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MOOM PITCHER REVIEW! THE MAN IS ARMED! starring Dane Clark and William Talman (Republic, 1956)

Dane Clark plays Johnny Morrison, this schlub of a truck driver who just got outta the pen after doing a year for taking the rap for a robbery. First thing he does once he hits El Lay is visit his former co-worker who spilled the beans on him and topple him over an apartment roof to the concrete a good ten stories down. Then he shows up at his old place of employment looking for a break, and his boss tells him that it was HE who pulled the job and made Johnny the patsy!

It gets even better---rather than sock his former boss Johnny decides to get involved in a big haul that's bound to bring in a good million or so. Johnny's also hitched up with his old galpal who has been pumping it up with a new flame in the interim, an intern on his way up inna medical profession. And of course the heist goes on and Johnny seems to get away with both the murder and the heist, only there's a big double cross from one of his co-workers who ruins his alibi and then the boss decides to pull a fast one and...well, it all goes down pretty good just like those late movies you watched from the fifties until the eighties and somehow after watching it all you have this nice satisfied feeling to go to bed with.

For being an actor who never quite flibbened my jib Clark is fine as the psycho ex-con even though he coulda played it a whole lot crazier a la Cagney in WHITE HEAT if only to get this film into overdrive. May Wynn as the secretary who has to choose between Johnny and the Doctor is typical fifties b-flick leading gal material...you may think she's kinda one-dimensional but I'll take her over all of those self-assertive females I've seen onna boob tube these past few decades. William Talman as the boss is perfect what with that slimy PERRY MASON aura of Hamilton Burger transposed to the crooked head of a trucking company while Barton MacLaine as the cop out to get 'em is well...Barton MacLaine!

Dunno if the old "film noir" revival of the late-twentieth century is still in gear but if it is this li'l sleeper would make a nice addition to the list. Nothing that's gonna make any big city film critic's top ten list, but isn't that the down to earth reason why you all should go see the thing???