THE LAST MILE (1959)

Mickey Rooney plays John “Killer” Mears in 1959’s The Last Mile, a remake of the 1932 Preston Foster film of the same name. Both are based on a stage play by John Wexley, who should be quite well known to crime film buffs as the screenwriter of such classics as Angels with Dirty Faces, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, City for Conquest, Cornered, and The Long Night.


The Last Mile is one of those “ripped from the headlines” prison pictures with a no-so-subtle social agenda, set in the death house at an unnamed prison in an unnamed state — the idea being that the events of the film could happen anywhere at any time, so long as we embrace a system of capital punishment. All of the film’s action unfolds along a single row of eight cells, fronted by a bare wooden table for the screw charged with babysitting the inmates. All of the cells are located on one side of the row, facing outward (at the audience), so it’s easy to see how this would have played out in live theater, and the film is marred by its inability to break free from its roots.


Seton Miller’s adaptation of Wexley’s play is solidly crafted. The story here divides nicely into halves: the first provides an exposé of life on the cell block: what the prisoners are thinking, how they pass their days, their relationships with the guards, and so forth. The second follows what happens when Rooney’s character is able to break out of his cell and take over the death house for a short time.


The film opens when a new man, Walters (Clifford David), is escorted onto the block for what is supposed to amount to a two-week stay. There’s a protocol to everything here, both officially and in the culture of the other residents, who all introduce themselves to the scared kid and inform him that they prefer to be called by their cell numbers instead of their real names. Walters has arrived just in time: it’s the big night for the man in cell number two, so the new inmate gets to witness the execution ritual straight away. We see the inevitable visit from the priest, the last meal, and the dramatic walk out of the cell and through the “green door.” Despite the tendency of low budget films to reach for melodramatic heights, all of this stuff is presented in a straightforward fashion. The only real cliché comes when the lights flicker on and off as the big moment comes, but even this is forgivable: we never actually see the chair (outside the opening credits), and hey — people say the lights really do flicker.


The following day a new man replaces the inmate “evicted” the previous evening, and life continues as usual in the death house. Inmates trade smokes, play some checkers, banter with the guards, and talk about their girls on the outside. You’ll grimace at this, but the lone black inmate paces his cell shirtless, and prays for the other cons. When bullets start flying later in the second half of the film, he’s naturally the first one killed. I love the Edward G. Robinson film Black Tuesday, so I have to add that on the other hand, at least the character here doesn’t pass the day singing spirituals.


The guards aren’t treated very fairly, but the film claims to have been based on a true story and features an opening title card that cautions viewers that prison protocol — hiring practices in particular — have been greatly improved since the incidents portrayed first occurred. At any rate, most of the prison employees come across like the last kid picked at the playground — unhappy people with an axe to grind, taking their frustrations out on the prisoners whenever they get the chance. They constantly taunt and jab, particularly about pending executions. The hits keep coming, even during those last fateful walks.


Things progress along these lines until it becomes Walters’ time to go through the green door. Circumstances place on the guards too close to Mears’ cell, and he take the opportunity to choke the guy out and grab his keys. Mears runs about like a tiny little whirlwhind, freeing prisoners and seizing guns and ammo from the guard station. The film’s second half ceases to be an ensemble affair and becomes a snarling Mickey Rooney picture — note the poster above, you get the idea. It also adheres much more closely to the typical prison picture story arc: standoffs, gun battles, hostages, demands, tough decisions, guys get killed and stuff blows up — you’ve seen it before. Despite the familiarity this remains entertaining — don’t let me scare you off.


What’s to like here? The film doesn’t waste time on that biggest of prison movie clichés: going from con to con and hearing him talk about whether he’s guilty or not, or if he got framed and railroaded into the chair. It’s actually refreshing to watch a movie that takes as a given that all of the inmates did it, and then just gets on with the story. Considering how The Last Mile wants to generate some sympathy for the guys on the inside, it’s surprising that it doesn’t try to pawn off at least one innocent man on us — after all, it’s not like we haven’t executed a few here in the real world. Furthermore (and this is a bit more understandable), the movie doesn’t paint the prisoners as cowards either. In that early scene when one of the men is taken away the actor plays it well: the guards have to physically remove him from his cell, but by the time he makes it to the door his bravado has returned and he’s able to walk through on his won two feet.


Mickey Rooney is also pretty good. We all like the guy, but he was never a top-drawer talent as a dramatic actor. He spent much of his young life as arguably the most famous and beloved actor in America; but when Andy Hardy and the Babes movies went away, things got tough for Mickey. Even as a person who did not live through Hollywood’s golden age and has experienced these films in restrospect, I find Mickey a little hard to swallow in tough guy parts. Rooney made a number of noirs, but he was typically cast — in pictures like Quicksand or Drive a Crooked Road — as a kid who gets in way over his head. In The Last Mile he plays a tough-as-nails killer, and if you can get past any hang-ups you might have about Rooney, you’ll be surprised at how good he is. Make no mistake, somebody else could have played the part better, just as Mickey would have been better if the budget had allowed for a few retakes, but all in all he (and a cast of unknowns) do pretty well here. What’s not to like? A jazzy score that feels far out of place and almost ruins the whole thing.


Some viewers might find The Last Mile a bit campy, and maybe it is, but on the whole it’s well worth your time. It’s streaming for free on Netflix these days, and those interested in the 1932 version can download and watch for free at the internet archive — accessible from the movie’s IMDb page.







The Last Mile (1959)

Directed by Howard Koch
Cinematography by Joseph Brun and Saul Mitwall
Screenplay by Seton Miller and Milton Subotsky, based on a play by John Wexley
Starring Mickey Rooney
Released by United Artists
Running time: 82 minutes

RAY DANTON DOUBLE FEATURE: The Night Runner (1957), The Beat Generation (1959)

Ray Danton starred in two pseudo-noirs in the late fifties, The Night Runner and The Beat Generation, both of which I caught recently. Despite the triple play of being tall, dark, and handsome, Danton’s limited skill forever doomed him to a low budget existence in Hollywood — though he did manage the occasional part in a big picture, and had a relatively successful run both behind and in front of the camera in Europe. In both of these films Danton plays a character with a screw loose, in the first a killer and the second a serial rapist, yet his good looks and likable demeanor begged audiences to find external forces to blame for his eroded mental condition.

In the The Night Runner (curiously titled because it takes place mostly in broad daylight), Danton plays Roy Turner, ex-mental patient. Turner is a victim of bureaucracy, cut loose by his doctors and unprepared to cope with the world. As an examination of the merits of the system which set the mentally ill free without any sort of support structure, The Night Runner is a failure, laughably so when compared to a film such as 1961’s The Mark with Stuart Whitman and Rod Steiger. Despite the attempt to be taken seriously, The Night Runner is B-exploitation that plays more like a bedtime story told to frighten children.

We never learn much about Roy Turner, but considering that audiences require a reason for all mental illness, there’s a token effort made to give him a troubled past: young Roy owned a pet seagull, shot and killed by his father, who Roy decries as a “mean old man.” The act of pet-murder causes Roy to flee his home for a new life as a cabin boy on a freighter, a story recounted to a dreamy-eyed girl in a moment of signature Danton deadpan. Somehow life’s winding paths have led Roy to his current profession of draughtsman at an engineering firm.


If The Night Runner doesn’t score points as a social exposé film, it’s hardly more successful as a thriller. Most of the running time is devoted to scenes of Roy trying to assimilate into the idyllic seaside community where he finds himself after wandering off the Greyhound bus. He fits in marvelously well, and we forget his past as he gets frisky with the innkeeper’s daughter and chummy with everyone else. Only the innkeeper is wary, though his suspicion is no more than that of any father with a 22 year-old daughter whom he rightly suspects is in heat. Sure, there are a few moments when Roy stares oddly into the distance as he is questioned about his past, but for the most part he displays a collected, bland exterior. The jump to murder is abrupt and hard to swallow. Roy conks the innkeeper over the head when the old man gets wise to his checkered past, and the film assumes we’ll go along with the idea that murder is Roy’s only option. This might make sense if Danton played Roy as a legitimate psycho, but instead he comes off as completely sane person guilty of a crime of passion. Following the act, Roy cleans up his mess, wipes the room, and tries to make the scene play as a robbery gone wrong.

The rest of the film deals with Roy’s attempt to conceal his crime unraveling, until he finally comes clean to his shocked sweetheart, who then falls from a cliff into the raging surf below. In the one moment in the film that Roy actually appears frightening, he stares vacuously down at her body as it is buffeted about in the cove. When Roy’s sanity finally reasserts itself he plunges in after her, and carries her limp and unconscious body home, where he calls the police. The film closes as Roy calmly waits for the sirens in a front porch rocker.

The Night Runner’s flaw is that it doesn’t depict Roy’s insanity, instead asking us to accept it on faith. Even though Roy commits murder, his motive is a too common to be cuckoo: he’s merely trying to conceal his past. Even after the murder, his attempts at concealment are coolly methodical. The fact that Roy is supposed to be a lunatic is immaterial.

Danton is a much more convincing psychopath in The Beat Generation, a film that in spite of its many flaws and its complete lack of a identity is engrossing. Undoubtedly the credit goes to legend-ary scribe Richard Matheson. It’s one of those pictures that tries to capture lightning in way too many bottles, even though each of the bottles is still interesting. Here Danton plays Stan Belmont, The Aspirin Kid, a psychopathic rapist with an itch for married women. In order to set up his victims, he waits for the husband to leave home, then shows up at the door on the pretense of wanting to repay a small loan. “Is your husband home?” — “No? Well, can I leave him a check?” — “Oops I don’t have a pen, could you get one for me?” — “Thanks, do you mind if I wait inside?” Stan’s nickname comes from the final step in his elaborate ritual: he feigns a migraine, and as his host is fetching a glass of water for his aspirin, he dons a pair of black leather gloves and slips into his criminal identity. Stan’s a rapist, not a killer, so each victim is left to share her story with the police.

The detective assigned to the case is Dave Culloran, played by one of the most underrated actors in all of film noir: Steve Cochran. Dave is a hard-boiled man’s man with his own ideas about the willingness of the Kid’s victims — until his wife becomes one of them. Cochran’s rough-and-tumble exterior and manner demonstrate inspired casting: he’s the spit to Danton’s polish. When his wife turns out to be pregnant, Dave can’t seem to come to grips with the situation, and it shows in his physical presence as much as it does in the dialog. Much of the running time deals with the debate between the Cullorans about the future of their unborn child, though it eventually strays to melodrama as the Mrs., played by Fay Spain, has a front lawn heart-to-heart about abortion with the local priest.

The presence of beat culture is wholly exploitative. Stan chums around with a bland clan of ‘Hollywood-ized’ beatniks, though his best friend is played by Robert Mitchum’s son Jim, who makes for a piss-poor Neal Cassady. The dialog is wonderfully over the top in a few segments, and there are scenes where young people cavort around or simply whine about ‘the man,’ but only when the film feels compelled to give the audience a dose of beat-this or beat-that. In a few of the club scenes we meet a young Vampira and an old Louis Armstrong— though like us Louis seems painfully aware that he’s in the wrong movie. Ostensibly Stan uses the beat crowd as a cover for his half-life as the Aspirin Kid — easy since the film presents his cronies as a bunch of vapid numbskulls. This is fine as a story point, but Stan’s role as a beat is that of willing fraud or con-man, which forces one to reexamine the reason for giving the film this title, and showcasing Mamie Van Doren on the poster, much less in the cast — though to her credit she injects some life into the second half of the picture. That is, before the climactic underwater harpoon gun battle.

The Beat Generation is a smorgasbord that deserves a larger audience. It’s by far the more interesting of the two films discussed here, and certainly provided the juicier part for Ray Danton. There’s no space to cover the bits with Jackie Coogan, Dick Contino, Charles Chaplin, Jr., or Maxie Rosenbloom, not to mention the harpoon guns.

The Night Runner (1957)

Director: Abner Biberman
Cinematographer: George Robinson
Screenplay: Gene Levitt
Starring: Ray Danton and Colleen Miller
Released by: Universal International Pictures
Running time: 79 minutes 

The Beat Generation (1959)

Director: Charles F. Haas
Cinematographer: Walter Castle
Writer: Richard Matheson and Lewis Meltzer
Starring: Ray Danton, Steve Cochran, Mamie Van Doren, Louis Armstrong, Fay Spain, and Jackie Coogan
Distributed by: MGM
Running time: 95 minutes