Dial 1119 (1950)

Undescribable Perfection

That was an excellent one.

It is a performances centric movie

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's 1950, and familiar TV faces abound in "Dial 1119": Marshall Thompson (Daktari), Sam Levene, Keefe Brasselle, William Conrad and Virginia Field. Thompson plays Gunther Wyckoff, a deeply disturbed man who, after shooting a bus driver with his own gun, walks into a bar and takes the patrons hostage.The police have to figure out how to capture Wyckoff and free the hostages without any other people getting hurt. They send in the doctor (Levene) whose testimony saved his life during a murder trial three years earlier.It's post-war, so there's some psychoanalyzing of Wyckoff along the way.The bar has a giant television, which is great to see, and the bartender controls it from what looks like a radio below. The block of Terminal City where the bar is located is an obvious set, but somehow, it sets the just the right atmosphere.Virginia Field plays one of the bar patrons, Freddy, and she's unrecognizable as the ingénue from Fox films such as "Lloyds of London," and the Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan films. With the exception of Levene, the original Nathan Detroit in "Guys and Dolls," who continued doing film, most of the other actors enjoyed good careers in television.Pretty good.

Marshall Thompson broke new casting grounds in playing the criminally insane escaped mental patient in Dial 1119. This film was out of the B picture unit at MGM and was far more likely to have previously come from a studio like RKO or Columbia. MGM was one of the last big studios to put out a realistic type noir film like this one.Time and circumstances get six people trapped in a bar in the fictitious Terminal City where Thompson after taking a weapon from a bus driver and killing him over it, he holds up in a bar. When the news comes over the bar television, Thompson shoots bartender William Conrad and holds the other customers which include Virginia Field, Andrea King, Leon Ames, Keefe Brasselle, and James Bell as hostages.Thompson had been convicted once of murder, but was declared insane and given a life sentence at an asylum due to the work of psychiatrist Sam Levene. A fact that police captain Richard Rober won't let him forget. They have a lot to say to each other during the course of the film.Dial 1119 moves at a pretty good pace and not a minute of its 75 minute running time is wasted. The lack of really big movie names no doubt helps create the realistic aura of the film.Marshall Thompson usually played good guys and will ever be remembered as Daktari from the television show. I suspect he never got roles like this again because the public wouldn't accept him just like Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley. This film is brutally uncompromising on its view of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment will not be pleased, but Dial 1119 is still a great noir film.

You know the audience is in for a bumpy ride when the all-night bus arrives in a place called Terminal City. Actually it's the luckless driver who ends up terminated, with a slug in the belly from ungrateful, wacko passenger Gunther Wykoff (Thompson) who has not yet learned how to blink or turn his head. So, now the crazy guy is loose in the city, headed for a late night bar sporting that new-fangled invention called television. (I suspect this 1950 production was one of the first to integrate TV into the storyline.) There, he holds hostage a motley crew of barflies who, needless to say, don't help his condition at all. He'd like to whack 'em all, but first he has to meet with his head-doctor (Levene) who's obviously done a pretty rotten job so far. Meanwhile, the cops, a TV crew, and a few hundred on-lookers have taken a real interest in Gunther's where-abouts and are waiting outside to greet him if he ever comes out. So, the stage is set, but how will it play out.This may be big-budget MGM's cheapest production on record (basically one set and a $20 lighting bill), but they do get their money's worth. This suspenseful little crime drama is well acted and packs a pretty good punch. Baby-faced Thompson plays against type and is excellent in the pivotal role of the stare-happy wacko. William Conrad is a stand-out too, as the no-nonsense barkeep, but I guess it's only logical that he would have to exit early— too bad. On the other hand, make-out artist Earl (Ames) and the classy what's-she-doing-in- this-dump Helen (King) are none too believable, and I kept hoping Gunther would spare us the bad seduction dialog and put a fist in Earl's syrupy mouth. Apparently, young father Skip (Brasselle) was added so there would be at least one sympathetic person among the collection of compromised characters. Anyway, it's a good, tight little B-film, with the novel idea (for its time) that movies and TV might get along, after all.

(There are Spoilers) Hostage drama that takes place in this bar with an on the loose psycho killer who just flew the coop from the local state hospital for the criminally insane wanting to see his shrink, psychiatrist, who got him off from being executed for the murder of a policeman three years earlier.The crazed killer Gunther Wyckoff, Marshall Tompson, didn't waste any time in making himself known to the public and police by gunning down a bus driver,John Damler, who's gun that was in full view of everyone on the bus was lifted by Gunther when everyone, including the bus driver, left the bus on a rest stop. The bus driver was not only incompetent in leaving his gun on board for Gunther to grab but later realizing that his gun was missing he didn't have enough sense to check for himself! The bus driver confronts Gunther not only telling him to give him his gun back but actually tries to grab it off him! You can just imagine what happened next, he got it right in the gut.Gunther wanting to see his psychiatrist Dr. John D. Faron, Sam Levene, about something in his past is frustrated to find that the doc is nowhere to be found, not in his office or apartment. Gunther going to the local bar to dry out only gets even more crazy when the bartender Chuckels, William Conrad,who's only doing his job forces him to have a drink, which he of course doesn't pay for. Within minutes Gunther completely loses it when he's spotted by Chuckels on the screen of his 3 by 4 foot remote control flat-screen projection TV set broadcasting a police bulletin with his picture, front and side, and then all hell breaks lose.Gunning down Chuckles who tried to pull a gun on him Gunther then takes center stage, and five hostages, in the movie as he calls all the shots, as well as giving them out.Gunther is determined to having a chat with Dr. Faron about his both mental state and military service. This goes on for what seems like days, it's all supposed to take place in less then a hour, as Gunther terrorizers the customers who are now his hostages. You can't help wondering why Gunther wants so badly to see Dr. Faron to the point where he already murdered two people to get an audience with him?You know right away that this guy, Gunther Wyckoff, is not only nuts but all his talk about his glorious and macho experiences in the US Army during the war, that he talks endlessly about to his captive audience, is all a pile of horse-sh*t. It's Dr Faron himself who later, against police orders, makes it into the bar and finally has this important talk with the psycho. Dr. Faron brings Gunther back to reality in just how ridicules he is, he was in fact never overseas and kicked out of the Army on a section 8, in his fantasies about his combat experiences which besides showing just how unprofessional Dr Faron is, in disturbing an already very disturbed and unstable person. Dr. Faron sets the now really off-the-wall Gunther off and jeopardizing not only his but the lives of all the people in the bar.Interesting but not at all earth-shaking movie about a mentally ill young man, Gunther Wyckoff, who just couldn't get it out of his head that he was a failure at what he loved most in being a blood & guts war hero. Gunther substituted that failed ambition in becoming a psycho killer of defenseless and innocent people. With the one person who could possibly help him, Dr. Faron, also failing to understand with just what kind of a dangerous person he was dealing with. Gunther egged on by Dr.Faron in revealing his darkest fears, that he just couldn't cut it as a combat soldier, that in the end cost both him and Gunther their lives.