morrison-dylan-fan Recently picking up the 1958 British Film Noir Chase a Crooked Shadow,I began looking for another Noir from '58 that I could watch it in a double bill with. Knowing Ed McBain for his classic novels and work with Hitchcock,I was intrigued to find a McBain Film Noir adaptation,which led to me hating cops!The plot:As the streets of New York get dried out during a long Summer,a stranger kills two police officers. Taking the murders personally, the 87th Precinct put two of their best cops on the case: Steve Carelli and Mike Maguire. Whilst the police officers struggle to pick up a lead, news reporter Hank Miller begins to hear gangs full of cop haters.View on the film:Set during long hot Summer nights, director William Berke & cinematographer J. Burgi Contner give their cop killer an evil under the sun atmosphere,with scorching hot white lights and dirty clothes signalling the burning hot Film Noir desire the cops have to grab the killer. While keep things strictly by the room, Berke finds side-streets for stylish quirks,from a deaf girlfriend to a gang of hip juvenile delinquency.Taking notes from McBain's first 87th Precinct novel,the screenplay by Henry Kane aims for the three cop killings to fire up the passions of their fellow officers. Killing the officers before they have been given any real depth, Kane's attempt to build a feeling of Film Noir urgency runs dry,due to it lacking any sign of the novel characterization/depth that was on offer to the police and the gangs. Oddly being named Steve Carelli instead of Carella, Robert Loggia gives a very good performance as the tough-talking Carelli,who wants to stop the hate on cops.

dougdoepke The early 50's were the era of Jack Webb, police procedure, and the docu-drama, where law enforcement was portrayed in the best possible professional light. After all, there was an emerging Cold War to fight. On the other hand, this late 50's movie, adapted from an Ed McBain novel, is edging away from that ideal toward a more realistic portrayal of policing in a city precinct. Dragnet, it ain't. Too bad that the result comes across as something of a trashy, exploitation flick because there's a good story with several interesting passages plus a neat twist ending buried beneath the tacky titillation. Someone's knocking off cops for no apparent reason, a psycho the detectives figure. So the heat at the precinct is really on with no real suspects. Nonetheless, much of what follows is pretty muddled and hard to follow. It's not an A-grade adaptation or narrative, to say the least.The way the cops are portrayed is interesting for the time. They knock people around, drink a lot (maybe on duty), and seem sex-starved much of the rest of the time. In short, the detectives appear not that different from most young American males. Given today's relaxed standards, colorful episodes like rousting a street gang or ogling a nude woman in a towel may seem tame, but in 1958, such scenes were quite daring. The trouble is that too much of the drama and suspense is sacrificed to a lot of cheesecake scenes, which may have sold tickets but do little to advance the story. Too bad, because the acting from a New York cast comes across as unforced and natural, plus the main characters don't look like typical Hollywood types. Even the girls, though sexy, aren't tinsel town perfect. With a better structured, less exploitative script, the film could have risen above the drive-in level. As the results stand, however, there's not much beyond an historical interest in the evolution of the cop film. Besides, guys can get more titillation by just switching over to the Playboy channel.

sol ****SPOILERS**** Graphically brutal movie for a film released in the 1950's about a cop killer on the loose with the entire city police department mobilized to track him down. When two policemen are shot and killed in two days who happened to be partners at the same police precinct for no apparent reason, other then being policemen, the word is out on the street that whoever knows anything about those murders better talk. Or else the full heat of the police force will come down on them. After checking out every hood and punk gang member in the city the police department came to the conclusion that whoever committed those killings did it only out of his personal hatred of policemen and are looking for a cop hating psycho. What they don't know is that the person behind these murders is a lot closer to them then they think.Det. Carelli and Maguire, Robert Loggia and Gerald S. O'Loughlin, are assigned to the case but unknown to them one of the detectives is the real reason behind this slew of killings. Later Det. Maguire gets gunned downed in the street and his partner, Det. Carelli, starts to put together what he knows of the case. Det. Carelli comes up with an unbelievable theory to who's doing these killings from his talking to Det. Maguire and his wife Alice, Shirley Ballard. Going through the motions looking for the killer Det. Carelli is at the bar one night with reporter Hank Miller,Gene Miller. Who's meddlesome actions with this story about a cop killer to get his big scoop almost cost the life of a cop who was mistaken for him. Thats when Miller tried to get a story out of a local teenage gang member by threatening him and his gang with unwanted media exposure. Det. Carelli drunk and not thinking tells Miller what he thinks is going on with the police killings and who's behind them. Miller irresponsibly prints the story that tips off the killer. Miller also foolishly prints the address of Det. Carelli's fiancée the pretty but hearing-impaired Teddy Franklin, Ellen Parker. Busting into her apartment the cop killer Marcer, Hal Riddle, finds Teddy alone and waits for Det. Carelli to show up and murder him. Alerting Carelli when Teddy sees the door light go on, thats the way she can tell if someone is ringing since Teddy can't hear. Det.Carelli surprises Macer and after having it out with him beats a confession out of Mercer not only to his killing the three cops but who was really behind and had him do those killings. This is in 1958 before the Supreme Court's passing of the 1966 Miranda decision. For a person to be read his rights and be presented with a lawyer before he says anything. Fine big city police drama that plays like an episode of "Naked City" but is far far more realistic as well as brutal without being filmed in city of New York, the name New York City is never mentioned in the film. Even though "Cop Hater" does look like it was filmed there.

bmacv Even longtime fans of Ed McBain's evergreen series of police procedurals set in the 87th Precinct may be startled to learn that they started out back in the1950s (and they're still coming). Cop Hater was the first of them to reach the big screen, in a bare-bones production directed by genre-movie veteran William A. Berke.A heat wave has settled over The City (it's New York, but McBain never identifies it as such), bringing tempers to the flashpoint. An alarm clock wakes a cop for his midnight shift; when he descends into the soupy night, a shot fells him. The entire precinct mobilizes immediately - one of their own has been killed.We encounter the familiar names of the Precinct's detectives (or some of them), most notably Steve Carella (here, Carelli), played by a young Robert Loggia; he's the bright cop engaged - not yet married - to the beautiful deaf-mute Teddy (Ellen Parker). His partner Maguire (Gerald O'Loughlin) has already tied the knot, but when he tries to keep cool in his undershorts to the whirr of a feeble fan, his wife (Shirley Ballard) brushes him off (`You're wet - oozing wet,' she sniffs).When a second cop is gunned down in cold blood, attention turns to members of one of the gangs of young punks that were a fixture of post-war New York, but it's a dead end. Next, it's Maguire's turn to meet his very own dead end. Loggia, made indiscreet by too many `splashes' of Scotch to slake his thirst, tells his theories to a callow newspaper reporter and inadvertently puts Teddy in jeopardy....Cop Hater gets the feel of the grimy streets and cramped apartments of a sweltering urban jungle just right (it also preserves the film debut of Jerry Orbach and very early appearances by Vincent Gardenia and Loggia). The puzzle of the murders may seem a little mechanical (it's a riff on Agatha Christie's The Alphabet Murders), and personalities don't emerge as vividly as we might like. But then this was early in the series, and McBain had only begun to sketch out the quirks of his recurring characters. McBain, of course, is the pseudonym of Evan Hunter (born Salvatore Lombino), who wrote the screenplays for Blackboard Jungle and The Birds. In Cop Hater, his anonymous City takes pride of place.