Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1957)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Richard Rodgers famous ballet number from On Your Toes serves as the title and the background music for Slaughter On Tenth Avenue, a tale of the New York waterfronts. The twin paradigm about the waterfront is observed in this film as in On The Waterfront, that it is systemically corrupt and the men there settle their own problems. That's what young prosecutor Richard Egan and homicide cop Charles McGraw face when they try to build a case against three of union boss Walter Matthau's hired thugs. They shot honest pier boss Mickey Shaughnessy in the hallway of his Tenth Avenue apartment building and Shaughnessy's friend Harry Bellaver saw them leave. And while dying, Shaughnessy names his killers to his wife Jan Sterling.The dockworkers have a Code of Silence, toughest there is and it isn't easy for Egan and McGraw. In fact DA Sam Levene is not sure there's enough to go on. Especially since neophyte prosecutor Egan will be facing top mob lawyer Dan Duryea. And Egan is also planning to get married to Julie Adams.Slaughter On Tenth Avneue is a competently made and well paced noir film. The comparisons between this and On The Waterfront are too obvious to be ignored. Egan is no Marlon Brando, but I think he would have been the first to admit that. To the dockworkers he comes across as a white shoe lawyer, but Egan worked his way up from the Pennsylvania coal mines where his people were all unionized mine workers. One thing that distinguishes this from other noir films is that our protagonist Egan is in fact an unambiguous hero unusual for a noir film. There's no real blending of the good and bad, the cast which is well made and gives good performances across the board falls one way or the other as well.The scene shifts from the court to the docks in the last 20 minutes or so and the climax is really taken right out of On The Waterfront. Slaughter On Tenth Avenue is still a fine bit film making that does credit to the cast and those behind the camera.

As the story begins, we watch three men sneaking into a tenement building in Manhattan's West Side. They have come on a mission to kill Solly Pitts, a decent man, who dared to cross the guys that were in charge of the union that ruled the waterfront in those years. It turned out to be a botched attempt because Solly, miraculously survives, and he is able to tell his wife Madge the names of the three paid assassins.A young Assistant D.A., Bill Keating, is assigned to cover the case because the other lawyers are busy. As Keating arrives in the hospital, he watches Madge approaching Lt. Anthony Vosnick, as she gives him the names of the perpetrators. Eventually, Keating learns about the identity of the criminals that tried to hill her husband. When he tries to bring justice, he meets a wall of opposition because the unwritten law about ratting these scum bags, plus his own department objection for trying a case in court with the flimsy evidence that Keating has found.Things at the waterfront were ruled by a corrupt man, Al Dahlke, who controlled all the rackets and felt the need to make an example out of Solly Pitts. In fact, a corrupt policeman, Sid Wallace, tries to get Keating to become friendly toward Dahlke, because he can profit by closing his eyes to the illegal activities around the piers."Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" was directed by Albert Laven, a man that went to have a long career on television. The film is based on a real incident that Lawrence Roman, the writer of the screenplay took from Bill Keating's tell-all book. This picture pales in comparison with "On the Waterfront", a fictional account that came before and directed by Elia Kazan.Richard Egan, the star of the film, was an actor that gave straight performances, as he shows in here. Jan Sterling is effective as Madge Pitts, the wife of the wounded man. Walter Matthau appears as the union boss, Al Dahlke, one of the many heavies he played during those years of his career. Dan Duryea has some excellent moments as the defense lawyer at the trial of the three men that attempted to kill Solly Pitts. Mickey Shaughnessy is seen as Solly. Charles McGraw, Sam Levene, Julie Adams and Harry Bellaver, are part of the supporting cast.The other asset in the film is the fine score by Richard Rodgers and Herschel Burke Gilbert, assisted by the uncredited Henry Mancini. The New York only location was not shot on the avenue that gives its name to the film, as it appears most of the work was done somewhere else.

Surely no other film noir has had such an illustrious composer responsible for its theme music. I studied "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue," the musical suite, in elementary school! The movie itself is quite good. It is a gritty story about life on the waterfront. The director isn't famous but I notice he also directed one of my favorites, which I haven't seen in many a long year: "Down Three Dark Streets"! And what a cast! Most people watching today will single out Walter Matthau, who is fine in a relatively small role. But Richard Egan is excellent as an ambitious young cop. Jan Sterling, always good in tough roles, is excellent as the wife of the man who falls victim to the title event. Julie Adams is appealing as Egan's wife. And Dan Duryea gives a bravura performance as a smart but not very admirable lawyer.The rest of the cast includes such noir staples as Charles McGraw, Sam Levene, and Mickey Shaughnessy.Initially, I have to admit that I found the music a little distracting. But I got used to it. And the movie hits pretty hard.

Based on fact, and hewing closely to a book co-authored by the central character Keating, this movie is based on more or less the real people portrayed in On the Waterfront -- there's even a priest-- only without Brando and without the romance. Egan as Keating is a bit of a stiff. I think the real Keating was more of a rebel. Great title music, an old Rodgers & Hart tune first used in "On Your Toes" for a comic dance number. Still, not much Slaughter and not much Tenth Avenue either. (The real life incident at the beginning took place on Grove Street in Greenwich Village, but "Slaughter on Grove Street" wouldn't sound right, I guess.)