GUN CRAZY, 1950, 35mm, Warner Bros. 86 min. Dir. Joseph H. Lewis.

Deadly is the Female - Her Violent Loves! Her Vicious Crimes! Her Wild Escapes!

In the sexiest, most percussive caper film of all time, the recently departed Peggy Cummins plays sharpshooting criminal Annie Laurie - she puts the Fatale in femme fatale. She is fatally devoted to hot gunslinger Bart, played by the tall, sensitive John Dall (from Hitchcock's ROPE). He is a reform school, ex-army guy adrift in boring America; she is a sideshow Annie Oakley who evidently killed a guy in St. Louis. It's the most memorable meeting in film noir as he eagerly volunteers to have a crown of matches lit on his head by her steady-shooting hand:

Laurie: How about the crowns? Would you like to light the matches?
Bart: Would you?
Laurie: Almost killed a man once. Shot a little too low.
Bart: So did I.

Then starts their propulsive, romantic crime spree; Bart always concerned that they are doing wrong and Laurie always wanting more. This movie was stylishly shot in glorious black and white in a month for no money and written by Dalton Trumbo while he faced a federal rap in the Commie witch hunt. Come for the cowboy outfits and sunglasses and topcoats and berets. Stay for the most bravura improvised, hand-held, shot from the backseat of a Cadillac bank robbery of all time. BONNIE AND CLYDE aspires to be this picture. It ain't. Love, sex, justice, violence and devotion get the once over in a square white people world full of great sportswear and big cars. And guns. This movie satisfies like few others. Bring a date and be prepared to go on the lam.