Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
I wish I'd seen this J. Lee Thompson film before the Scorsese remake, because that film is so clearly a response to it. Bowden (Gregory Peck) is essentially innocent -- having only witnessed a crime and testified against Cady (Robert Mitchum) -- and so the moral lines are relatively clear. What is unarguably police corruption therefore feels like a reasonable bending of the rules.
The remake's grimy depths of moral turpitude and sensational, sudden violence turn it into an almost grindhouse take on the same story: not just more frightening, but more believably sleazy.
Mitchum is brilliant and there's nothing quite like a southern noir, crisp shadows in the swamp: it's a great picture, just one that now seems tame by comparison.