and assumes a new identity and joins gal pal B-Girl chanteuse Marianna (Grahame) our perceptions change drastically. It would have helped if this film would have been shot more on actual locations as it is its almost all Universal back-lot, it picks up when it moves to "Border Town" (Tijuana) and Barry is revealed, but that location looks minimally used at best, it pales in comparison to say "Touch of Evil". Its also one of those quasi Noirs that take place way too much in the sunshine for the first 3rd of the film (but hell they didn't know we'd be debating Film Noir 60 years later). Barry is way better than I was expecting (showing a lot of range that I never saw in TV's "Bat Masterson" or "Burke's Law"), and Grahame & Hayden are great as usual, Connors plays Conroy's second in command adequately, but the budget lets this film linger in the second tier of Noirs. Graham sings a song at the bar obviously a lip-sync, but she shakes that thing a bit doing it so who cares, lol. I'm a Gloria & Sterling fan so its an essential for me. 7/10

• Killer of Family Man.

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  Naked Alibi is directed by Jerry Hopper and adapted to screenplay by Lawrence Roman from the story "Cry Copper" by Gladys Atwater and J. Robert Bren. It stars Sterling Hayden, Gloria Grahame, Gene Barry and Marcia Henderson. Music is by Joseph Gershenson and cinematography by Russell Metty. Urgh! It's one of those lesser grade film noir movies from the classic cycle that should have been super, but isn't. It's also a Sterling Hayden film that gives his knockers ammunition to call him wooden, yet the tedious direction of Hooper and all round over staging of the production is what's at fault here. Plot has Barry (over acting) as a suspected cop killer who walks free to apparently wreak more misery on the police force. Hayden's stoic and robust detective is not having a bit of it and becomes obsessed with bringing Barry's edgy character to justice. Grahame slinks into view in shapely fashion after half hour of film, to naturally stir the hornet's nest still further. The potential is there for a hot-to-trot noir of psychological substance, a peek under the skin of men teetering on the thin line separating good and bad. Sadly it's all so laborious and fake, the male actors indulging in what I call auto-cue acting as they act out badly staged scenes. Grahame comes out of it relatively unscathed, while Metty gives the production an atmosphere it doesn't deserve with some slats and shads dalliances. But really it's average at best and the cast are wasted. 5/10

• NAKED ALIBI: caution - film may not deliver on promises inherent in title

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  I'm not sure how Universal slipped this one past the Bureau of Consumer Protection, but they did. Despite the title's bold claim, this 1954 crime drama features absolutely no nudity or alibis - clothed or unclothed. On the plus side, it does co-star the deliciously sexy Gloria Grahame, but on the minus side it's a very poorly written part which does nothing to showcase her particular talents. She plays Marianna, a saloon singer in a sleazy town on the US side of the Mexican border, who manages to get herself involved with both an ex-cop (Sterling Hayden) and the suspected cop-killer (Gene Barry) he is obsessively pursuing. Even by the often convoluted standards of film noir (which this movie aspires to be) plotting, the story makes little sense, but there's little else to distract the attention. Hayden sleepwalks through his part with the air of an actor focusing on his paycheck rather than the script's obvious flaws, while Barry struggles unsuccessfully to create some sort of plausible whole out of the many inconsistencies in his character. In one scene he's a baker and family man wrongly accused by bullying detectives of murdering an officer, and in the next he's a big shot gangster (without a gang or criminal purpose) on the Mexican border, splashing the cash, roughing up the locals, and inflicting his particularly aggressive brand of lovin' on Miss Grahame. Quite how or why he leads this double life doesn't trouble director Jerry Hopper. In fact, very little seems to bother Mr Hopper. Not the implausible plot, the waste of talent (Grahame and Hayden) or the film's slapped-together-on-a-shoestring feel. NAKED ALIBI was shot in large part on the Universal back-lot and it looks it. The town square will be instantly recognizable from countless other movies made by the studio, while the border town's back alleys and loading docks are littered with those empty wooden crates one only ever sees in such large numbers in low budget movies where they're trying to fill in the space without spending money on props. Production values are so low that NAKED ALIBI plays more like a lackluster 1950s TV drama than a big screen entertainment. If Hopper thought he was contributing to the often stylish and memorable canon of low-budget film noir thrillers which many studios turned out in the early 1950s he was wrong. The confused plot, unimaginative camera-work and cast going through the motions put paid to that. For the Gloria Grahame completists among us this is a must-see, for everyone else there's plenty of other, much more rewarding things, you could be doing with your time. Check out more of my reviews at http://thefilmivejustseen.blogspot.com/