''Pickup'' is a 1951 American film noir written and directed by Czech actor and filmmaker

Hugo Haas Hugo Haas (19 February 1901 – 1 December 1968) was a Czech film actor, director and writer. He appeared in more than 60 films between 1926 and 1962, as well as directing 20 films between 1933 and 1962. Life and career Haas was born in B ...

. It was the first American film by Haas, a refugee from German-occupied Europe, who went on to make a series of gloomy noirs about doomed middle-aged men led astray by younger femmes fatales. Haas also starred in the film, alongside

Beverly Michaels Beverly Eileen Michaels (December 29, 1927 – June 9, 2007) was an American B-movie actress and Pin-up girls, cheesecake model of the 1950s. Career Michaels began her career at the age of 16 in 1944 as a showgirl at Billy Rose's Diamond Horse ...

, Allan Nixon and Howland Chamberlain.

Plot

Low-budget ''Pickup'', based on a 1926 novel ''Guard No. 47'' by Josef Kopta, contains a plot that is similar to that of the 1946 film '' The Postman Always Rings Twice'' (1946), based on James M Cain's 1934 novel of the same name, but according to Larry Langman, "a poor man's version". Haas plays Jan "Hunky" Horak, a hard-of-hearing railroad dispatcher who lives in a poor neighborhood by the railroad tracks and is seduced by Betty (Michaels), who is after his money. After they marry, Betty and her lover Steve Kowalski (Nixon) scheme to murder him. But in a chance accident, Jan regains his hearing and discovers their plot. Steve has a last-minute change of heart and Betty leaves, disgusted with Steve's inaction.

Cast

as Jan Horak *

as Betty * Allan Nixon as Steve * Howland Chamberlain as Professor * Jo-Carroll Dennison as Irma * Mark Lowell as Waiter * Marjorie Beckett as Secretary Doctor * Art Lewis as Driver * Jack Daley as Company Doctor *

Bernard Gorcey Bernard Gorcey (9 January 1886 – 11 September 1955) was a Russian-born American actor. He began in Vaudeville, performed on Broadway, and appeared in multiple shorts and films. He portrayed ice cream shop proprietor Louie Dumbrowski i ...

as Joe

Reception

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' magazine praised Haas as "Hollywood's most promising new moviemaker" since Stanley Kramer, calling the film "a fascinating game of cat & mouse, played for pathos as well as suspense", and noted how its sense of character, acceptance of human frailty, and seedy, impoverished setting made it far from the usual Hollywood film. More recently ''Filmfanatic.org'' called it "a tawdry, low-budget camp classic", criticising predictable elements but praising the dialog and some unexpected plot twists. Fernando F Croce remarked on its "unusually blunt masochism" and sympathetic treatment of the femme fatale (who makes it out alive).

Release

It opened in New York on August 30, 1951. Released only to secondary and independent theaters upon its 1951 release.

References

External links