The Big Caper: Burning Desire For a Life of Luxury Drives Career Criminal to Score a Cool Million Bucks

Roxanne Arlen, Paul Picerni, Corey Allen, "The Big Caper" (1957).

Heist films must always be centered around a carefully thought-out plan — and no matter how artfully arranged, the scheme will sooner or later go horribly wrong.

Lots of stuff can cause a heist to crash and burn: a flaw in the plan; unforeseen circumstances; somebody accidentally trips an alarm — you’ve probably seen them all. 

But the most interesting kind of heist failure occurs when gang members' weaknesses cause it to happen. One is a big mouth, another has a hot temper and yet another has an uncontrolled addiction, all of which causes friction that punches a hole in the entire operation. “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) and “The Killing” (1956) are two high-water marks in the American heist sub-genre, and both are like case studies of each character’s flaws. “The Big Caper” (1957) is a kindred spirit, but not in the same league as the other two.

In "The Big Caper," career criminal Frank Harper (Rory Calhoun) will eventually confront the same fate that other hoodlums before him have met. Like many others, his desire for material comfort and freedom motivates him to go for the big score. He's every bit the cool character as he drives a shiny Chrysler during the opening credits. He yearns to be seated in the lap of luxury, or at least flush with cash now that he dropped his last couple of thousand bucks at the track. He drools over the swank Southern California home that racketeer Flood (James Gregory) is renting. Poolside at Flood’s lair, Frank is all business while secretly coveting the senior gangster’s upper middle class lifestyle, including his blond bombshell of a girlfriend, Kaye (Mary Costa), who’s in taking a dip.

 Frank wants Flood to pony up the cash he needs to do a big job. A former Marine who was stationed at Camp Pendleton, Frank knows that the Corps’ payroll is regularly kept in a small bank near the base. More than $1 million in cash can be had if they play their cards right. Flood is hesitant, but is eventually persuaded to finance the operation and provide his connections to crime specialists.

The plan is that Frank and Kaye will pretend to be husband and wife, buy a filling station and a home in the community and blend in with the local citizens. When the time is right Frank's crew will crack open the bank vault and make off with the dough. 

The scheme sounds foolproof, as do most heist movie plots, but the difficulty comes in the execution. For one thing, putting Frank and Flood’s girl together, posing as man and wife, is like playing with matches near a leaky gas pipe.

Within a few months Frank and Kaye have mingled their way into the community, making friends with other couples in their neighborhood. They’re even pals with the cop on the beat. But their manufactured image of suburban contentment is as staged and hollow as pictures in a Sears catalogue. 

Why the big charade is needed as part of the robbery scheme is never clear, but it puts Frank and Kaye together in a domestic setting and their lace curtain existence together begins to have an effect on both. Kaye is unhappy being Flood’s girl, and pretending to live in matrimonial bliss makes her crave the real thing. She tells Frank that she plans to split with Flood. 

“Hope I’m not around when you decide to break the news to him,” he growls. 

Rory Calhoun, Mary Costa: An Imitation of Domestic Bliss. 

She’s not the only one feeling the itch of desire. He struggles to keep his relationship with Kaye on a strictly business track, but it’s only a matter of time before the wall he puts up develops cracks. Frank can barely stand running the filling station and earning peanuts. It’s for squares, he says. When neighbors are around he’s all smiles, but can hardly wait to pull the caper and blow town.

Pulling the robbery requires rounding up the manpower get the job done; a heist movie staple. Roy (Corey Allen), Flood’s blonde, musclebound houseboy and henchman is odd and unpredictable. He appears to have a sadomasochistic relationship with his boss — Flood whips him for showing his muscles to Kaye (could this have anything to do with Flood’s blasé attitude toward her?). Roy’s hackles are raised when Doll (Roxanne Arlen), the cupie doll girlfriend of another mobster, shows up, breaking the crew’s guys-only policy. Soon enough, she burrows her way into the caper and becomes a threatening annoyance to Flood.  

Old man Dutch Paulmeyer (Florenz Ames), expert in the art of blowing open safes with nitro, joins the pack. Respected among his peers and near retirement, he speaks with an accent and is the consummate gentleman thief. 

His diametric opposite, Zimmer (Robert H. Harris), an arsonist and hard-core boozer, stumbles onto the scene. Sweating profusely, dressed in a panama hat, white linen suit and a loud, wide tie, it’s clear that he’s going to be trouble. He’s a pyromaniac who strikes wooden matches and stares dreamy eyed into the flame as though he’s getting an erotic rush from it. There’s dynamite and a timer in his suitcase and he’s got an unquenchable thirst for gin — what could go wrong?

Quite a lot, actually. Especially when Frank and Kaye learn that there’s a very big problem with Zimmer’s plans to set off a diversionary explosions as part of the robbery plan.

Frank is finally left on his own to struggle with his conscience, knowing that the crew’s big score will do irreparable damage to the community that he once ridiculed. The film seems to ask whether or not an antisocial cynic can transform himself into righteousness simply by going through the motions of living a clean life and accidentally finding love. It takes more than that, of course, but Frank Harper is a hard-core case who just might have a soft center.