Appointment with Danger is a great movie.
Here’s the deal: It’s Gary, Indiana in 1951.
A nun has just seen Jack Webb and Harry Morgan strangle a man, but she
doesn’t know it. It’s raining and
her umbrella’s jammed and she buys Morgan’s excuse that the victim’s had too
much to drink and they’re “helping him get some air.” The nun suspect’s something’s up and
tells the next beat cop she sees, but he’s quickly distracted and nothing comes
of it. The next morning, a body in
an alley turns out to be a postal inspector (FYI, the postal inspectors were
America’s first federal law enforcement officers. They’re a legitimate organization.). Cue Alan Ladd, the best but meanest
postal inspector of ‘em all, to piece together the clues, find the bad guys,
and ring down the curtain.
That’s the first five minutes. The rest of the film is moody black and white, men in
fedoras and women in slinky dresses, and exchanges like, “Do you even know what
love is?” “Sure. It’s what happens between a man and a
.45 that won’t jam.”
Webb and Morgan, who went on to make television history as
the cops in “Dragnet,” make convincing and dangerous villains. Alan Ladd is clearly having the time of
his life as a hard man who who gets to deliver lines like “I don’t have a
heart. I have a muscle in my
chest. When a postal inspector
dies, they don’t say his heart stopped.
They say he got a charley horse.”
And Paul Stewart, one of the great character actors, delivers a
mastermind who’s smart, ruthless, and flawed enough to make him interesting.
Appointment with Danger has fistfights and
innuendo, car chases and shootouts.
It also has a watertight plot and great photography. Further, it takes advantage of
its unique location, snappy dialogue, and a wonderful sense of what makes a
noir picture great. Appointment with
Danger works in every way.
