Dial 1119 (1950)

Truly Dreadful Film

Amateur movie with Big budget

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It is obvious that this is one of Dore Schary's pet projects at MGM, certainly not for the taste of Louis B. Mayer at the climax of his reign at the studio where the lion was about to roar "The End" for him. Hypocritacally patriotic Mayer disapproved of the Civil War drama "The Red Badge of Courage" and the spiritual drama "The Next Voice You Here", and it is very obvious that this one, too, made him wince. The theme is the psychological destruction that comes from war, whether involved or rejected from duty, and here, it is the later, surrounding the already demented Marshall Thompson, a young man who believes it is his duty to kill, having wanted so much to do so when World War II came up.Killing a bus driver after he is discovered to have a gun, he then takes over a local bar where a new invention called television is presenting local news as the bartender (William Conrad) grumbles about it. It is the local news that will soon be camping outside this bar when Thompson orders local police to send doctor Sam Levene there for one last confrontation in exchange for the hostages he has taken. Virginia Field is unforgettable as the aging and drunken "B" girl obviously tiring of life yet unable to escape her floozy identity. Andrea King is a young lady enticed by an older married man (Leon Ames) with a romantic trip out of town. These are the most memorable of the hostages, the others (including a newspaper man whose own paper ignores his call for help) not as fleshed out.The film makes a few important comments on both the human condition and the issue of violence in society. The most obvious issue is the importance of gun control. In only 75 minutes, the film's gritty and unapologetic violence takes several lives shockingly and seems to be written just to expose the growing violence in society rather than present a plot which is neatly wrapped up like the usual MGM fare. Field gets a great exit which ties the trashy element of the story with an ironic twist that is sure to bring delight.

Marshall Thompson broke new casting grounds in playing the criminally insane escaped mental patient in Dial 1119. This film was out of the B picture unit at MGM and was far more likely to have previously come from a studio like RKO or Columbia. MGM was one of the last big studios to put out a realistic type noir film like this one.Time and circumstances get six people trapped in a bar in the fictitious Terminal City where Thompson after taking a weapon from a bus driver and killing him over it, he holds up in a bar. When the news comes over the bar television, Thompson shoots bartender William Conrad and holds the other customers which include Virginia Field, Andrea King, Leon Ames, Keefe Brasselle, and James Bell as hostages.Thompson had been convicted once of murder, but was declared insane and given a life sentence at an asylum due to the work of psychiatrist Sam Levene. A fact that police captain Richard Rober won't let him forget. They have a lot to say to each other during the course of the film.Dial 1119 moves at a pretty good pace and not a minute of its 75 minute running time is wasted. The lack of really big movie names no doubt helps create the realistic aura of the film.Marshall Thompson usually played good guys and will ever be remembered as Daktari from the television show. I suspect he never got roles like this again because the public wouldn't accept him just like Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley. This film is brutally uncompromising on its view of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment will not be pleased, but Dial 1119 is still a great noir film.

Enjoyed this 1950 film which dealt with a mental patient who thinks he was a soldier during WW II and has a legal license to kill any one he decides to kill. This crazy person is played by Marshall Thompson, (Gunther Wyckoff) who is riding in a bus and sitting next to a lady who is trying to be friendly, but Gunther just looks straight ahead and views a gun that the bus driver had on his sun shade and just gets up and blows this driver away. Gunther eventually goes into a bar and locks all the customers in the bar and starts killing the bartender and threatens various other women in the bar. Gunther wants to have his Doctor John D. Faron visit him in the bar in order to prevent him from causing all this death to innocent people. There is plenty of tension in this bar and the women in the bar do their very best to try and over power this nut case.

Out of the grayness of film noir drama comes a pondering on the gray area of social engineering. Dial 1119 is a film discussion of the distention between straight-ahead law enforcement and the brand-new authority of psychological intervention in criminal matters. The heart of the film is the series of conversations between the Homicide Captain and the forensic psychiatrist. Therein lies a clear blueprint of the issues: Is it better to identify and treat society's offenders, rather than simply punish? What should the treatment be; confinement, medicine or capital punishment? In view of the fact they prosecuted a man for murder and saw him escape the electric chair to kill again, are the police to be blamed for being skeptical of the medical model in dealing with crime? Are we to condemn the doctor's humanist courage as simple folly, or celebrate it as a noble march toward higher existence?I found the relationship between police and doctor to be unique in cinema, can't remember when I've ever seen it so clearly and dramatically drawn. Also, the characterizing vignettes of the various hostages were deftly wrought. Overall, a remarkable film rendered nearly into the realm of science-fiction by the dominance of a 48 inch flat screen TV over the main set, presaging the looming hypnotic sway the contraption would wield on a developing social world.