kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** Framed for a crime, which is never elaborated or explained in the movie, that he didn't commit ex-SFPD cop Vic Barron, Mark Stevens, is out to not only gets those who framed him but the person who killed his wife and child in a car bomb explosion that left him looking like the phantom of the opera without his mask on. The one person whom Barron is out to get is mob boss Tino Morelli, Douglas Kennedy, whom he thinks order the hit on him that ended up killing both his wife and five year old daughter. Checking out Morellie's old haunts in the city a bay area nightclub owned by Nick Buda, Lewis Martin, Barron is confronted by Buda's bodyguard the man in white Roxey, Skip Homeier, whom he puts away with a couple body chops and hits to the kidney.It's later that Barron gets the word from the out cold Roxey's abused girlfriend Lily Arnold, Joan Vohs, after leaning on her a bit that Morelli skipped out of town and is now residing in th Alasken town ,known as the "Salmon Capital" of the world, Ketchiken. Taking Lily's fishy story to be the real deal Barron takes the first plane out or north to Alaska to both meet and knock off Morelli for what he did to him and his family. It's there that Barron meets bar owner Peggy Hadrding, Martha Hayer, who despite his disfigured mug or face takes a shine to him because of his manly and "I don't give a sh*t about anything" attitude. Meanwhile with the word out that Vic Barron is in town Morelli's bodyguard Johnny Blue-Eyes, Mort Mills, takes a crack at him only ending up on the floor with his kidney's badly damaged from Barron's karate chops. It was later in the movie when Barron breaks into Morelli's house that he karate's chops Johnny Blue-Eyes, who tried to stop him, so bad that he never regained consciousness or woke up for the remainder of the film!****SPOILERS**** Things start to happen that has the vengeful Vic Barron begins to change his opinion about Morelli when he meets his 7 year old daughter Marie, Cheryl Callaway, who's so sweet and friendly to him, even when he attempted to kidnap her, that he has second thoughts of doing her dad in! How could, Barron summarizes, Morelli be such a rat when he produced a sweet and lovable girl like Marie! It soon turns out that Barron was right! Not in how sweet & lovable Marie is but that her dad Morelli couldn't have done what he did in killing his wife & child with a bomb planted in the family car! It turned on Buda's orders, who also framed Barron, it was Roxey who did it who's now also in Alaska and on Buda's orders not only planning to knock off Morelli but also his motor mouth girlfriend Lily and frame Barron for it!P.S Mark Steven's first directed film and probably his best right up there with his later big score in the anti-Castro movie, filmed during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, "Escape from Hell Island" that almost had, if WWIII broke out, him and his entire cast nuked in a massive nuclear exchange between the USA & USSR while filming the movie!

mark.waltz If the writers had flashed back to the wronged man being convicted of a crime and the evidence which made him believe that mobster Douglas Kennedy was the guilty party revealed, this might have been better structured. However, they choose to start the film where the innocent man (Mark Stevens) is released from prison and sets out to locate Kennedy who is living with another identity in a small Alaska town with his sweet daughter and living a double life. Most of the film is cat and mouse with one of the cats (Kennedy) also the mouse for the psychotic Skip Homieier and Stevens playing mouse for both of them. All Kennedy wants to do is protect his daughter from danger, and while it is obvious that he is still living a life of crime, he's also a model citizen in his community where his past life is unknown.At times, I felt that maybe I had missed an important plot development, but after re-watching the beginning, realized that everything that had come before was exactly what I remembered having seen earlier. At times, the hero is as creepy as Homieier who is playing a variation of the psychopath which Richard Widmark played in "Kiss of Death". Especially disturbing is the sequence where Stevens follows little Cheryl Callaway (as Kennedy's daughter) under a Jedi and she innocently asks the stranger if he'd like to play with her to which he simply hands her firearm ammunition.While there are some definitely gripping moments of suspense, the damage has already been done by the weak narrative. There's really nobody to root for here, even Stevens who was basically done in by the unsympathetic way he's presented here. Martha Hyer adds some perkiness as a barkeeper with an interest in Kennedy but her character really serves no other purpose than to add some adult female to the story.

ryepsen-1 Mark Stevens was terrific in the earlier (and truer) noir, Dark Corner (1946), with not only the young Lucille Ball but also a masterful one- handed Martini pour. Cry of Vengeance, with Stevens in the main role and also directing, has promise but falls back on a dozen clichés: knocking out a tough guy with one sucker punch; confessing everything to a bartender; the ex-con revealing tenderness to a little kid with a broken doll; a character named Joey; and plenty of bleach blinds (Martha Hyer is, however, excellent). The sets, with flimsy doors and unconvincing wainscoting, are cheesy. Early on you'll note poor dubbing when an outdoor scene couldn't be miked. And Stevens is unrelentingly grim, evidently following his own direction that it wasn't necessary to allow nuances o show through. You could have directed and scripted a better version, and I'll state here that I could as well. Be sure to catch Dark Corner, with its fine performance from Clifton Webb of Laura fame.

secondtake Cry Vengeance (1954)Leading man Mark Stevens falls something short of a cult figure. He is director and first actor in four movies from 1954 (this one, his first) to 1963. He plays his roles as if he is in control, which he is, literally, from the director's chair. He's the hardened type, and here he is bitter bitter bitter, to the point that he is not quite a fully developed character and it's hard to get absorbed in his problem.The rest of the movie is functional. It doesn't lack interest--for one thing, it's shot in Alaska, mostly (the exterior shots)--and the supporting cast is middling to good, filling roles we've seen before from pretty girl befriending the unlikely hero to chatty bartenders to a sweet kid who turns the man around through her innocence. And the filming (William Sickner, a routine cameraman with nearly two hundred B-movies to his credit) and editing, likewise, are workaday...the job gets done, but it lacks some kind of richness or aura or plain old drama. Then to make it a little more disappointing, a couple of the main themes are taken a little too directly from earlier noirs, namely "The Big Heat" which came out the year before. The theme, established right away, is a cop who is out for vengeance against whoever killed his wife and child in a car bomb meant for him. Stevens plays this part with cold certitude. It's an interesting film in some ways, but a clunker in many others. Take it for what it was, and what it is.