17 Gun Crazy (1949) and Guncrazy (1992) GUN CRAZY(1949) There were so many tag lines for the 1949 Joseph H. Lewis film originally titled Deadly Is the Female (sometimes reviewed under this title) that one wonders why the King Brothers (producers) did not stick with this title. But it is easily seen why they chose to rename the John Dall/Peggy Cummins starrer Gun Crazy—because Bart (John Dall) says to Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) at one point, “We go together, Laurie…like guns and ammunition go together!” Yes, Bart and Laurie are “Thrill crazy…Kill crazy.” Advertising refers to English actress Peggy Cummins as “Notorious Laurie Starr…wanted in a dozen states…hunted by the F.B.I.” and “She was more than any man can handle!” and claims to present “The Flaming Life of Laurie Starr (The Lethal Blonde)” and “Her Violent Loves! Her Vicious Crimes! Her Wild Escapes…” “Nothing Deadlier Is Known to Man.” An obvious forerunner of the Bonnie and Clyde type of action crime movie about the flight of a fugitive pair of mad lovers and robbers, Gun Crazy thrills its audience like no other film noir of the late 1940s. It is the last word in B-noir commercial movies. Written by MacKinlay Kantor (previously known for his Academy Award-winning screenplay of The Best Years of Our Lives [1946]) in collaboration with blacklisted Dalton Trumbo (“Millard Kaufman”), Gun Crazy has become a cult film, a midnight movie, because of its dazzling -75- |