Shack Out on 101 (1955)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I first discovered this film shortly after I became a Keenan Wynn fan; I had heard it was a bit of a strange customer. Indeed, 'Shack Out on 101 (1955)' is an eclectic little thing: part Communist spy drama, part romance, part screwball comedy. Lee Marvin sleazes around as a shady chef passing along government secrets to the Russians. Keenan Wynn slops across the diner floor in swimming flippers and snorkel. And you just know that harpoon gun is going to impale somebody by the end of the film! I was even proud to recognise a young Len Lesser (that is, Uncle Leo from "Seinfeld"), who even then boasted his trademark whiney voice.George (Wynn) owns a diner by the beach, and is in love with pretty blonde Kotty (Terry Moore) – who inadvertently rejects him in the cruelest possible way, explaining "I love you like your mother does." Kotty is going steady with Sam (Frank Lovejoy), a scientist and seashell-collector who is collaborating with diner chef Slob (an extremely greasy Marvin) to pass on government secrets to the Russkies. Nothing in this film sits comfortably: the characters all hate each other, and spend a lot of time yelling about it, and the plot – like most films spy films of the era – is largely incomprehensible. But it has its charms, as curious as they may be.

SHACK OUT ON 101, Edward Dein's 1955 minimalist masterpiece of Cold War weirdness remains, over 50 years later, one of Hollywood's strangest concoctions.A dilapidated seaside beanery just north of San Diego is the setting for this outré noir tale about a group of disparate folks who become either directly or peripherally involved with Commie spies and stolen microfilm. The unforgettable cast includes Keenan Wynn as the diner's proprietor, a man obsessed with his "pecs" and always at odds with Lee Marvin as Slob, the animalistic short-order cook who's obsessed with va-va-voom Terry Moore who drives all the guys wild as the put-upon waitress who seems to only have eyes for Frank Lovejoy, "the professor" (of what we're not exactly sure) and Whit Bissell as the annoyingly chatty salesman who wanders in and out of the picture whenever a couple of uninterrupted minutes of bizarre banter is required. This is not a normal film in any true sense of the word. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense and, apart from aligning itself with the then current trend of pseudo patriotic, anti- communist espionage films, it isn't easy to guess what was really on the minds of those who produced this delirious little oddity. At times hilarious (possibly intentional, possibly not) and grimly somber, SHACK OUT ON 101 defies rational description and should most definitely be experienced at least once, or in the case with some of us, as often as humanly possible.

The shack out on Highway 101 just north of San Diego is an oceanside greasy-spoon hung with nautical bric-a-brac like a Red Lobster franchise. It's also the regional headquarters for an subversive spy ring and the claustrophobic setting for one of the oddest fish spawned during the Red Scare paranoia of the post-war years. Keenan Wynn owns the joint, with short-order cook Lee Marvin and waitress Terry Moore as his live-in help, an arrangement as uncomfortable for Moore as it is convenient for Marvin, who can't keep his hands or lips off her. Regulars include Frank Lovejoy (as an unspecified 'professor' romancing Moore), salesman Whit Bissell, an old fisherman making 'deliveries' right off the boat, and a couple of drivers for theAcme Poultry Company who come in for coffee and cherry pie. In this entrepôt big wads of cash get traded for tiny slivers of microfilm. And operatives losing their nerve or asking too many questions get dead.Few of those movies which the studios felt constrained to issue in testimony to their rock-solid Americanism were much good (and audiences shunned them like week-old mackerel). But they shared an utter lack of humor and a suffocating tone of moral urgency. This one is more perplexing. The prevailing tone remains light, at times veering toward farce, to an extent that the very real possibility presents itself that the whole thing is a very sly put-on. One morning when Wynn and Marvin, stripped to their waists, engage in some weight-lifting, Wynn insists that his chest muscles be referred to as 'pecs.' Marvin retorts 'I'm very happy with my pecs,' whereupon they call in Moore to judge which of them has the better legs. In another scene, Moore, lighted through the holes of a hanging colander, looks like she contracted some exotic contagion. But then the movie shifts abruptly into cloak-and-dagger episodes right out of B-movies of the international intrigue genre. Towards the end, the heart sinks as it becomes clear that the movie means us to take it seriously. But serious about what? Never is the word 'Communist' uttered.

Talk about Perception Clues!!! I think Marvin's talking on a cell phone (it's a shell he's listening to); I think he's giving More CPR, and he's kissing her without consent!!!Some great lines that show how paranoid we were about the Red Menace; I suppose they were referring to communism when they were speaking of the kind of stupid spies. Keenan Wynn does a jam up job as the spurned (but nicely) boss who just doesn't give More 'that spark'. It's obvious Lovejoy does and you feel Wynn's pain as he witnesses the magic between them. I'm a woman and even I could feel the chemistry Terry More was putting out way back when...even in black and white.Marvin matches her in lusty acts, words and looks, but she's not buying. The director did a great job with the action in that little shack, and from a historical perspective, it's fun doing a walk down Paranoia Lane. It's hard to believe that anyone could have thought we would be sucked in to that communism trip......but the cruelty shown those who were attracted to the beautiful ideas in that theory somehow gave more credence to what is an impossible idea in reality.Just as Nietche's Superman ideas of those who can 'live above the law' were hogwash insofar as reality is concerned, so too communism. But this movie helps you feel the country's fear of these folks out to overthrow our government in some kind of muddled way ...though you're never sure who'se selling, who'se buying and what is the product?For you Terry More and Lee Marvin fans, it's a must. Or for a view of our recent History, it's also fun.