‘Gun Crazy’ Has a Classic Robbery Scene … But We Never See the Actual Holdup

John Dall, Peggy Cummins, 'Gun Crazy' (1950).

For a dizzying moment
spectators become 
accomplices to a crime

By Paul Parcellin

“Gun Crazy” (1950)

The thoroughly American story of violence and rebellion that is “Gun Crazy” influenced generations of filmmakers since its release and laid the groundwork for many a crime picture to come. One of its most obvious kin is probably Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) (the berets and sweaters worn by femmes fatale in both films are a visual link between the two).

In “Gun Crazy,” one scene in particular, a robbery that takes place off camera, stands out as the most recognizable and influential in noir. 

Cummins as Laurie,
sideshow queen. 

Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) is a carnival sharpshooter dressed in a cowgirl outfit performing in the sideshow. Bart Tare (John Dall) faces off with her in a shooting contest and the competition takes on an erotic charge. It’s lust at first sight for this all-American couple with a gun fetish and they get hitched on the spur of the moment. But Laurie wants diamonds and furs and she browbeats Bart into sticking up stores, which they do before stepping up to the big leagues.

Frequently celebrated for the groundbreaking cinema it is, the Hampton robbery scene, the sharp shooting pair's first bank stickup, resonates with a kind of ragged energy. Director Joseph H. Lewis shot the entire robbery sequence, more than three minutes in duration, in one long take with a camera in the back seat of the getaway car. 

Dall as Bart,
born to shoot.

Lewis was unsure if the bank scene would work. So he shot a test scene with a hand-held 16mm camera and used high school kids as stand-ins for the two stars. The film's producers, the King brothers, Morris, Frank and Hyman, were impressed.

The getaway car is a stretch Cadillac with the rear seat removed to make room for Lewis and other crew who were crowded into the back. They mounted the camera on a greased wood platform so that it could be moved easily. Microphones hidden in the sun visors picked up dialogue and two sound men stationed on the roof with boom microphones recorded the sounds of the car.

The result is a scene that almost leaps off the screen. It feels authentic and raw due largely to its unscripted elements. As Bart and Laurie approach the bank, a car pulls out of a parking space and they pull into it. This was not prearranged (if no parking space was available they planned to double park). The patter between the two novice bank robbers, both before and after the heist, is improvised. No one, other than the bank’s staff and the police, knew that a film was being made — some on the street thought they were witnessing a real robbery.

Laurie and Bart, on the lam and incognito.

Once the robbery gets under way, Laurie waits in the car while Bart ducks into the bank. Both are clad in cowboy outfits, finally acting out the roles of real desperados that they’d only been cosplaying for carnival crowds. The American myth of the old west, with its history of violence and lawlessness, is the larcenous duo’s fantasy come to life.

Despite the buildup to the big event, we never see the heist take place — an unconventional move on the filmmaker’s part. This is due, in part, to the film’s budget restrictions, but Lewis’s unconventional approach has a payoff. 

We spend the duration of the robbery with Laurie, who stays cool when things start to go south. A cop strolls into the shot and lingers in front of the bank as Bart is inside. She hops out of the car and chats with the peace officer, then takes swift action once Bart barrels out of the bank. 

As they make their getaway, she turns to see if the cops are on their tail. Facing the camera, she grins, thoroughly enjoying the intense and dangerous dash from the law. It’s a carefully designed shot. Bart’s eyes are on the road and he doesn't see Laurie’s thrilled expression as they flirt with disaster. Had he realized that she's an adrenaline junky, and a dangerously unbalanced one at that, would he have dropped her and run the other way? Probably not, but this revealing, reckless moment makes it plain that their criminal partnership is teetering on the edge of destruction.

With the camera stationed behind the couple, the audience sees the entire scene from the back seat of the getaway car, which makes viewers not only spectators but virtual accomplices to the crime. 

Although more common today, this kind of offbeat camera placement was more of a novelty in 1950. Of course, “They Live By Night” (1948) includes a robbery scene in which the camera stays trained on the car rather than recording the holdup that's under way. In "The Killers" (1946), a robbery scene is shot in one long take. But neither of those films use the more daring camera placement of "Gun Crazy," putting it inside the moving vehicle and taking us, the audience, along for the ride. 

A narrow escape.

Quentin Tarantino doesn’t specifically mention “Gun Crazy” as a direct influence on “Reservoir Dogs” (1992), or the film's off-screen diamond heist. But he's a “Gun Crazy” admirer [he also cites Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” (1956) and Lewis’s “The Big Combo” (1955) as influences] so it’s not a stretch to imagine that he borrowed a page from Lewis’s playbook and left the heist to the viewer's imagination. 

Like “Gun Crazy,” “Reservoir Dogs” focuses on the aftermath of a crime and the relationships among characters rather than the details of the crime itself. Both films were made under tight budgets, so eliminating an extra expense would be an attractive option for both directors.

The "Gun Crazy" bank robbery scene evolved as it was revised and reworked from its original form. Blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo rewrote MacKinlay Kantor’s script and mostly left the robbery scene intact. Kantor had written a longer, more comedic exchange between Laurie and the policeman, but Trumbo trimmed it down. 

It was Lewis’s idea to make it all one continuous shot, from the pair approaching the bank, to the robbery and finally the getaway, and those may be the film's most revealing moments. While the robbery takes place offscreen we’re given a chance to size up Laurie and calculate her and Bart’s odds of survival. Clearly, neither of them will be robbing banks for long.

‘The Long Good Friday’: A Gangster Noir That Saw the Future

Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, "The Long Good Friday" (1980).

Mobster’s World

Blown to Bits

in an Easter

Wave of Terror


Contains spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

‘The Long Good Friday’ (1980)

As Good Friday approaches it’s fitting that we look at one of the slender number of crime films set on the holiest of Christian holy days. In filmdom, the connection between religious rites and acts of criminal savagery can be jarring (think of the baptism scene in “The Godfather”) and, by some viewers’ standards, just this side of blasphemous. But the marriage of the odious and the sacred often underlines the hypocrisy of those who tread on both sides of the fence.

In “The Long Good Friday,” which saw its U.S. debut 43 years ago this month, London crime kingpin Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) faces a disastrous Easter weekend as he watches his criminal empire disintegrate. A stubby, barrel chested Tasmanian devil of a man, Harold is about to launch a multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan. The project is designed to revitalize London’s then desolate Docklands property and fill his pockets with more cash than an East End geezer such as he could dream of. 

The idea is to remake himself into a legitimate businessman, more of less, with the help of some startup cash from the New York Mafia, a detail that casts doubt on his grand plans.

It’s 1979 and the Docklands and its surrounding area is depressed after the shipping industry moved on to larger, more suitable ports. With astonishing accuracy “The Long Good Friday” foretells the city’s future after the conservative government redeveloped the property into a sterile haven for the upper classes, a real-life outcome that would line up well with Harold’s planned cash grab.

Harold makes his pitch,
the Tower Bridge looms behind him.

We meet Harold after he touches down in a Concorde, returning from a secret mission in the States. He wastes no time getting down to business, entertaining guests on a cruise aboard his yacht on the Thames. Among the invited are corrupt cops and city officials as well as New York gangster Charlie (Eddie Constantine). With the zest, if not the eloquence, of an evangelical preacher, Harold pitches his scheme to rebuild part of the city in time for the upcoming Olympics (a London setting for the Olympic Games is purely fictional in this time frame). His goal, he says, is to make England a dominant European country again. As he speaks, he’s framed by the Tower Bridge which looms behind him, but as the craft glides onward the bridge recedes into the background and Harold stands alone, proclaiming his grand ideas and giving the impression that perhaps he’s grown too big for his britches. 

Hoskins, as the blustery, violent and highly temperamental Harold, is the very embodiment of a gangland boss. But his inflated sense of self importance, his arrogance and overconfidence are among his greatest weaknesses and are instrumental in his ultimate downfall. He’s a character who can only be matched is sheer hutzpah by Edward G. Robinson’s Rico Bandello, another bullying fireplug who dominates the mob in “Little Caesar” (1931).

P.H. Moriarty, Helen Mirren, Bob Hoskins, Brian Hall

Keeping Harold anchored to terra firma is his girlfriend, Victoria (Helen Mirren), who, unlike Harold, the plain spoken ruffian, is educated and comes from a good middle class family. The role of Victoria was originally written as Harold’s bubble headed slice of arm candy, but Mirren fought with director John Mackenzie, insisting that the character take on a more consequential role in the story, and it’s a good thing that she did. Victoria is Harold’s guiding light, and later when she begins to lose her composure as Harold’s world crashes down around him, we know that things are bad. A side note: The world of mobsters is one that the actress knew first hand. In the scene aboard the yacht, some real gangsters were brought on as extras, and they were all familiar with Mirren’s uncle, who was himself a member of the London underworld. 

A bomb set off in a pub is meant for Harold.

Once Harold’s luck takes a turn for the worse, things come apart in rapid order. He hopes to dazzle the visiting money men, but inexplicably, bodies begin to drop and bombs detonate as he and Victoria try to make nice with the visiting Mafioso, hoping in vain that they won’t notice that something’s terribly wrong. But a bomb in the pub where he and the New York contingent plan to dine is proof positive that Harold’s plans are being swept away like beach stones in a tsunami. The bombings are a clue to who’s behind the mayhem — the story was pitched to producers as “terrorism meets gangsterism.” Incidentally, the pub that’s leveled in a bomb attack was merely a set, but must have been a convincing one because passersby popped in from time to time expecting to be served drinks.

Understandably, Harold’s at wit’s end and means to find out who’s liquidating his close associates and trying to wipe him off of the map. “I’ll have his carcass dripping blood by midnight,” he growls. 

An interrogation in the slaughterhouse.

In one of the film’s more visually arresting and grotesque scenes, he rounds up a band of his associates and dangles them upside down on hooks in an abattoir, hoping to scare the bejesus out of them and learn who’s betraying him (If these are his pals, we’d hate to see what he does with his enemies).

Conditions get worse still for one fellow who endures some stigmata body modifications on a warehouse floor, a scene reminiscent of a real-life incident perpetrated by notorious gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who lorded over London’s underworld in the 1960s. The film’s replication of that occurrence is a fitting if shocking development in this Easter tale beset by paranoia and blood letting.

Harold is continually one step behind his mysterious tormentors, but finally learns that, after a series of fumbled actions and misunderstandings, the IRA has put him in its crosshairs. Blinded by his arrogance, he opts to take an ill-advised path to sew up his problems, a drastic move that demonstrates Harold’s delusional thinking.

Although the film was completed in 1980 it wasn’t released in the U.K. until the following year and didn’t premiere in the U.S. until 1982. Britain’s ITC Entertainment originally backed the production, but got cold feet after seeing the final cut. The film’s political undertones and graphic violence prompted the firm to refuse the film a theatrical release. But Handmade Films, the company founded by former Beatle George Harrison, acquired the rights and agreed to distribute it. The delays, however, only served to build the public’s anticipation of its release and helped secure the film’s cult status.

For those curious about the real-life Docklands development project, which became Canary Wharf, the film predicted with surprising accuracy the project which didn’t begin until after “The Long Good Friday” was filmed. Unfortunately for many, much of the housing lost to the developer’s wrecking ball was replaced with high end living quarters and commercial buildings. Opinions on the project’s success are mixed, with some lauding the rejuvenation of the downtrodden docks, and many feeling that the working class was steamrolled over in this bid to create valuable properties and big profits.

While many of the Docklands denizens’ lives were adversely affected over time by the project, Harold’s world falls apart before his eyes, and in a most dramatic manner. As the film ends, he’s trapped in his fancy automobile, framed this time not by the magnificent Tower Bridge, but by the vehicle’s windshield, and he’s behind it, under glass, as it were. There’s no wiggle room for him to get away. Victoria is spirited away in another car and Harold, alone and vulnerable, is in the hands of one of his tormentors (Pierce Brosnan, in his first film role). There’s little else for him to do but ponder his past and try to work out how he ended up at this juncture. He’s been roused from his reverie and his dream may one day be realized, but by someone other than himself.