Claysaba
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Voxitype
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
Ariella Broughton
It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
secondtake
Dial 1119 (1950)The simple premise here is transcended by gritty, real acting and some nice filming and editing to make a great minor movie. At the start, a psychotic killer is loose, and he is looking for the shrink that once put him in the mental ward. But when he gets to the town where the doctor lives, things go wrong, and he ends up with a set of hostages in a second story bar. Police arrive and surround him, and the standoff begins.What happens next is partly formula, as each of the hostages has some kind of encounter with the man, either in trying to talk him out of things, or make a phone call for help, or eventually physically attack. There is a shadow of that more famous precursor, "The Petrified Forest," but with none of the literate and romantic elegance of the hostages or the archetypal hype of the criminals. This is more of the gritty truth of what it might actually be like.Outside the bar, as the townspeople gather and the police strategize, it's a believable situation as well. It's night on the street, and the doctor is found but no one will let him go in and negotiate because the cops have their preferred methods which are tried, one by one, without success. There's a slight feeling of those crowds who were watching Henry Fonda trapped in his upper story room in "The Long Night" (1947), though in this one the crowds are not at all sympathetic. Eventually the doctor takes a chance and goes in to talk to the criminal in what is now an established profession of crisis negotiator.One fascinating aspect here, for 1950 especially, is the role of live television. A portable "on the spot" t.v. truck arrives and sets up in the street (with more than one camera). And in the bar there is a large screen (yes, very large) television that the criminal turns on for awhile. This allows him to see what is happening outside the bar, and so we get to see both sides of the situation at the same time. While television had been used many times in movies before, it was perhaps never quite so visually integral to the events as here. The technology that is implied for this kind of very large device isn't clear (they mention something in the movie which doesn't explain it, really, but which makes clear they know it's unusual for the time).There are several excellent (and familiar) actors in this tightly woven plot. The lead (the killer) played by Marshall Thompson is unfamiliar to me, and might be a weaker link--he plays the steely-faced desperado a little too straight (not that we needed Richard Widmark, that's an idea!). The cop side of things is very routine, but there are some nice twists to their progress. In all, well made and mildly suspenseful, and fast enough to never let you down.
bkoganbing
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.
MartinHafer
Back in 1936, Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart starred in a tough little film based on their play by the same name. Howard is a nice drifter who just happens to walk into a desert restaurant/filling station at the same time a wanted mobster and his henchmen arrive. And, through most of the film, these crooks terrorize the patrons and make them fear for their lives. This sort of plot has been repeated several times in the 1950s with "Suddenly", "The Desperate Hours" and this film, "Dial 1119".The major difference with "Dial 9111" and these other films is that instead of a criminal holding everyone hostage, it's an escaped mental patient--a guy who has no compunction about killing people with his stolen gun. Seeing this guy with a baby face is particularly striking. And, to make it a lot more creepy than these other films, he does so with absolutely no emotion--none! The bar is made up of a variety of patrons (some of which have interesting back stories--like the creep played by Leon Ames) as well as the amazingly blunt and rude bartender, 'Chuckles' (William Conrad).Once the guy begins shooting people in the bar, there isn't a lot the police can do--he might be insane but he's also smart and has figured all the angles--and police are afraid to do anything lest all the captives be killed. The film then, is a very tense standoff--on with brutal violence, great tension and a lot to offer with such a low-budget film. Well worth your time.
howdymax
A little storyline before I get to the bad stuff. This psycho rolls into town on a bus and shoots the driver with his own gun for no apparent reason. I say for no apparent reason because for the first 15 minutes of the movie, he never says a word. What is a bus driver doing with a pistol anyway? He then wanders into a bar full of cast characters, and when his picture appears on tv, he shoots the bartender. Again for no apparent reason. He then holds the bar patrons hostage and notifies the cops with a demand that he wants to see his shrink. By this time, I wanted to see my shrink.The psycho is played - or should I say underplayed - by Marshall Thompson. This guy has been a minor player in movies, and later TV, forever. He specialized in innocent, usually naive characters. He should have stuck with it. This isn't acting. I don't know what it is. He practically walks in his sleep, There are occasional eruptions of violent hysteria to remind us that he is nuts. Otherwise, we would think he was asleep. He sometimes launches into a whining explanation of all his problems. The only people who care are the ones he's holding hostage. By the middle of this movie, I felt like I was held hostage. From time to time they cut to Sam Levene who plays the shrink. He sounded crazier than the psycho! I have to believe all these actors were contract players. Nobody could possibly have wanted to appear in this movie voluntarily.There is one peculiar aspect to this movie that caught my attention. They seem to be fascinated with TV. This was 1950 and TV was still largely an oddity to most folks. There is a large screen TV in this seedy bar that probably wouldn't rate a pin ball machine in real life. They feature shots of those immense early tv cameras as well as the control trailers with all the flashing lights, dials, knobs, and switches. Anyway, the shrink finally talks his way into the bar and takes that high energy opportunity to confront this guy with the news that he was rejected by the draft and invented a story that the military taught him to kill in order to hide his own inadequacies. What! This guy has been under treatment for years, locked up in a rubber room, and the shrink takes this explosive moment to confront him. Well, guess what happens.Meantime, do yourself a favor. If you ever decide to watch this, play a little background music on your stereo to fill in all the dead time.
