BY FRED BLOSSER
World
War II vet Jim Fletcher (Bill Williams) awakens in a Navy hospital bed after
languishing in a coma for two years. He
learns that he’s despised by other patients and hospital staff as a traitor,
but he has no idea what he’s supposed to have done wrong. Amnesia has erased that portion of his
memory. Overhearing that he’s going to
be court-martialed, Jim escapes from the hospital and seeks help from his buddy
Mark Gregory. But he learns from a
newspaper headline that Mark is dead, and that he is blamed for the “torture
killing.â€
Initially
at gunpoint, and then willingly when she begins to realize that Jim is
innocent, Mark’s widow Martha (Barbara Hale) helps the fugitive hunt for
another friend, Ted Niles (Richard Quine). Jim, Ted, and Mark were fellow prisoners in a Japanese POW camp, Jim’s
last memory before his coma. He hopes
that Niles can help him piece together what happened, and why he’s being chased
by Naval Intelligence and two mysterious killers. The mystery is compounded when Jim and Martha
grab dinner at a restaurant in Los Angeles’ Chinatown and Jim spots an Asian man whom he recognizes as Tokoyama (Richard Loo), the sadistic prison-camp guard
who haunts him in PTSD mental flashbacks.
“The
Clay Pigeon†(1949) is an efficient little B-movie, what studios called a
“programmer†in the old days to fill the bottom half of a theatrical double bill. A trim 63 minutes long, it’s typical of the
modestly budgeted, black-and-white crime dramas cranked out by Hollywood during
and after WWII. Like TV series dramas a
decade later, these unassuming pictures provided on-the-job experience for
up-and-coming young talent who would go on to write, direct, and produce more
prestigious works. In this case, the
young talents were 35-year-old scriptwriter Carl Foreman and 33-year-old
director Richard Fleischer, here billed as “Richard O. Fleischer.†Fans of classic Hollywood spectacle fondly
remember Fleischer for “20,000 Leagues under the Sea†(1954), “The Vikings†(1958), and “Tora! Tora! Tora!â€
(1970). Just as readily, Cinema Retro fans are likely to associate him
with cult favorites like “The Don Is Dead†(1973), “Soylent Green†(1973),
“Mandingo†(1975), and “Mr. Majestyk†(1975).
Fleischer’s
direction in “The Clay Pigeon†includes some compelling Noir visuals and
situations. In the opening scene of
Fletcher in close-up in his hospital bed, two anonymous hands enter the frame,
feel along the unconscious man’s face, then suddenly close on his throat. Later, Jim is chased through anonymous big
city (L.A.) streets by two menacing characters in fedoras. In their initial meeting, Martha apparently
welcomes Jim and says she’s glad to see her husband’s friend. Then, realizing that Martha has gone into the
next room not to fix coffee but to call the police, Jim lunges in and grabs the
phone. The two engage in a believably
frantic scuffle. Jim clinches with
Martha and covers her mouth, she struggles and bites his hand, and Jim knocks
her out.
After
this first, tense half-hour, the movie loses some of its momentum as Martha
becomes Jim’s ally and the couple take time out from their flight to picnic on
the beach and engage in some silly banter. But the final scenes pick up stride again as Fletcher is trapped by his
enemies on a speeding train -- a foreshadowing of Fleischer’s claustrophobic,
train-bound thriller a year later, “The Narrow Margin†(1950). One sequence reflects screenwriter Foreman’s
interest in social issues, as another war widow, played by Marya Marco, hides
Fletcher from Tokoyama and his gunmen. The widow is Japanese-American, and Fletcher notices that one of the
items in her apartment is a commendation to her late husband, also
Japanese-American, who was killed in action against the Nazis in Europe. It’s nice to see that the studio cast
Asian-American actors Loo and Marco in prominent speaking roles in an era in
which white actors were cast all too often as Asians. As old-movie and classic-TV enthusiasts know,
stars Williams and Hale were married in real life. Two other familiar faces in early stages of
their careers, Martha Hyer and Robert Bray, have bit roles.
The
Warner Archive Collection release of “The Clay Pigeon†is a
manufactured-on-demand DVD-R. The 1.37:1
image, pillarboxed for widescreen TVs, is sharp and clean, so sharp in fact
that the grainy stock footage used in the train sequence is distractingly
apparent. There are no extras, chapter
stops, or subtitles on the disc.
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