Private Hell 36

This minor noir was put together by some major Hollywood talent: leading lady turned film director Ida Lupino, Lupino's third husband Howard Duff, Lupino's second husband Collier Young, Warner Brothers contract player Steve Cochran, Academy Award-winning actor Dean Jagger, and Don Siegel, soon to be identified as a maverick American film director in his own right and here paying his journeyman dues approximately two years before his auteurist breakout with Invasion of the Body Snatcher (1956). Produced and written by Lupino and Young (as The Filmmakers), Private Hell 36 is a surprisingly tender-hearted story of good people turning bad. Duff and Cochran play LAPD detectives, long-time partners inured to the punishing hours, scant rewards, and inherent dangers of their profession... until they seize a $300,000 booty from a dead criminal and begin to imagine what that kind of money would do for their lives. When Cochran chooses to pocket the cash, Duff reluctantly plays along, but ruptures begin to scar their friendship just as their captain (Jagger, in avuncular, pipe-smoking mode) and colleagues pick holes in their account of what went down. The homoerotic back beat of the Cochran-Duff partnership gives Private Hell 36 an unexpected kick, even half a century later, post-Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976), Reservoir Dogs (1992) and dozens of other like-minded policiers. Joking about their partnership as "going steady" and buffeting wisecracks from their fellow cops about being boyfriends, Cochran's thrill-seeking bachelor Cal Bruner and Duff's more four-square Jack Farnham are happy in their life together and resigned to the unprofitable tribulations of law enforcement... until Farnham's wife (Dorothy Malone, in a thankless cameo) and Bruner's girlfriend (Lupino, as a dodgy lounge singer) inspire the men to expect more. An allusion to Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) would not be out of the question, with Cochran playing the more confident and manipulative John Dall role, Duff the uncertain Farley Granger role, and Dean Jagger in the James Stewart role of the men's mentor and conscience. All performances are spot-on and the supporting cast is peppered with such reliable types as Dabbs Greer, King Donovan, Richard Deacon, James Anderson (the venal Bob Ewell of To Kill a Mockingbird) and William Boyett, later a stock player for Jack Webb. If Private Hell 36 falls short of noir greatness, it's largely because director-for- hire Don Siegel was still forging his signature motifs and payoffs and not yet free to balance extreme violence and mundane reality with the same exhilarating anarchy. The film works best as a pencil sketch of themes and scenes he would replay in later films, with more artistic license and more indelible results. The pharmacy burglary that sparks the first act and ends with Cochran riding hophead recidivist Donovan through a plate glass window looks ahead for sheer bushwhack outrageousness to the bank robbery in Siegel's Dirty Harry (1971) while the plot point of thieves sweating out retribution from an unseen assailant anticipates similar business in Charley Varrick (1973) and the codependent Cochran-Duff partnership sets the tone for the professional unions of The Lineup (1958), The Killers (1964), and Madigan (1968). Robert Keith's description of Eli Wallach in The Lineup as "a wonderful, pure, pathological study" could apply just as readily to Cochran here, as well as Steve McQueen in Hell is for Heroes (1962) and Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Released on video cassette in 1998 by Republic Pictures, Private Hell 36 has long been nigh impossible to come by (though the online movie rental service Netflix has offered the film for digital streaming) and now makes its digital debut under the auspices of Olive Films and Paramount. This new region 1 DVD is a just-the-facts affair, burdened with no special features or extras. The image is on the high side of acceptable and the mono audio is on par, making for a satisfying viewing experience. Olive also offers Private Hell 36 on Blu- ray. For more information about Private Hell 36, visit Olive Films. To order Private Hell 36, go to TCM Shopping. by Richard Harland Smith