Jan 22, 2024
Naked Alibi (1954)
"Look, Joe, I like you, but I don't know what's got into you lately. Maybe you're working too hard or something, but you're getting yourself a rough reputation. Now, take a tip: change your tactics, or you're liable to find yourself without a job."
#naked alibi#film noir#american cinema#1954#jerry hopper#lawrence roman#j. robert bren#gladys atwater#sterling hayden#gloria grahame#gene barry#marcia henderson#max showalter#billy chapin#chuck connors#don haggerty#stuart randall#paul levitt#joseph mell#richard beach#decentish noir concept with a strong cast but hamstrung by its reactionary politics; it's a classic 'cop knows bad guy is guilty but has no#proof so resorts to extralegal means and psychological torture to break him'. the film is clearly positioning us to sympathise with#Hayden's frustrated cop but his methods are so objectionable that you end up (ymmv) bristling for Gene Barry's killer figure#ah yes Gene Barry; mr adventurer himself. this is the first thing I've seen him in since finishing that itc series and altho this was made#a good two decades earlier it's still hard to shake the image of the wizened playboy who earned the enmity of an entire cast and crew#Hayden and Grahame are both very good‚ even tho her role is really just a lazy mishmash of the parts that had catapulted her to fame in the#previous couple of years (most notably 1953's The Big Heat) but the love triangle down Mexico way which makes up the second half of this#film is still somehow less interesting than the (ethically frustrating) police procedural it begins as. a tinally confused and somewhat#unsuccessful film but with some great setpieces including a final rooftop chase that I'd bet money influenced the opening of#Hitchcock's Vertigo a couple of years later
