Tonight's Movie: The Looters (1955) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

THE LOOTERS (1955) is one of a number of interesting spring Blu-ray releases from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.

To my knowledge, this brand-new release is the first time is the first time this Universal Pictures film has been released for home viewing.

As THE LOOTERS begins, no-good Pete (Ray Danton) shows up at the remote Colorado cabin where his old army buddy Jesse (Rory Calhoun) lives.

Pete has lost everything gambling and Jesse, who owes Pete his life, agrees to let Pete stay while he figures out his next steps.

Shortly after Pete's arrival the men hear a plane crash and set out to find it, with experienced trail guide Jesse leading the way. It takes the men a couple days to reach the crash site in the rugged back country.

Along with the badly injured copilot (Rod Williams), there are three healthy survivors at the crash site: Model Sheryl (Julie Adams); Navy man Stan (Frank Faylen); and Parkinson (Thomas Gomez), who discovers an opportunity to steal money which was being transported on the plane.

Pete quickly throws in with Parkinson to grab the money, but what next? Pete and Parkinson are soon suspicious of each other, and they also debate killing the other survivors -- the problem being that they need Jesse's skills in order to make it off the mountain alive.

Meanwhile, shelling about to take place at a nearby army training camp may make things even more dangerous for everyone involved.

I found this an enjoyable 87 minutes. While not a great film, it's solid entertainment, bolstered by a good story and almost the entire movie being filmed in the great outdoors.

A group of travelers fighting both internal and external forces for survival is an old favorite movie theme, most often seen in Westerns such as DRAGOON WELLS MASSACRE (1957) and ESCORT WEST (1958), to name just two titles among many.

The added threat of the Army, who depending on circumstances could be the group's salvation or death, reminded me a bit of the crime film SPLIT SECOND (1953). Greed influencing the dynamics of a small group of people is another easily recognizable story theme.

Richard Alan Simmons' screenplay, based on a story by Paul Schneider, thus weaves many familiar elements into a story which also has some unique aspects, as the two villains decide what to do with the others in the group. Pete and Parkinson are outnumbered, but they have the guns.

Calhoun and Adams are longtime favorites, and Danton is extremely effective as a man who is both a sleaze and maybe not quite right in the head. Gomez was also an experienced movie villain; he doesn't bring anything to this role we haven't seen from him before, but he's fine in the part.

I particularly liked Faylen as the genial Navy man on the verge of retirement who can't believe he's suddenly in a more dangerous situation than he ever was while serving his country.

Russ Conway plays an army major, and Bess Flowers fans will briefly spot her as one of the plane passengers early in the movie.

The film was briskly directed by Abner Biberman. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about the widescreen black and white cinematography of Lloyd Ahern, but it gets the job done; I did appreciate a couple nicely atmospheric foggy scenes.

The excellent print is from a new HD master from a 2K scan of the 35mm fine grain. Sound quality is very good.

Extras consist of a gallery of half a dozen trailers for other films available from Kino Lorber, along with a commentary track by Toby Roan. Toby's tracks are always well researched, and I'm looking forward to learning more background on the film, including the location shooting.

For more on this movie, my friend Kristina also wrote about it a few years ago at her site Speakeasy.

Fans of the cast and well-done adventure films should enjoy this one, now easily available at long last thanks to Kino Lorber.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.

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