MOVIE OF THE DAY: "13 WEST STREET" (1962)

Kind of a neo-Death Wish, 13 West Street is the story of Walt Sherill, a NASA engineer who suffers a beat-down from a bunch of juvenile delinquents. Ignoring police Sgt. Pete Koleski's request to let the police handle it, Sherill embarks on his own brand of street justice. Before the case is cracked, two people will die and Sherill's wife nearly raped. Good goin', Walt!

As with the previously-discussed Cop Hater,  13 West Street resembles a well-made TV show from its generic opening credits right down to its bland sets. The budgetary restrictions give the picture a more realistic look, however, particularly with its many L.A. location shots.

 

"Hey, you kids! I used to be a gun for hire!"

And like Cop Hater, the lead actors are what give it a certain vibe that make it worth watching. Alan Ladd, who also produced, plays Sherill not as an angry vigilante but as a guy who's just tired with criminals getting away with it. And I mean tired. Ladd -- looking at least a half-decade older than his 48 years -- appears exhausted in the first scene at work and never quite wakes up.

 

When doing target practice, always wear an
ascot.

I have no idea if this can be attributed to Ladd's alleged real-life insomnia or the realization that his Hollywood heyday, starting with This Gun for Hire in 1941 and peaking with Shane 12 years later, was rapidly coming to an end. (A few months after the release of 13 West Street, he survived an "accidental" self-inflicted gunshot to the chest.) Either way, Ladd arouses a genuine sympathy that another actor might not have been able to pull off.

Ladd isn't happy being upstaged by his
co-star.

It's always interesting when actors of two different styles go toe-to-toe. In 13 West Street the studio-trained Ladd goes up against the Method school's Rod Steiger (as Sgt. Koleski), who's quite good. But because of my memories of Frank Gorshin's dead-on impressions of him and Steiger himself often chewing the scenery, camera and costumes in movies like The Big Knife, it's impossible for me  to take him entirely seriously even in his more subdued performance here.

Similar to Al Pacino, Steiger sounds like he's "doing" Rod Steiger throughout the movie. There's just something about the way he pronounces words like "better" as "bedder" that makes me laugh. But that's OK, mainly because he gives 13 West Street a welcome lift whenever he appears, particularly with the worn-out Ladd. It's almost the opposite of, say, Steiger's role as a gangster in The Harder They Fall, where his hamboning goes up against -- and loses to -- the endlessly charismatic Humphrey Bogart.

Don't worry, they won't be sneering much longer.

Unlike many cinematic juvenile delinquents at the time, the punks in 13 West Street are spoiled brats from Beverly Hills, whose parents gladly lie to the cops in order to protect their reputation. Michael Callan, as Chuck Landry, brings out the gang leader's vicious sociopathy that drives away even his most loyal friends. Maybe if they had know Callan was 27 and not 17 they'd have cleared out earlier.

False adverting alert:
The image of hot rods must
have been for luring in the kids,
because they aren't in the
movie.

While 13 West Street's more-or-less happy ending comes as no surprise, what's never really addressed -- without giving away too much -- is that the deaths of two people are due at least indirectly through the actions of Sherill. I don't know if we're supposed to come away with the idea that he's no better than the punks, or just forget the deaths even happened. 

None of this would have happened anyway had Sherill filled up the car tank with gas before stalling out in a bad section of town, and not yelled "Stupid idiots!" at the kids who were obviously looking for a little violence to pass the time. For a rocket scientist, he's no rocket scientist.

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 To read about Steiger's The Big Knife, go here.

To read about Cop Hater, go here.