Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Am I Missing Something?

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The 50's don't come any goofier than this. It's like Senator McCarthy and the Three Stooges stole 50 bucks and decided to commit a movie. But Lee Marvin steals the show in a performance that puts him in the Commie Dishwasher Hall of Fame. When he's not serving up Timex hamburgers, checking out his "pec's", or slobbering over waitress Terry Moore, he's relaying atomic secrets to the Russkies. And here I thought Stalin's boys only spoke in whispers and worked in libraries. Actually this is a Marvin showcase. Watch how effortlessly he moves from laughs to menace and makes you believe both. That weight-lifting scene with Wynn is some kind of screwball classic. It looks improvised to me, like someone said, "Hey, we've only got 3 pages of script! Turn the camera over here." And when Marvin strangles himself in pursuit of "a Really big neck", I heard gym doors slamming all over the city. There must be a story behind this one-set wonder, but it can't be any weirder than what's on screen. I'm just wondering when the outpatient Dein's were due back for further therapy. Anyway, it's an overlooked chance to catch one of our greatest actors in perhaps his most offbeat and unsung role.

What a crazy and terrible film this is! It's watchable because it's so random. When Lee Marvin's character's name is Slob, you know a film is worth watching. And when Slob just happens to be the biggest scientific threat to America EVER (this is one of the Cold-War fright films) masquerading as a greasy spoon cafe cook, you just can't stop watching the film! Best line-- "Go and clean that greasy griddle, Slob", said to Marvin, who looks like he's about to pour piping hot coffee on anyone's face in every scene. The film is impossible to follow, with customers at the grimy 101 shack striking up random conversations with each other about nothing in particular. Terry Moore is the waitress who every man in the film wants to jump. The film has an AWESOME opening scene with a scantily clad Moore lying on the beach, and Marvin in the background with his ear to a shell. And he tries to jump her there and then!! There's also some inane stuff about weight-lifting and trying on flippers next to the counter. Hard not to recommend, even if it is awful.

I find it tremendously rewarding to see all these enthusiastic comments about this movie here on the IMDb. This is a film that no-one ever seems to have heard of, and it's a guilty pleasure in every way. It makes NO sense, it is essentially claustrophobically confined to one cheap set within which a stream of unlikely characters played by great quirky actors parades by. There is no narrative structure at all, and you're not even sure what the point is by the end, but thanks especially to Lee Marvin and Keenan Wynn, you're fascinated all along the way. I haven't seen it in years now (something happened to my videotape of it, recorded off of TNT many years ago), but I'd consider it one of my favorite movies on the basis of the fact that I could watch it over and over and always find it satisfying.It's hard to recommend it for any rational reason, and yet I'd urge any film buff with even a tiny sense of the absurd to watch it some time before you die. You'll never see anything remotely like it, for good reason. But it gives you faith in the concept that just about anything can get produced, if you only believe strongly enough.....

The most important thing about this amazing piece is that despite its limitations from the buck fifty budget to the sledgehammered propagandist overtones to the all-over-the-place acting, this is a highly entertaining and enigmatic movie-going experience. That is not to say that it makes a lick of sense. But when you are treated to as much tear stained laughs and anvil-forged he-man dialogue, does it matter? I didn't even intend to see this one but a revival house ran it as the second feature here in Hollywood a few years back and I sat and watched and was blown away. I can't recall what the top billed film was but I sure recall this quintessential (yet almost unknown) tough guy movie. Screw all the proto-Nietzchean questions of Man and Superman, existential angst and jingoistic integrity discussion. This is pure lusty FUN... the story of good girls gone bad and bad men gone worse!For starters, here's an object lesson on how someone with screen charisma can overcome incredible problems, including a spotty on-the-nose script and zero production values. In this case, young Lee Marvin (SLOB) absolutely obliterates, yanking all our attention away from whatever else is happening (generally not much) in any given scene. This IS a compliment. His infectiously sullen scowl and alienated bad boy 'tude is so blinding that even Keenan Wynn, quite the smouldering hambone of hate himself, is superseded. I can't really recall all the ins and outs of the thinly veiled communist parablizing (something about smuggled nuclear secrets), but I sure recall Marvin hitting up a very comely Terry Moore and that the sparks fly. Truly, there is as much iconoclastic rebellious poseuring here as in Brando's much more famous (but no better) THE WILD ONE or any three Clint Eastwood movies. There may not have been any visible plot but the dialogue is diamond hard and I promise the blisteringly melodramatic interactions will have you laughing harder than you will at anything Adam Sandler puts out.