The Long Wait

A well directed, well photographed little known gem of a film.

Great role for Quinn who would have made a great Mike Hammer. His primitive face and huge hands seem prepared for instant violence.

In spite of being a low budget film, the directing, acting and photography seems superior than that better known B classic 'Detour'. Gene Evans and Charles Coburn always took their character roles seriously and seemed incapable of bad performances. The lovely ballad that plays over the credits 'Once' is appropriately used throughout the movie and deserves to be a standard.

The scene where a bound-up Peggie Castle crawls to a bound-up Quinn (to get her hands on his hidden pistol under pretense of a final kiss) would have made a great paperback cover for a Spillane Novel.

I see by the credits that this gem of a noir was filmed by Franz Planer, who did many classics. I've seen most of the Mickey Spillane movies, and this one has the most distinctive photography. The director Victor Saville seems to have been a better producer than a director. he also had an affinity for Mickey Spillane; he produced nearly all the Mike Hammer movies in the 1950s.

The cast is outstanding; besides the great Anthony Quinn, there are several lovely girls, the best being Peggie Castle. Even the trampy woman at the beginning who gets a rude kiss-off from Quinn plays her small part to perfection.

The doctor who treats Quinn's hands at the beginning has a familiar face. I've seen him in many TV shows as well as movies.

It's impossible to make a bad movie when you have Charles Coburn and Gene Evans backing you up.

Mickey Spillane's "The Long Wait" stars Anthony Quinn, Charles Coburn, Peggie Castle, and Gene Evans.

Quinn plays Johnny McBride, who survives a horrible car crash but winds up with burned hands and amnesia. A clue leads him back to his home town where he, unbenownst to him, is wanted for the murder of the DA. And there seem to be people who don't want to ask too many questions. However, he learns one thing - a woman he knew back then, Vera West, who has left town, can tell him what actually happened.

Johnny also learns that rumor has it that Vera, to escape the bad guys, has had complete plastic surgery and changed her name - but she's back in town with her new identity. Johnny meets several women, but which one of them if any, is Vera?

Johnny proves himself a chick magnet as he becomes involved with each of these women, who work for a man named Servo - but Servo takes orders from someone else.

Unfortunately for the viewer, the potential Veras looked alike and it was hard to tell them apart. They weren't familiar enough to this viewer to be able to tell them apart.

The film has an amazing scene where a bound Peggie Castle crawls up to a tied-up Johnny, supposedly for a final kiss, but to get his gun. Stylish pulp for sure.

This is a real Mike Hammer type of story - dames, brawls, and misogyny.

The Long Wait is directed by Victor Saville and adapted to screenplay by Alan Green and Lesser Samuels from the Mickey Spillane novel. It stars Anthony Quinn, Charles Coburn, Gene Evans, Peggie Castle, Mary Ellen Kay and Shirley Patterson. Music is by Mario Castelnuovo- Tedesco and cinematography by Franz Planer.

Johnny McBride (Quinn) is a amnesiac who manages to get back to his home town of Lyncastle where he hopes to unravel who he is. But pretty soon he finds himself in a quagmire of trouble and strife...

Every once in a while I come across an instance like this, where a film noir picture's reviews back upon its release were savage, and yet today the more modern noir lover is mostly positive about the pic. In fact IMDb's rating sits currently at 7.2, which as the site's users will attest to, is pretty good going. So where we at with this Spillane revamp?

The complaints back in the day about it being dull and boring smack to me of writers back then not exactly understanding the noir ethos, though it's noted that there is the odd modern reviewer sharing the same complaint. It's a film very much erring on the side of bleak and moody, dabbling in the complexities of the human condition, and it's done very well, though the screenplay is hardly minus plot holes and is full of incredulous set-ups.

We also have to buy into Quinn being catnip to the dames, four of them no less! But Quinn does angry and broody very well, and he gets to do lots of both here. The aura of a town paddling in its own muck is evident, the amnesia angle merely an excuse to keep things on the side of murky, for it's imperative that we feel Johnny McBride's confusion and mistrust, and we do. All of which is framed superbly by Planer's (Criss Cross) photography, which never misses a chance for shadows and low lights.

With salty villains and sultry dames, violence and choice dialogue, and a few superb scenes (one sequence in an empty warehouse is stunning), this is very much a noir for noir lovers to sample. But with that in mind, these warnings should be noted, that as is often the way in noirville, the ending is divisive and the overt misogyny could well offend. 6.5/10

If you liked Mirage, rent The Long Wait. It came ten years earlier, but it feels like a poor man's Mirage. Anthony Quinn stars in the film adaptation of Mickey Spillane's novel. He survives a terrible car accident, with amnesia and burned hands as his souvenirs. He has no memory of his past, but when he finds out he's wanted for murder, he has to work quickly to prove his innocence.

This is actually a pretty entertaining flick, with plenty of eye candy and good acting from Tony. The only detriments were the leading ladies in the film. They looked so much alike, I kept getting them confused, and their collective talent was maybe one tenth that of a normal actress. The only way I was able to excuse it was to believe they were all cast as favors to producers, and in the story, they all were supposed to look similar. Tony is trying to find a girl from his past, and he-and the audience-can't tell if she's Peggie Castle, Shirley Patterson, Dolores Donlon, or Mary Ellen Kay. I didn't really like being confused, but that was the point.

Charles Coburn adds a bit of class to the movie and somewhat makes up for the lousy acting of the four women. Really, though, it's Tony's show. Without him, it would be a terrible B-picture with low energy and bad pacing. Tony's incapable of giving a low energy performance, and he adds a fantastic spice to the tension-filled scenes with the ladies. And if you're wondering how many of the girls he romances, the answer is all of them. Want to rent it now?