"Well, Cinderella, I was beginning to think you'd never come for your shoe."
Mal Reese (John Vernon)
1967 was a rough year for crime films.
Any crime film that was in the theaters in the same year as "Bonnie and Clyde" almost had to take a backseat.
There were lots of other crime films that year — both fiction (most notably "Cool Hand Luke" although there was also "Wait Until Dark") and nonfiction (i.e., "In Cold Blood") stories — that are remembered by film buffs today, but "Bonnie and Clyde" really sucked up most of the oxygen in the room at the time and continues to demand a lot of the attention.
Consequently, a pretty good crime film like "Point Blank," which made its debut on this day in 1967, was forgotten practically from the start. It was far from a box–office smash, and today it is a hidden gem that you will seldom find shown on television. If you want to watch it, you may have to buy the DVD.
Which may not be such a bad idea. The movie was declared "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and chosen for preservation in its National Film Registry last year. My guess would be that was the first time that many people ever heard of it.
It got good reviews when it was released half a century ago and deservedly so. But "Bonnie and Clyde" (which was selected for the National Film Registry in 1992) had been in theaters only a couple of weeks when "Point Blank" premiered so it was all but ignored by the moviegoing public.
Timing, as they say, is everything.
If you ever saw "Animal House," you must remember John Vernon. He played Dean Wormer.
But more than a decade earlier, Vernon played a character who teamed up with Lee Marvin in "Point Blank" to steal a lot of money from a courier for a gambling operation — then he double–crossed Marvin, shooting him and leaving him to die. He took the money and Marvin's wife with him.
But Marvin didn't die, and he recovered with the help of a perplexing character played by Keenan Wynn. A few years after being shot he popped up to take revenge, aided by his sister–in–law (Angie Dickinson), and get his money (an objective he mentioned several times). Carroll O'Connor had a supporting role in the years before he found fame as TV's Archie Bunker.
Part of his revenge involved killing Vernon's character in a particularly brutal way.
I guess the moral of that story is — if you're going to kill people, don't wound them and then leave, assuming they will die. Finish the job. Don't leave the ultimate witness still breathing.
If you do, in keeping with Murphy's law, they will survive, and, at the very least, they will identify you.
At the very worst, well, they will do something like what Marvin's character did. As I say, it wasn't pretty.
But I suppose it is true what they say — No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of criminals.
Even in the movies.
That brings me to one more point.
Film critic Roger Ebert had a few questions of his own, most of which seemed to deal with plot logic. But, in the mostly make believe world of the movies, it is not wise to expect too much logic.
Still, if you like suspense thrillers, "Point Blank" is pretty good. As I say, it was ignored at the time — but it has come to be regarded as one of the best of its kind in the '60s.
