Bank Robbing

 

 (themoviedb.org)

THE ST. LOUIS BANK ROBBERY-1959-Naive college dropout George Fowler (Steve McQueen) is hired by some gay bank robbers to drive their getaway car. Though they seem to carefully plan everything, it ends badly. McQueen is good but the rest of the cast isn't up to it in this low budget film noir crime drama with 2 directors credited. One is Charles Guggenheim who later won three Academy Awards for short subject documentaries. The other, John Stix, directed a few films for TV. The script by Richard Heffron (who later directed FUTURE WORLD (1976)) is based on the real-life robbery in 1953.

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The Original Blob

THE BLOB-1958-Teenagers (?) Steve (Steve McQueen) & Jane (Aneta Corsaut) try to convince the local authorities that a killer blob from outer space is on the prowl and devouring the citizens of their sleepy town. Some other hot rodders try to help out. They meet resistance from a school principal, also Jane's father. Police lieutenant Dave (Earl Rowe) is sympathetic to the teens' plight but his hot headed Sargent (John Benson) wants to run them all in because he thinks they are jealous of his war record. Eventually adults and teens get together to try and stop the red gelatinous rolling terror when it invades a movie theater showing a double bill "spook show" of "Daughter of Horror" and "Bride of the Monster"! Taking refugee in a diner, Steve, Jane, her baby brother, the cook and the waitress become trapped when the blob covers the whole building. After electricity fails to kill it, Steve accidentally learns it doesn't like cold. Earlier in the film, when being chased, Steve and Jane hid out in a meat locker and the blob retreated. So the principal leads the teens in a school break in to retrieve CO2 fire extinguishers. Somehow they manage to freeze the gooky invader and the air force drops it in the Arctic circle. It's not dead, only frozen and after "the end" appears on the screen it's followed by a question mark.

This Technicolor low budget classic  was directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth and produced by Jack Harris who later teamed to make THE 4-D MAN and DINOSAURUS, both disappointing letdowns compared to this. It marked McQueen's first starring role and the final film for veteran character actor Olin Howland who plays the blob's first victim. Lead actress Anet Corsaut later played Sherriff Andy Taylor's main squeeze on TV's long running "The Andy Griffith Show". 

There was actually a comedy like sequel made 14 years later called BEWARE! THE BLOB, directed by actor Larry Hagman and featuring appearances by such notables as Godfrey Cambridge, Shelly Berman, Robert Walker, Jr. and others.

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Cool TV

 
A TV show I've been watching recently on ME TV is the western WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE starring Steve McQueen as Josh Randall, a tough but not so ruthless bounty hunter who sometimes helped out needy people for free and/or sometimes proved his charges innocent of the crimes they were said to commit. A few episodes have comedic overtones and Randall is kind of a buffoon but usually after killing a man he had some remorse. It ran for three seasons on CBS from 1958-1961.

 I like to watch these kind of shows mainly for the guest stars and WANTED had it's share: DeForest Kelly, Lon Chaney, Warren Oates, Martin Landau, Jay North (in a strange Christmas episode), Michael Landon, John Dehner (in several episodes), Jay Silverheels, John Carradine and James Coburn to name a few. For around a dozen episodes in 1960 Wright King was also featured as fellow bounty hunter Jason Nicholls (he played a different role in an earlier episode), King had a featured role in Elia Kazan's A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE (1951), hosted a TV kid's show JOHNNY JUPITER (1953-54) and was in two episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Later he had a small role as a simian doctor in the original PLANET OF THE APES.

 McQueen of course went on to super stardom with roles in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GREAT ESCAPE, BULLITT and others.

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