dougdoepke Despite a catch-penny tile, "Try and Get Me" (aka Sound of Fury) remains a truly frightening movie whose disturbing imagery lingers long after the voice-over reassurances subside. The director, Cy Endfield, was one of the lower profile victims of the Mc Carthy purges. Viewing this movie now, it's easy to see why. Family man and returning vet Howard Tyler (played by the always low-key Frank Lovejoy) is recruited into a life of crime by no more than ordinary desires for the American Dream. Desperate and unemployed, he falls into the clutches of a swaggering stickup man superbly played by a preening Lloyd Bridges. (Notice how subtly Bridges bends Tyler to his will on their first meeting at the bowling alley.) Joining Bridges, Tyler finally gets the standing he desires, but the spiral he has entered dooms him and his family's share of America's promise. (Note that conspicuous among the lynch mob's vanguard are fraternity boys, true to the actual event on which the movie is based.) Throughout, the lighting and photography effectively undermine the facile voice of reason that the producers probably felt obligated to include. Endfield may have wanted an anti- violence film, but the resulting visual landscape implies a world of endemic violence. A sense of powerlessness pervades the film, one that mere admonishments cannot overcome. As a result, the characters appear caught in some terrible metaphysical web from which there is no escape. Events march relentlessly on to a conclusion that remains one of the most harrowing in Hollywood history. This is film noir at its darkest and most frightening. Something should be noted in passing about the compellingly exotic performance of Katherine Locke as Hazel the manicurist. Watch her facial expressions as this highly repressed plain-faced woman experiences yet one more rejection in what a paste-on smile shows to be a lifetime of rejections. Never has a blossom perched so precariously on a cheap hairdo conveyed as much lower-class longing as hers, while the car ride with a guilt-ridden Tyler could serve as tawdry inspiration for a dozen feminist tracts. What ever became of this unusual actress, I wonder. Without doubt, however, the film's dramatic high point is the lynch mob. It's one of the most coldly unnerving 20 minutes in movie annals, far surpassing (in my view) the better-known Fury (1936) in its depiction of mass violence. The fact that the mob is made up of ordinary citizens brought to fever pitch is especially telling. Unthinking violence is thus shown as potentially present in us all. At the same time, the screenplay refuses to take the easy way out. In fact, Howard and Jerry are guilty, unlike, say, the three unfortunate cowboys in The Oxbow Incident (1943). Thus, what repels us is not the fact that innocent men are killed for a crime they didn't commit. That would be too easy. Instead, I think we're unnerved by how the crowd appears to celebrate the brutality of vigilante justice. Endfield succeeds in making this aspect especially ugly. Yes, in a very general sense, justice is served—murderers are in fact punished for their crime—but if so, justice is served in a particularly barbaric way even if the act does have popular support. In my little book, Endfield has fashioned the most effective of all anti- lynching movies, in part because it doesn't take the easy way out.That Endfield exiled himself to England and a conventional career with Stanley Baker, shows how much was lost among those purge victims whose disappearance, unlike many others, went generally unnoticed. Just a couple of years after the remarkable "Try and Get Me" (and Endfield's also provocative "Underworld Story"), Hollywood began sanitizing the screen with the escapism of period spectacles, Technicolor westerns, and full-cleavage sex goddesses. Indeed times had changed. As Endfield already knew, the studios had to fight the Cold War too. There would be no more thought-provoking Try and Get Me's.

beresfordjd Lloyd Bridges always gives good value whether as a complete villain, as here, or as a hero- remember Sea Hunt? Sea Hunt was my favourite TV series when I was an impressionable kid. I also loved him in the Airplane movies, showing a real talent for comedy. He is the best thing in this B movie. Most of the other actors I am sure were not professionals and Frank Lovejoy was not up to par either and usually I have quite liked his performances. I am watching it as I type this and am far from impressed by it - brave treatment of a dark subject or no. The actress who plays the manicurist is close to appallingly bad. Where were the razzies when we needed them? I am interested enough to see it through ,however, so it cannot be quite as bad as I am painting it. There are lots of film noir movies from this era that were so much better. This could have been superb with a better, more able cast (Lloyd Bridges aside). I think a lot of this was dubbed later so it affects the acting and atmosphere.

Robert J. Maxwell Frank Lovejoy is a veteran who never was sent overseas during the war. He can't find a job to support his wife (Kathleen Ryan) and little boy. Angry, embittered, and perhaps a little guilty, he falls in with bad guy Lloyd Bridges who sport platinum cuff links and seems to be enjoying himself all over the little California town. Bridges offers Lovejoy a job as his wheel man. Just a couple of minor stick-ups, nothing serious. But the robberies escalate into the kidnapping of a college boy from a rich family. Bridges, an envious psychopath, kills the kid out of spite. Both Bridges and Lovejoy are caught and jailed but several thousand people break into the jail, beat the men, and pass them outside overhead like serving platters where they meet vigilante justice.I haven't seen it since I was a kid but the memory of that climactic collective murder still makes me wince.It's impossible to comment on the performances, or on much else for that matter, after the passage of so many years but unless my brain has turned to tofu, I'm compelled to recommend the film. I remember Lovejoy as being a little stiff but Lloyd Bridges giving a dead imitation of a caged animal. Kathleen Ryan was winsome. And there is a touching portrait of a desperately lonely lady who hooks up with Lovejoy.It was made at the height of the anti-Red hysteria in Hollywood, a time when subliminal pro-communist messages were being read into cinematic trifles. And the advertising campaign that accompanied this release seemed almost to goad the audience into mindless mob action. Get in on the ground floor of the explosive rage for justice! That sort of thing. In other words, hang the Reds.It was completely at odds with the message of the movie itself, which was that ordinary guys can get sucked up by circumstances and find themselves suffering the same fate as those who are truly evil. Oh -- and mobs can be dangerous. (If you're a social psychologist, think "risky shift".) Out of all the simple black-and-white crime melodramas that appeared in the post-war period, this is one of the few that had me by the lapels.Based on a real incident in 1930s San Jose, California.If it shows up, be sure to catch it.

ionus The only interesting acting in this film is Lloyd Bridges'. The writing and directing are workmanlike but the result is uncomfortable to watch and there is a definite preachiness to some of the speeches (what else can you call them?). Also, the ending sequences are a bit too reminiscent of Fritz Lang's "Fury" (1936, starring Spencer Tracy), even though the events turn out differently.