Shack Out on 101

The working title for the film was originally Shack Up on 101 but after lead Terry Moore allegedly complained, it was changed to Shack Out on 101. The exterior scenes of the movie were shot on location in Malibu, California. The opening credits give a special screen credit to "A Sunday Kind of Love" (written by Barbara Belle, Louis Prima, Anita Leonard and Stan Rhodes) but it is not heard as a vocal number or in its entirety in the actual film. The few scenes where music is used usually occurs in the shack bar where a jukebox is situated. Composer Paul Dunlap is credited with these selections. A soundtrack album for Shack Out on 101 was also released (now out of print). Lee Marvin and Keenan Wynn were lifelong best friends who first met in the early fifties and shared a love for motorcycle riding after Marvin developed a taste for it while filming The Wild One (1953) with Marlon Brando. Shack Out on 101 was Marvin and Wynn's first film together but they would later appear together on numerous TV programs and reunite in 1967 on the big screen in Point Blank. The original tagline for the film's poster was "Four men and a girl!" by Jeff Stafford SOURCES: Lee Marvin: His Films and Career by Robert J. Lentz (McFarland & Co.) Marvin: The Story of Lee Marvin by Donald Zec (St. Martin's Press) Lee: A Romance by Pamela Marvin (Faber and Faber) IMDB

Shack Out on 101 was one of several melodramas and thrillers made in the fifties that exploited the public's fear of the "Red Menace" and Communist infiltration. Other infamous titles in this subgenre include Big Jim McLain (1952) with John Wayne, My Son John (1952), Prisoner of War (1954) starring Ronald Reagan and Jet Pilot (1957). Terry Moore, who was born Helen Koford, was under contract to 20th-Century-Fox at the time she was cast in Shack Out on 101, an Allied Artists Picture. It was a studio loanout and she was being promoted at the time as a sex symbol in the Marilyn Monroe mode. Moore is best known for her role in the RKO fantasy-adventure, Mighty Joe Young (1949). She also attracted considerable publicity for her claims that she secretly married Howard Hughes in 1949 and even though she couldn't produce any evidence of it, the Hughes's estate paid her a settlement in 1984. Moore's leading man in Shack Out, Frank Lovejoy, spent most of his film career playing detectives, reporters, soldiers and various authority figures. I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951) is one of his most quintessential roles. Keenan Wynn, who had been an MGM contract player for years, quit the studio in 1954 and began freelancing in films and television, with Shack Out on 101 being one of his first movies as an independent actor. As Slob, Lee Marvin was already a well-established character actor by the time he made Shack Out on 101, thanks to memorably villainous roles in The Big Heat (1953) and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). He had already begun the switch to leading roles from supporting ones in 1952 with Eight Iron Men but it wasn't until he starred in Cat Ballou (1965) and won the Best Actor Oscar that he began to command top billing. One of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood, Whit Bissell has more than 250 film and television credits to his name. While his traumatized war veteran Eddie in Shack Out is one of his more colorful performances, he is probably best known for the cult horror films, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (both 1957) and Monster on the Campus (1958). Len Lesser, who plays Slob's partner in crime in Shack Out, is still working and is well known for his TV appearances as Gavin in Everybody Loves Raymond and as Uncle Leo on Seinfeld. Jess Barker, who appears as Artie, had just divorced his wife, actress Susan Hayward, when he made Shack Out and was involved in a bitter custody battle with her for their two sons. Edward Dein, writer and director of Shack Out on 101, toiled mainly in the B-movie industry with a few detours into television (The Wild, Wild West, Hawaiian Eye). Among the genre films he worked on are Boston Blackie's Rendezvous [1945], Curse of the Undead [1959], The Cat Creeps [1946] and The Leech Woman [1960]. He also contributed additional dialogue on Val Lewton's The Leopard Man [1943]. Among the entire behind-the-camera crew of Shack Out on 101, cinematographer Floyd Crosby is easily the most distinguished and prolific, having received an Oscar® nomination for his very first film, Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931). He has worked on everything from Robert Flaherty's landmark documentary The Land (1942) to High Noon (1952) to countless cult favorites in later years when he found steady work at American International Pictures (House of Usher [1960], X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes [1963]). by Jeff Stafford SOURCES: Lee Marvin: His Films and Career by Robert J. Lentz (McFarland & Co.) Marvin: The Story of Lee Marvin by Donald Zec (St. Martin's Press) Lee: A Romance by Pamela Marvin (Faber and Faber) IMDB

"Since Edward and Mildred Dein have fashioned dialogue that is occasionally adult and funny and have the services of principals who can accentuate these humorous lines and situations, Shack Out on 101, which was unveiled at the Globe yesterday, avoids the stigma of being a sub-standard spies-vs-F. B. I. imbroglio. But Mr. Dein, who also directed this minor intrigue, has too many issues simultaneously confronting a viewer. Shack Out on 101, in short, is not only bursting at its foundation with muscle men but with romance, idealism and a smidgin of silly plotting. It is slightly diverting but it is also enough to make an observer's head swim...Credit Lee Marvin with a polished portrayal as the tough, sinister and seemingly thick-witted cook, Terry Moore is a pleasing eyeful as the waitress who attracts all the males in the vicinity." - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times "...trash classic...Absolutely one of a kind, with most of the action taking place on a single shabby set (Wynn's beanery)." - Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide "One of the oddest movies of the fifties...It has amazing dialogue, sax music, and skin diver suits." - Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Video Guide "What comes out of this silly little Red Scare spy drama from the smack-dab middle of the 1950s is an almost perfect, semitrashy set piece; everybody has a good time...The movie is a dead-on minimalist portrait of America at its most paranoid. It's the one to show the history class." - Barry Gifford, The Devil Thumbs a Ride & Other Unforgettable Films "Among the last of the Red-scare movies, this is also one of the most hilarious. It's in the so-bad-it's-great category. In what other genre could a grease-stained, lecherous cook named 'Slob' also serve as Mr. Big in the Communist Party?" - Arthur Lyons, Death on the Cheap" The Lost B Movies of Film Noir! "...Lee Marvin, who is easily the most repulsive object that Hollywood has dug up in recent years, is such a skillful performer that when he starts hacking away at a bacon-lettuce-and-tomato on toast, the spectator has all the visceral sensations of watching an MVD interrogator do work on an enemy of the people." - Time Magazine "...Lee Marvin's delightful portrayal of a simple-minded short order cook, who turns out to be the menace of the film...Marvin will certainly gain in importance as a marquee name with this picture." - Motion Picture Herald "Modest suspenser which seemed at the time to have some fresh and realistic attitudes." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide "This is probably the strangest film in which Lee Marvin ever appeared, topping even Gorilla at Large [1954] for eccentricity...Shack Out on 101 is a melodrama with a message: Communist agents can be, and are, anywhere...It truly is an oddity, with its uneven mixture of exploitation, political message and comedy." - Robert J. Lentz, Lee Marvin: His Films & Career "A snappy entry into those Red Scare movies from the Cold War paranoid period of the 1950s in America. Writer-director Edward Dein and his wife Mildred who is co-writer, provide a very funny take on those kind of superpatriotic films while at the same time preaching to the choir. It's also helped by a fine cast, with Lee Marvin excelling in his role as a lecherous greasy-spoon short-order cook named "Slob"..." - Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

Every once in a while arrives a oddball film treasure that seemingly fell off the back of a truck. When new, 1955's Shack Out on 101 earned absolutely zero respect. Variety's review called it a "dull, confused melodrama" and "a mish-mash of Saroyan-like characterizations." Considering that it takes place almost entirely in one set, Shack is actually quite an achievement. Produced by Allied Artists, the anti-communist thriller Shack is neither confused nor dull; it's just the story of an average American highway rest stop infiltrated by a nefarious Red spy ring. The writers are the husband and wife team of Edward and Mildred Dein, who also collaborated on Universal's odd vampire western Curse of the Undead. Edward Dein directs in a style reminiscent of the Monogram and PRC pictures of the 1940s, but with better cinematography and acting. Every patron of George's beachside diner on California's Interstate 101 has a crush on the shapely & vivacious waitress Kotty (Terry Moore). But she only has eyes for Professor Sam Bastion (Frank Lovejoy), a nuclear physicist from a top-secret lab at the nearby University. Kotty's most ardent admirers are the balding owner George (Keenan Wynn), who keeps his dreams to himself, and the short order cook "Slob" (Lee Marvin), who paws at Kotty every chance he gets. Sam can't talk shop because he's part of a team working on an atom project for the U.S. government. But it also appears that Sam is conspiring with Slob and a fisherman named Perch (Len Lesser) to sneak secrets out of his nuclear lab. Also frequenting the café is Eddie (Whit Bissell), a neurotic terrified by violence of any kind. Eddie and George were buddies at the D-Day landings, an experience that frayed his nerves. Things become serious when Kotty partly witnesses the killing of one of Sam's fellow physicists, Dillon (Frank DeKova). From that point forward Kotty doesn't know whom to trust. Two poultry deliverymen eat at the diner a lot, and ask a lot of questions. Kotty notices that their hands are unusually soft, for truck drivers. Sam keeps asking Slob to introduce him to his communist spy connection, a mysterious mastermind named Mister Gregory. On a stormy night, the shack on Highway 101 becomes a battleground in the struggle to protect America against evil Enemies of Freedom. Author Barry Gifford called Shack Out on 101 "a semi-trashy Cold War version of The Petrified Forest", and "a minimalist portrait of America at its most paranoid." Aided by an enthusiastic cast, the rather rigid script is brought to life in a way that seems unusually sleazy for the Eisenhower years. Described as having "an eight-cylinder body and a two-cylinder mind," Slob is the most entertainingly inconsistent traitor on film, and his behavior seems counterproductive to the stealth needed to smuggle atom secrets. Suffering from acute sexual inferiority, Slob molests Terry Moore's Kotty at every opportunity - on the beach, in the kitchen. At one point he laughingly threatens to put "something gross" in Eddie's hamburger. The movie's tone veers between a paranoid civics lesson and the looseness of a Beat play. The acting, especially between Lee Marvin and Keenan Wynn, often feels like improv. A critic from the Pacific Film Archive asked, "Did anyone write their parts or direct them? Or did they just run amok?" The script includes two scenes that simply give Wynn and Marvin an opportunity to be silly. In a comic weightlifting break, the proceedings pick up an odd gay vibe when Slob and George compare body development. They rush to dress when Kotty re-enters the diner -- they don't want to be seen with their shirts off. Lee Marvin fans will also be amused when Sam Bastion slaps, punches and intimidates the "weakling" Slob. A heavily decorated Marine, Marvin would later be known as one of the most credibly tough of tough-guy actors. Shack Out on 101 retains its sense of absurdity even as it resolves as a wave-the-flag melodrama. Frank Lovejoy had made a couple of socially-conscious liberal films (Home of the Brave; Try and Get Me!) but the image that stuck was as J. Edgar Hoover's double agent in I Was a Communist for the FBI. Lovejoy's Sam Bastion also seems to be wound a little too tightly. After a day engineering weapons of mass destruction he relaxes by sorting out little seashells he keeps in a shoebox. The fight for Freedom naturally involves a measure of violence, including a stabbing and a shooting. The milquetoast Eddie recovers his killer instinct long enough to share in the general mayhem. Slob gets rough with Kotty when he suspects that she knows what's going on. With no boiling coffee handy, as Marvin suffered in The Big Heat, Kotty makes do with a hot fabric iron. And no Cold War thriller would be complete without a lecture about American complacency in the face of the communist threat: "The apes have taken over. While we were busy watching television and filling our freezers they've come out of the jungle and moved in. And what's worse is they've begun to dress like us and think like us." The actors appear to be having a fine time in Shack, and succeed in making the proceedings lively and entertaining. Even Terry Moore comes off well; her Kotty seems genuinely hurt to discover that her boyfriend is a traitor, even if she must first look up the word in the dictionary. With its Mad magazine-like weirdness, Shack comes rather late in the game for an anti-Commie epic. By 1955 patriotic Cold War messages could be found in every kind of genre thriller, but pictures dedicated solely to the activities of Red spy rings were on the wane. Olive Films' Blu-ray of Shack Out on 101 is a nearly spotless HD encoding of a thriller that waited until the 1980s to become a genuine cult item. Most fans first saw it on cable television. The widescreen framing improves the viewing experience over un-matted flat TV prints with acres of empty space above and below the actors. Floyd Crosby's lighting is fairly unremarkable for the earlier reels but becomes more expressive for the nighttime confrontations at the show's finish. The sharp HD image allows one to see the goose bumps on Terry Moore's arms when she's lying on the beach. The film has a pleasingly jazzy soundtrack, highlighted by the well-known tune A Sunday Kind of Love written in part by (Barbara) Belle and Louis Prima. Original poster art stressed the sex angle, with no fewer than four images of Terry Moore kissing and embracing the various denizens of George's seaside diner. By Glenn Erickson

Slob: I've got a good mind to drop these dishes. George: You've got a good mind? Slob: Every time I talk about the tomato you get busy. George: The tomato's got a name - Kotty. Everybody's got a name. Slob: Then how come you call me Slob when my name's really Leo? George: Because you look like a slob. Even when you're clean you look dirty. Eddie (to Sam): You know something. If you told me to jump off a building, I'd take off like a jet job. Sam: Eddie, I told you the fish are cold-blooded. Eddie: This I want to hear straight from the fish's mouth. George: Well fellows, what'll it be? Artie: I'll have the Egyptian dancing girl. Pepe: Yeah, me too. George: Sorry, they're out of season but how about cherry pie and coffee as if I didn't know. Sam: Slob's got an eight cylinder body and a 2 cylinder mind. Sam: Will you tell me something? Kotty: Anything, Sam, anything. Sam: What are the first amendments to the Constitution called? Kotty: The Bill of Rights. Sam: That's right. What form of government is this? Kotty: The best! Slob: You smell nice, what is it? Kotty: Soap, you should try it sometime. George: The last time the cash register rang, I answered the phone. Sam: The apes have taken over...while we were busy watching television and filling our freezers, they've come out of the jungle and moved in! And what's worse, they've begun to dress like us and think like us. We're just where we were in the beginning. The animals have begun to hunt men." George: It's all a bunch of slop. Eddie: You just finding that out? Life's 90 percent walking through slop to get to the roses. Eddie: How long ago was D-Day? You have a lot to be grateful for. Did'd ya ever see two guys with more holes in 'em? I still remember how choppy the channel looked through your chest. Kotty: Funny. A truck driver with soft hands. Eddie (to George): Even if you were Cary Grant she shouldn't give you a second look. The whole thing is chemistry. Slob (admiring George's chest): Hey, that's great. What a beautiful set of muscles. George: How many times have I told you not to call them muscles. Ya wanna sound like an amateur? Call 'em pecs. Slob: I don't go for those guys at Muscle Beach. The waist is so thin there's no room for any food. Slob: You know what I want? A big thick neck. George: Don't you want a stomach like mine? Slob: Well, I go for your triceps and your biceps. They look great. But I wouldn't have your legs if you'd give 'em to me. Slob (to Kotty as he and George compare legs): Which one's got the best? Kotty (pulling up shirt to display her legs): In this establishment, I have. Sam: Kotty? Now what's wrong? Kotty: Nothing. I just don't want to stand between you and your shells. You don't need a woman. You should go steady with a clam. I don't get it. A grown-up man and you still play with seashells. Sam (to Slob): How can I explain to you the secret of a new element that may obsolete the power of the hydrogen force? Slob: You like my cooking? Kotty: Not bad. Slob: You like me? Kotty: Like I like garbage. George (after being shot in the arm): Hey, Slob, have you lost all your buttons? Kotty (to Slob): What have we ever done to you? Why do you want to change our lives? You got your own place. Build it up. Tear it down. If you want to eat each other, eat each other. Just leave us alone. Kotty: So all the time the professor was only playing a game? Sam: That's right. Kotty: And me too? Sam: In the beginning, yes but you're too much ammunition for me.