Cinema: Vintage Violence

The Killers, nominally based on a vigorous short story by Ernest Hemingway, seems to borrow most of its inspiration from the Marquís de Sade. In 1946, the Hemingway story triggered a crisp crime thriller starring Burt Lancaster as the willing victim gunned down by hired assassins. The latest version, with John Cassavetes, was designed as a full-length feature for television, then was bucked along to theater exhibitors when NBC decided that its burly blend of sex and brutality might loom rather large on the home screen.

In an opening sequence that roughly sets the tone, two hoods, contracted by Con Man Ronald Reagan, show a fine flair for menace as they trail Cassavetes to a school for the blind, where they pummel a winsome blind receptionist. In another scene, they threaten to parboil a man sweating off pounds in a steam cabinet, thus warming up for the moment when they thrust leggy Angie Dickinson headfirst out the window of a skyscraper hotel room, trying to make her tell what happened to the $1,000,000 swag from a mail robbery.

Perhaps the sole justification for turning a fine old movie into a just passable new one can be summed up as Angie Dickinson. Playing the tawny, amoral triplecrossing swinger who lures Cassavetes from auto racing to a life of crime, Angie isn't a subtle actress. But she somehow suggests to every male in the audience that this is a girl more inviting, and more dangerous, than a custom Ferrari idling on a fast track.