Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Private Hell 36 Blu-ray Movie Review

Steve Cochran as The Devil.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 15, 2012

Somebody somewhere is going to get the bright idea to make a biographical film about Ida Lupino. Though she’s little remembered today (sadly), Lupino, while never really an A-list actress in the truest sense of the term, managed to keep working steadily for decades in a number of relatively high profile roles. But what really sets her apart from her Golden Era comrades is that Lupino was one of the first women (in the American film industry, at least) to branch out into several executive roles, including directing, producing and writing. Lupino’s directorial efforts are a really fascinating and surprisingly twisted oeuvre in and of themselves, miles apart from the often kind of bland, B-movie roles she was given as an actress. Her writing is similarly skewed toward the darker tones of human nature, and that’s certainly the case with 1954’s Private Hell 36, a film Lupino co-wrote with her ex-husband Collier Young (who also produced) and starred in with her then current husband Howard Duff. In its own small scale way, Private Hell 36 presages all sorts of later noir-esque films, notably L.A. Confidential, with cops on the take and sultry femmes fatales luring otherwise semi-decent men to their doom. Tautly directed by Don Siegel, who would go on to reinvent the hard bitten cop genre with at least a couple of Clint Eastwood films (notably Dirty Harry), Private Hell 36 manages to rise above its lo-fi ethos to deliver some startlingly effective drama, as well as some fairly nuanced depictions of various people facing moral dilemmas from which there is no easy escape.

Private Hell 36 aims to be a taut thriller about a crisis of conscience, and that is why one peculiar aspect of this little film is so confusing: at barely 90 minutes long to begin with, the film spends almost its first 45 minutes setting up characters before the actual salient plot point is finally arrived at. We have two apparently stalwart police detectives, Jack Farnham (Howard Duff) and Cal Bruner (Steve Cochran), who are trying to track down some missing loot from a robbery. The film actually starts with a veritable bang, as we see one evidently dead or disabled man in an elevator and then witness Bruner quickly dispatching some bad guys involved in a violent crime. But then the film bogs down, at least somewhat, in a long expository sequence which introduces blowsy saloon singer Lilli Marlowe (Ida Lupino), who is the only one who can identify a man who has been passing some of the missing loot.

That then sends the film off on some well staged but draggy moments at a racetrack, where Lilli will hopefully be able to help Farnham and Bruner collar the bad guy. Finally things swing into high gear, at least for a moment, when the two cops engage in an exciting car chase with the villain, a chase which ends with a spectacular crash (well, spectacular for 1954, anyway), and that’s finally when the main arc of the plot kicks in. Blowing away from the smashed remains of the bad guy’s coupe are copious amounts of cold, hard cash, at which point Farnham notices a wrecked lockbox that is full of bills. Both he and Bruner scurry about trying to pick up as much of the money as they can, and we see some momentary indecision on Farnham’s part as to whether he should put the bills back where they belong or not. The irony turns out to be it’s Bruner who’s more than willing to literally pocket a large stash of the cash himself, despite the fact that the bills are marked and can’t be spent, at least not right away.

Bruner wants the dough, however momentarily ineffective it may be, because he’s fallen hard for Lilli, and as he confesses to her in a scenic car drive, he and she share a desire for the “best things in life”. The interesting formulation here is that Lupino’s Lilli is not a typical femme fatale. She’s not particularly seductive, and in fact seems to not want any kind of relationship. She comes across as a bruised soul, one who has built up a certain toughness over the years and isn’t about to be taken for a fool again, even if Bruner hints that he can provide for her in a manner to which she would certainly like to become accustomed.

That leaves the bulk of Private Hell 36 to play out as a dialectic between Farnham’s desire to spill the beans about Bruner without ever really being able to and Bruner’s own increasingly desperate attempts to keep his secret safe. Playing into the drama is some fairly turgid domestic meanderings featuring Farnham’s long suffering and overly worried wife (played by Dorothy Malone). The films wends its way toward a pretty rote conclusion, with a putative twist that kind of undercuts the previous attempts to at least dance around a sort of quasi-noir feeling. Duff is fine as the no nonsense policeman, presaging his work a decade and a half later on the briefly successful ABC cop drama Felony Squad, and Lupino, while oddly cast (she did after all write the role for herself), manages to make Lilli a rather unique character. The film largely belongs to Cochrane, however. He has a hulking, menacing quality, one filled with a very visceral athletic, even violent, quality that brings to mind the young Ralph Meeker in such films as Farewell My Lovely. Cochran never really grabbed the brass ring of stardom in Hollywood, despite having an undeniable magnetism, dying under rather weird circumstances at a relatively young age, and Private Hell 36 remains one of the best performances in his all too short career.

Private Hell 36 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Private Hell 36 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The elements here do occasionally show signs of age, with sporadic specks and flecks dotting the landscape. Contrast is occasionally problematic as well, with some scenes (notably the racetrack segments) looking slightly washed out in comparison to the rest of the film. The image is largely crisp and well detailed, though, offering very good fine object detail in close-ups, though generally speaking it's not an ultra-sharp looking film. There are a couple of weird artifacts present, however. At around 21:33, as Duff walks in front of a nightclub curtain, a weird haloing effect is present for just a moment that almost looks like waves of electricity emanating out of his head. I'm assuming this may be some strange form of aliasing or the result of edge enhancement. Later there is a very brief moment of white dot-like scratches that occurs in a scene with Malone. Otherwise, though, this is a decent, if not exemplary, looking high definition presentation.

Private Hell 36 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Private Hell 36's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix gets the job done surprisingly aggressively at times, with excellent fidelity and some appealing dynamic range. Some of the foley effects are a little on the hyperbolic side (the screeching tires and ultimate crashing noise in the car chase sequence are notable examples). Dialogue is very cleanly and clearly presented, and while the track is obviously narrow and rather shallow, there's not much here to complain about. The track has withstood the vagaries of time rather well, all things considered.

Private Hell 36 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Private Hell 36 contains no supplements of any kind.

Private Hell 36 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If Private Hell 36 would have cut to the chase (no pun intended) a bit sooner, it would have been a much tauter, more exhilarating, experience. The characters are all quite well written and are ably portrayed by a game cast, but the film simply takes too much time getting to Bruner's thievery and Farnham's crisis of conscience. Once we do arrive at that point, things bog down again in needless domestic drama with Farnham's anxious wife and the seemingly doddering attempts of the police chief (Dean Jagger) to get to the bottom of the missing loot. But buried within this undeniably flawed gem are some great moments which help to alleviate the tedium. Lupino is a really interesting presence here, less the seductive femme fatale than a wary refugee from failed affairs, and Cochran is really excellent in a physically adept and emotionally nuanced portrayal. Cochran got pigeonholed into a bunch of villainous roles early in his career and was never really able to shake the perception of him as a "bad guy", something not helped by his extracurricular reputation as a major Hollywood Lothario, but here he's able to color the villainy with a certain vulnerability and even likability. Private Hell 36 isn't a great film, but it's a surprisingly entertaining one a lot of the time.