Raw Deal

Plot synopsis:
Prisoner Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe), who has "taken the fall" for an unspecified crime, breaks out of jail with the help of his girl, Pat (Claire Trevor), who also serves as a first-person narrator in the story. Neither is aware that the escape has been facilitated by mobster Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr), a sadistic pyromaniac, who has arranged for Joe to be killed in order to avoid paying Joe his share of $50,000 for the crime. When the break-out succeeds, Rick decides that he must have Joe done in some other way.
Pat and Joe kidnap a social worker, Ann (Marsha Hunt), who has been visiting Joe in prison, trying to reform him. This begins a doomed film noir love triangle. A fight with a vicious thug (John Ireland) ends when Ann shoots Joe's attacker in the back. After acting in Joe's defense, Ann realizes she is in love with him. Relenting, he sets her free and prepares to flee the country with Pat. In their hotel room, Pat receives a phone call warning them that Rick has seized Ann and will harm her unless Joe and Pat come out of hiding. Pat lies to Joe that it was a call from the hotel desk clerk since she does not want him to go back to Ann.
After boarding a ship, Joe attempts to convince Pat that they can start a new life in South America together. A guilt-stricken Pat now confesses to Joe that Ann is in danger. Joe races to save Ann from her captor, Rick. Under the cover of a thick fog, Joe manages to get past Rick's thugs and sneaks into Rick's room. A gunfight erupts with Rick and Joe shooting each other and inadvertently starting a fire. Joe and Rick, both wounded, fight hand-to-hand with Joe finally pushing Rick through an upper story window to his death. Mortally wounded, lying in the street, Joe dies in Ann's arms as Pat, under arrest, looks on. Seeing the happiness in Joe's face, Pat comments in voice-over that "This is right for Joe. This is what he wanted."

Tags: violence, romantic

Review:
This movie, a cheap b-production with only one actor with stand-out talent, Claire Trevor, and a young powerful Raymond Burr, manages to seem authentic all the way through because it doesn't hold back on the violence or the threat of violence.
O'Keefe uses two women he knows, his floozy Trevor and the good-girl counselor he really loves (she's cast in light and draws him like a moth) as cover.
The movie then follows O'Keefe as he does a mini-FUGITIVE, like the television show, making love to his women and encountering a raging lunatic in the woods who doesn't have anything to do with him, but might get O'Keefe caught anyway by swarming police on the hunt for the maniac.In this rough noir, you get a suicide by cop, a guy fighting not to get his face impaled on a set of wall antlers, a flaming friccasee thrown in a drunk woman's face, a nasty deception and the good girl getting tortured, and a bloody final encounter between psycho Burr and O'Keefe, with plenty of face-ripping and falling from burning buildings.
That's not standard stuff, and if you can get into babe Trevor with light shimmering on her lips as she tries to figure out how to save her thug O'Keefe from the police, Burr, and the younger angel ready to steal him away, then you will enjoy hell out of this film..
It really is a beautiful, brooding movie.The key theme is escape, as a convict is on the run and he takes two women with him, one his girlfriend who is sort of "bad" and one an admirer who is basically "good." The two don't get along of course, and in the process of fleeing from one situation to another (pretty much always at night) we see the man switch from one kind of woman to another.
It stars Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt, John Ireland & Raymond Burr.
Paul Sawtell scores the music and John Alton is the cinematographer.Convict Joe Sullivan (O'Keefe), incarcerated after taking a fall, breaks out of jail with the help of his girl, Pat Cameron (Trevor).
Kidnapping Joe's social worker, Ann Martin (Hunt), Joe & Pat hit the road, it's a road that will lead to desperate consequences for many.A raw fatalistic film noir that sees the ace pairing of director Mann and photographer Alton.
One of the best decisions made by Mann and Sawtell is that of the narration by Trevor, in itself unusual for a woman of noir to narrate, it's sorrowful and mournful in tone anyway, but with Sawtell scoring it with the theremin it plays out as part of a nightmarish dream-state.O'Keefe was not the leading man type, but that's perfect for this film, he offers a credibility to a man whose life has taken a down turn, where his only comfort is being a thorn between two roses, but with that comes more problems as he seeks to only breathe the fresh air of freedom.
Mann's film would have been great and got through on his direction and script anyway, but with Alton's camera it ends up being essential for the film noir faithful.From the opening, where the credits show up on the background of prison bar shadows, to the no cop out-classic noir-ending, Raw Deal hits the mark.
John Alton's cinematography perfectly captures the noir-like atmosphere of San Francisco as does Trevor's voice-over narration accompanied by the haunting sound of a theremin playing..
Gripping film noir with Dennis O'Keefe as Joe Sullivan, a man who escapes from prison with help from Pat, the woman (Claire Trevor) who's loved him and stuck by him for years.
Claire Trevor is especially good playing one of her washed-up floozy roles, and Raymond Burr is at his most diabolical as a pyromaniac crime boss.
Joseph Emmett "Joe" Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe) is in the State Prison for taken the blame for the gangster Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr) that owes him US$ 50,000.00.
"Raw Deal" is a film-noir with a triangle of love between an ambiguous criminal that wants to be a good man, his experienced lover and a naive young woman that also falls in love for him.
Raw Deal is Anthony Mann's 1948 crime noir follow-up to the slightly better T-Men. Again it stars James Cagney-wannabe Dennis O'Keefe this time as bad apple Joe Sullivan.
And I think it's interesting how the sexual dynamics between Dennis O'Keefe and both women (played by Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt) are continued throughout the story.
He Shoulda Stayed in the Can. Good, tough stuff from director Anthony Mann and a real film noir to use that battered term.
Pat (Claire Trevor) narrates the story of her involvement with boyfriend Joe (Dennis O'Keefe) from the night that he escapes from prison until she is arrested.
Raymond Burr who plays "Rick" and John Ireland who plays "Fantail" make a couple of good bad guys and there is one disturbing scene where Burr's character throws a dish which is on fire onto his girlfriend's face - we didn't really need that.
Dennis O'Keefe stars in this crackerjack noir film directed by Anthony Mann.
O'Keefe plays a man who took a rap for gangster kingpin Raymond Burr and now he's thinking he's gotten the bad end of a Raw Deal.
As dark as that classic was, Raw Deal is a good deal darker as O'Keefe's world is getting smaller and smaller due to the bad choices he made in life.With cops and Burr looking for him, Dennis also has himself involved with two women, steady streetwise Claire Trevor and the secretary of his lawyer Marsha Hunt.
And like any classic O'Neill play there is an inevitability about these people especially O'Keefe.Before Anthony Mann moved on to westerns and bigger budgets he did some good noir work in the Forties and Raw Deal is a fine example..
In this picture, Dennis O'Keefe,(Joe Sullivan),"Las Vegas Shakedown", plays a convict in prison, who takes the rap for Raymond Burr,(Rick Coyle),"Ironside TV Series,'69, who is a big time hood who promises Joe Sullivan he will give him $50,000.
"Raw Deal" from 1958 is directed by Anthony Mann and stars Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt, Raymond Burr, and John Ireland.The film is narrated by Pat (Trevor), who is the girlfriend of escaped convict Joe (O'Keefe).
Mann kept moving up the director ladder, but in his early days directed some terrific noirs.The cast is excellent, with Trevor's aging floosie, desperately in love with Joe, a standout.
"Raw Deal" is one of the best film noirs I've seen, with seedy production values that enhance the seediness of the story.Dennis O'Keefe plays a man who escapes from prison with the help of his girlfriend, Claire Trevor in a fabulous performance.
He then sets off on a plan to get vengeance against the crime boss (Raymond Burr) that landed him in prison in the first place.This is as cynical, brutal and jaded as noirs get, reminding me in its nearly total absence of moral considerations and its lack of redemption for just about any of its characters of another supremely cynical noir, "Detour." One of the most interesting things to me about "Raw Deal" is how much it's actually about the women around our main character, almost more than it's about the main character himself.
It's as if the women can't help but be dragged down by the criminal world they've attached themselves to -- the social worker ironically becomes a killer, while the gangster moll is the one who faces the film's primary moral dilemma.Terrific off-kilter compositions and camera work by John Alton (a surreal scene late in the movie filmed through fog is a stand out) heighten the sense of decay and sleaze.
Movies like "Raw Deal" are what got me hooked on film noir in the first place.Grade: A.
Claire Trevor proves her superior acting talents once again as a "Corkscrew Alley" woman with 100% noir values and outlook on life.You also get brutish sick noir from Raymond Burr, and classic John Ireland tough-guy thug action.This movie is a definite recommend for anyone interested in the genre or for anyone interested in sincerely motivated performances by stars at the peak of their talent..
The point of view here isn't from the hard-boiled Joe (Dennis O'Keefe, one man you don't want to mess with, unless you can 'get under his skin') who's just escaped from prison to settle old scores, but from his old lady Pat (Claire Trevor), a dame with years behind her waiting and waiting, and after being patient for so long (as she tells us in a constantly eerie, mournful voice-over, almost something one might expect from The Magnificent Ambersons) she busts him out.
But her good side pushes Pat away from Joe, and a little closer to Ann despite the danger of a guy with a lot to lose holding a gun and with a score to settle via gangster Rick (Raymond Burr, playing well as a dirty fat heel).The music set behind her, which doesn't change all that much, sounds as if it's out of a chilling dream, where the fatalism has rocketed through the roof and there's not much she can do about it.
Yet Mann and director of photography capture so many beautiful and stark moments, pivotal ones as part of the artistic peak of film-noir, especially in the scene on the boat as Joe rattles on about the good things to come.
The mood is near perfect, the character actors are all up to snuff (Hunt actually delves a little into how she's changed forever by the trip, by the firing of a gun that carries more implications than a less ambitious film would allow), and in a fairly short running time there's a substantial amount of craft to go alongside a crackerjack story where conventions are given added weight by attitude and a predilection to imagery that might not make it in some noirs (the climax with Joe and Rick, the flames of hell right around them in the office).
Knowing he is looking to escape, Rick greases some wheels to help Joe's girlfriend Pat to organize an escape – all with the knowledge that once he is out he will be certainly caught in the resulting police dragnet and either killed or sent back to prison for even longer; either way he'll be out of Rick's hair.I have watched a few noirs recently and the last couple in particular were a lot slower than I would have liked, so part of the appeal of Raw Deal was the short running time, which suggested that it wouldn't be taking too long over anything.
Hobbled from the jump by the first uninspiring sight of Dennis O'Keefe's flabby medicine ball of a face, Raw Deal is a film that will only please those who giggle automatically at noir tropes and who think of the 1940's as some kitschy wonderland of slang and fedoras instead of real people backed, as they are in every era and every country, into existential corners.Let's take the scene where Raymond Burr shoves a hotpot of cherries jubilee in a groupie's face.
Into their midst comes miss sweetness and light, young Marsha Hunt, and we have a bizarre escapees-a-trois throughout the film, with tough gal and good gal not speaking as they compete for whose heart can throb the most for O'Keefe on the run, who treats them both pretty rough and is more interested in who might be shooting at him than which woman's eyes are on fire with stuff that can keep for later.
Marsha Hunt and Claire Trevor are both brilliant in their roles, as are O'Keefe and the cowardly, double-crossing and oily gangster, Raymond Burr.
He's sensitive."On top of this, we have the overall gray and "noir" mood of the picture, about a man with very bad odds (Joe Sullivan/O'Keefe), and two women, one of them his loyal accomplice Pat (Claire Trevor), who is also narrator of the story, and Ann (Marsha Hunt) who is forced to join them.
This is a movie in which there are not many surprises for the viewer.Cardboard characters:the hero,who ,when he was a child ,saved his mates from a fire,and then became naughty when he turned 16;the sadistic treacherous gangster;the two female parts:the good virtuous girl who struggled hard to live decently;the bad gal who hides a big heart though.This villainess is played very well by Claire Trevor who's given a special treatment by the director:every five minutes,we know about her frames of mind ,thanks to her voice-over,with an ominous musical background.It does not amount to much, anyway,because the actress is gifted enough to convey what she is feeling without that.
It's got Genre Icons...Director Anthony Mann...Cinematographer John Alton...Actors Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor, Raymond Burr, and John Ireland.
The Villain Rick (Burr) is Sadistic, Selfish, Flashy, and a Pyromaniac.The Story is a Downbeat Display of Duality where Joe (O'keefe), Pat, and Ann (Marsha Hunt), All have a Conflicting Conscience and a Constant Struggle to Redeem the Opposing Oppression of Psychological Maladies.Once Pat's Narration Begins at the Start of the Film with its Ethereal and Creepy Music and She Visits Joe in a Prison, a Scene Filled with Odd Angles, Barred and Sprawled with Geometrical Intrusions, the Film Presents Itself as Something Unordinary and Compelling.It Also Includes Typical, Cynical, and Off-Beat Dialog"Keep your eye on her, she might go soprano.""I'll be through with this in three-quarters-of a-half-an hour.".A Must See for Fans of Film-Noir, B-Movies, Anthony Mann, John Alton, Crime Movies, and Expressionistic Surreal Cinema..
It was that bad.Journeyman actor Dennis O'Keefe was fair enough as the escaped convict, but the really good parts were John Ireland and Raymond Burr as tough hoods.
Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt all shine in this 1948 film.Though as a child O'Keefe saved other kids from a fire,he became a criminal and supposedly took the rap for a sadistic person, played by the reliable Raymond Burr.O'Keefe plays the part perfectly as a deprived person seeking to live a better life in a world that has condemned him.In the same year that she won her supporting Oscar for "Key Largo," Claire Trevor again plays a moll.
Although the film runs a scant 78 minutes, it manages to tell its story and hold the viewer's interest throughout.Dennis O'Keefe stars as a convict who's escape is engineered by the crime boss (Raymond Burr) who had set him up for the fall in the first place, with the hope that O'Keefe wiil be killed in the escape attempt.
John Ireland is along as Burr's hitman who gets into an exciting fight with O'Keefe in a darkened storeroom."Raw Deal" is a good movie that didn't get the praise it deserved..
Of course that doesn't happen and so he finds himself on the run with two vying women in tow, the first, his long-standing, long-suffering girl-friend played by Claire Trevor, the second, his lawyer's clean-living secretary, Ann, played by Marsha Hunt whom he inveigles into his getaway against her will, but who falls for him anyway as things play out.It all ends on a dark, misty night (naturally) with O'Keefe confronting Burr and a fiery, violent and naturally pessimistic ending, with nobody winning, in true noir style.
RAW DEAL – 1948Director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John are both firing on all cylinders in this hard hitting film-noir.
The top flight cast includes Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor, John Ireland, Marsha Hunt, Regis Toomey and Raymond Burr.
Ann Martin (Marsha Hunt) is a legal assistant who tells him that with good behaviour he could possibly get released in 2 or 3 years time and his girlfriend Pat Regan (Claire Trevor) informs him that arrangements have been made for him to escape.
And, when O'Keefe slapped Claire Trevor across the face, I knew this was a Noir film with little sentiment (a hallmark of better Noir).Unfortunately, while the film had so many elements I liked, there was one clichéd role that seriously detracted from the gritty realism and that was the character played by Marsha Hunt.
Tremendous film from director Anthony Mann is a tour de force in the noir department, bringing in a whole barrage of nifty visual cinematic treats and noir elements like: prison escape, jealousy, kidnapping, bitter darkness, criminals on the lam, fistfights, gunfights, revenge, a cold femme fatale and a fire-happy, sadistic crime boss.Mann's direction is the star, but Dennis O'Keefe, Marsha Hunt, Claire Trevor and Raymond Burr give excellent, realistic performances as the prison escapee, a kidnapped female lawyer, faithful femme-fatale and crime boss, respectively.Favorite scenes: * Trevor surprised by a speeding train as she waits for her boyfriend to escape from prison and get into the getaway car * The hellacious fight between Joe and Rick's thugs (at the supposed meeting place with Rick)* Bad-ass, agitated boss Rick throwing his blazing dessert on some chick who spills a drink on him!If you like film noir, this is a must-see, one-of-the-best, don't-missers..
Director Anthony Mann teams again with Dennis O'Keefe for another Film-Noir crime drama.
A hard-boiled criminal Joe Sullivan(O'Keefe) escapes from prison to take out revenge on the killer who framed him and owes him $50 Grand, Rick Coyle(Raymond Burr).
Pat (Claire Trevor) helps bust erstwhile boyfriend Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe) out of prison.
She falls for a common street thug like Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe), has a bleeding heart for a wife killer who crashes Oscar's Tavern, and then turns around and shoots one of the henchmen sent by big Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr) to put Sullivan away.
Overall, Raw Deal is a well-made noir film from Anthony Mann, one of the best directors ever to have worked in Hollywood.
I know it was directed by Anthony Mann, who was to go on to do some really interesting things over the next decade, but this is for the most part a routine flick.Basically, Dennis O'Keefe breaks out of the slams with the help of his moll, Claire Trevor.