Wow! Such a good movie.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The Long Wait is directed by Victor Saville and adapted to screenplay by Alan Green and Lesser Samuels from the Mickey Spillane novel. It stars Anthony Quinn, Charles Coburn, Gene Evans, Peggie Castle, Mary Ellen Kay and Shirley Patterson. Music is by Mario Castelnuovo- Tedesco and cinematography by Franz Planer.Johnny McBride (Quinn) is a amnesiac who manages to get back to his home town of Lyncastle where he hopes to unravel who he is. But pretty soon he finds himself in a quagmire of trouble and strife...Every once in a while I come across an instance like this, where a film noir picture's reviews back upon its release were savage, and yet today the more modern noir lover is mostly positive about the pic. In fact IMDb's rating sits currently at 7.2, which as the site's users will attest to, is pretty good going. So where we at with this Spillane revamp?The complaints back in the day about it being dull and boring smack to me of writers back then not exactly understanding the noir ethos, though it's noted that there is the odd modern reviewer sharing the same complaint. It's a film very much erring on the side of bleak and moody, dabbling in the complexities of the human condition, and it's done very well, though the screenplay is hardly minus plot holes and is full of incredulous set-ups.We also have to buy into Quinn being catnip to the dames, four of them no less! But Quinn does angry and broody very well, and he gets to do lots of both here. The aura of a town paddling in its own muck is evident, the amnesia angle merely an excuse to keep things on the side of murky, for it's imperative that we feel Johnny McBride's confusion and mistrust, and we do. All of which is framed superbly by Planer's (Criss Cross) photography, which never misses a chance for shadows and low lights.With salty villains and sultry dames, violence and choice dialogue, and a few superb scenes (one sequence in an empty warehouse is stunning), this is very much a noir for noir lovers to sample. But with that in mind, these warnings should be noted, that as is often the way in noirville, the ending is divisive and the overt misogyny could well offend. 6.5/10

With a poll coming up on IMDb's Classic Film board for the best titles of 1954,I started to search around for near-forgotten Film Noirs to view.With having heard about lead actor Anthony Quinn,I was thrilled to stumble up on a title,which would hopefully make the long wait I've had of seeing Quinn on screen something that was worth waiting for.The plot:Hitch-hiking Johnny McBride gets a lift from a driver,who ends up crashing his car and leaving McBride in a coma for 2 years.2 Years later:Waking up from the coma McBride discovers that along with his finger prints having been burnt off in the crash,that he is also suffering from amnesia,with any type of ID that McBride owned having been burnt in the crash.Walking out of hospital at last,McBride starts attempting to put his life back together.Meeting 2 people who claim to be friends,McBride is told to go to a small town,due to a shop in the area having a photo of him.Unknown to McBride,the 2 friends are actually people who want to claim a reward over McBride being linked to a bank robbery and a murder.Reaching the town,McBride soon run into 2 police officers who arrest him for murder.With their main piece of evidence being the finger prints on a gun that McBride used to rob a bank that he worked at,the cops are horrified to discover,that all of McBride's finger prints have been burnt off.Horrified by the allegations,McBride decides that he has waited long enough to start search around the city's underground,in the hope of uncovering his long forgotten past.View on the film:For their adaptation of Mickey Spillane's novel,writers Alan Green and Lesser Samuels smartly keep the audiences unrevealing of the past at the same distance that McBride is heading towards,which allow for each of the films sharp twist & turns to strike the viewer with the same shock that they hit McBride with.Whilst the ending is disappointingly up- beat,for the rest of the running time,the writers create a wonderfully grim Film Noir world.Giving some strong hints that McBride has shell shock from serving time in the war as he obsessively searches for his near-mythical dame,the writers paint the world that McBride attempts to remember as one that's rotten to the core,as McBride discovers to his horror that he may be linked to an underworld which has got a firm grip on the entire city.Wrapping the city in shadows as McBride goes in search of his past, director Victor Saville and cinematographer Franz Planer build an atmospheric city which is covered in dirt,with Savile and Planer making every street look like it has been infected with the characters morals,as each building appears to be rotting away.Along with the filthy Film Noir streets,Savile and Planer cake McBride's (played by an amazing,rough Anthony Quinn) in sweat,which drips across the floor as he delves deeper into the underbelly of the city and uncovers the past which he has long waited to find.

A well directed, well photographed little known gem of a film.Great role for Quinn who would have made a great Mike Hammer. His primitive face and huge hands seem prepared for instant violence. In spite of being a low budget film, the directing, acting and photography seems superior than that better known B classic 'Detour'. Gene Evans and Charles Coburn always took their character roles seriously and seemed incapable of bad performances. The lovely ballad that plays over the credits 'Once' is appropriately used throughout the movie and deserves to be a standard. The scene where a bound-up Peggie Castle crawls to a bound-up Quinn (to get her hands on his hidden pistol under pretense of a final kiss) would have made a great paperback cover for a Spillane Novel.

One professional reviewer calls this film "meandering, actionless." I'd call it complex and psychological, with well-developed characters and some memorable dialog. It is quintessential film noir with a torrid romance thrown in. You have to suspend your disbelief to buy it, but you'll gladly toss it away and revel in the intensity of it's emotions and unexpected plot twists. It's not just a battle of wits with dangerous adversaries, it's a hero's quest for truth and a search for lost love. You're kept guessing as to the finish right until the end -- more importantly, you care how it ends. I saw it at least a half dozen times back in the 1950s and 60s. I'd like to see it again and discover if it's as good as I remember it -- or whether I was just a hormone-charged teenager with a crush on Anthony Quinn. ;-)