Born to Kill (1947)

What a waste of my time!!!

Very well executed

A Disappointing Continuation

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This noir film directed by Robert Wise is bereft of characters you can sympathize with save for Audrey Long and Phillip Terry. It does however rivet your attention to the leads of Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor, a pair of amorals if I ever saw one.Back in Reno where Trevor was getting shed of a husband she happens to discover the murders of Isabelle Jewell and Tony Barrett done by a very jealous man played by Lawrence Tierney whom she meets on the train to San Francisco. They like each other, but he focuses on Audrey Long, Trevor's half sister who was lucky enough to have a father worth a fortune.But Tierney's past is ever so slowly creeping up on him. And Trevor while now engaged to Terry, still she can't resist Tierney. Pity these two just didn't hitch, they truly deserve each other and not the people they were going with.What I love about Born To Kill is the great care that Robert Wise took in both assembling his supporting cast and fleshing them out. Rarely do you see that in a B film. Those already mentioned plus Elisha Cook, Jr. as Tierney's luckless pal, Walter Slezak as a private detective open to a little blackmail, and Esther Howard as the landlady in Reno who hires Slezak to investigate the murder of her friend Jewell.Born To Kill will keep you glued to the television or the big screen as it did in 1946 I'm sure. A truly fascinating bunch.

The screenplay is something Harry Stephen Keeler might have written whilst heavily sedated. There's no back story for the male lead Lawrence Tierney nor for his relationship with Elisha Cooke Jnr; following Claire Trevor he finds her with her half-sister and fiancé. He tells the sister she will be seeing more of him Cut: they're married. Economical or sloppy writing. Three guesses. Lawrence, who was the elder brother of Scott Brady here bears more resemblance to Ray Milland albeit he has the acting ability of an amoeba with learning difficulties. Some of the best performances come from the support in the shape of Walter Slezak's private eye, sans moustache for once, and Esther Howard, looking as though she hasn't drawn a sober breath since she played Jesse Florian in Farewell, My Lovely. Watchable.

This film noir combines several murders with a couple very humorous characters. It opens in Reno where Helen (Claire Trevor) is getting a six-week 'quickie' divorce. While there, she stays at a boarding house run by a jolly beer-loving floozy, Mrs. Kraft (Esther Howard), who seems very impressed by one of her fun-loving tenants, Laury (Isabel Jewell).One night while in a local gambling establishment, Laury and Helen are both seen by one of the gamblers there, Sam Wilde (Lawrence Tierney). When Sam follows Laury and her boyfriend home, he kills them both out of jealously. Helen later comes home to find both bodies on the kitchen floor but--without being too shocked by the sight, she walks away from the scene so as not to get involved with a 'messy situation' before returning home to San Francisco the next day.In the meantime, we learn that Sam is, literally, a homicidal maniac and that his friend, Marty (Elisha Cook Jr.), has to keep him out of trouble by sending him out of town, pronto. As a result, Sam and Helen re-meet on the train headed for San Francisco. Without knowing of each other's role in the dual murder, the two become friends during the trip. When they arrive in town, Helen gives Sam her address and suggests a hotel for him to stay at as she goes home to her foster-sister, Georgia (Audrey Long), and new fiancé, Fred (Phillip Terry), both of whom are wealthy. When Sam shows up at Helen's house, he meets the foster-sister; learns that she is wealthy; convinces her that she is beautiful--something she doesn't see in herself--and ends up marrying her. However Helen, who has always resented Georgia for her money, now also resents her for her husband too. (It's clear that she's more of a kindred spirit to the 'taking' Sam than her 'giving' fiancé, Fred.)The story is moved along when Mrs. Kraft hires a crafty private detective, Albert Arnett (Walter Slezak), to find out who killed Laury. Arnett's investigation takes him from Reno to San Francisco, where the story's climax plays out with often-humorous scenes involving Elisha Cook, Jr., Walter Slezak, and Esther Howard.Born to Kill is a good movie with some of the best noir stars. My appreciation of Claire Trevor's talents—especially for mollish characters (Stagecoach and Key Largo) and as a femme fatales (Murder, My Sweet). My only disappointment with this movie is that the ending was somewhat predictable.

Born to Kill is a pretty hard edged film-noir. This is perhaps unsurprising when you consider that it has Lawrence Tierney in its lead role. Tierney was a pretty brutal character in real life and he certainly looks and acts the part. In this one he is violence incarnate. The character he plays is quite one dimensional but he is very convincing nevertheless. His evil is offset by the character played by Claire Trevor, who is the Machiavellian femme fatale who orchestrates Tierney's brutality behind the scenes. Trevor is very good in this more complex role. She is only matched by Walter Slezak who plays a low-life private investigator; Slezak basically steals every scene he is in.The plot-line is a fairly standard rise and fall narrative that many crime films had. The only real weakness to the story is in the marriage between Tierney and Trevor's rich half-sister. They make an incredibly unconvincing couple and you tend to forget they are even married most of the time. But this is a relatively minor complaint all things considered. The director is Robert Wise, who proved himself to be somewhat reliably versatile. He was responsible for films as different as the horror movie The Haunting and the science fiction film The Andromeda Strain; Born to Kill proves that he could certainly make an entertaining film-noir too.