Guns Girls and Gangsters (1959)

(On Cable TV, December 2020) There is something a bit too easy in the way Guns Girls and Gangsters is put together – too obvious, like its title. Coming at the tail end of the original film noir movement, it’s perhaps a bit too self-aware about the elements it has to include (like, er, Guns, Girls and Gangsters) but not witty or sophisticated enough to be able to make much out of it. The story has to do with a Vegas armed car robbery pulled off by ex-convicts, complicated by a sexy seductress cheating on one of the criminals with another. Produced away from the major studios, the film feels a bit threadbare when it comes to production values – but it did have the good sense of putting its dollars where the stars were: Lee Van Cleef is an excellent choice as a vengeful husband, while Mamie Van Doren dominates the film as a sultry blonde femme fatale. The narration underscores things a bit too much, exemplifying the theme of excessive self-awareness combined with the lack of skill to pull it off. While thoroughly mediocre (easily in the lower-middle-tier of first-generation film noir thrillers), Guns Girls and Gangsters still has enough to entertain, but it’s going to be as a semi-unintentional comedy more than a hardcore noir.