Load of rubbish!!

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely Brilliant!

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Mark Sevens stars and directs this crime drama. After angering mobsters, police officer Vic Barron(Stevens)is framed for a crime he didn't commit. The worse part is suffering the tragedy of his wife and child being murdered. After serving his time, Barron is determined to seek revenge on one man in particular, Tino Morelli(Douglas Kennedy), who helped put him behind bars.When have you seen Film Noir set in Alaska? Barron is blind to everything but getting vengeance and he travels to a remote town in Alaska. Ketchikan is where the mild mannered Vic is sure he'll find his man and settle the score. CRY VENGEANCE may seem a bit off beat; sometimes making it hard to tell the difference between good and bad. The plot is sustainable and even miles and miles of snow look good.Rounding out the cast are: Martha Hyer, Cheryl Callaway, Mort Mills, Don Haggerty and John Doucette.

***SPOILERS*** Framed for a crime, which is never elaborated or explained in the movie, that he didn't commit ex-SFPD cop Vic Barron, Mark Stevens, is out to not only gets those who framed him but the person who killed his wife and child in a car bomb explosion that left him looking like the phantom of the opera without his mask on. The one person whom Barron is out to get is mob boss Tino Morelli, Douglas Kennedy, whom he thinks order the hit on him that ended up killing both his wife and five year old daughter. Checking out Morellie's old haunts in the city a bay area nightclub owned by Nick Buda, Lewis Martin, Barron is confronted by Buda's bodyguard the man in white Roxey, Skip Homeier, whom he puts away with a couple body chops and hits to the kidney.It's later that Barron gets the word from the out cold Roxey's abused girlfriend Lily Arnold, Joan Vohs, after leaning on her a bit that Morelli skipped out of town and is now residing in th Alasken town ,known as the "Salmon Capital" of the world, Ketchiken. Taking Lily's fishy story to be the real deal Barron takes the first plane out or north to Alaska to both meet and knock off Morelli for what he did to him and his family. It's there that Barron meets bar owner Peggy Hadrding, Martha Hayer, who despite his disfigured mug or face takes a shine to him because of his manly and "I don't give a sh*t about anything" attitude. Meanwhile with the word out that Vic Barron is in town Morelli's bodyguard Johnny Blue-Eyes, Mort Mills, takes a crack at him only ending up on the floor with his kidney's badly damaged from Barron's karate chops. It was later in the movie when Barron breaks into Morelli's house that he karate's chops Johnny Blue-Eyes, who tried to stop him, so bad that he never regained consciousness or woke up for the remainder of the film!****SPOILERS**** Things start to happen that has the vengeful Vic Barron begins to change his opinion about Morelli when he meets his 7 year old daughter Marie, Cheryl Callaway, who's so sweet and friendly to him, even when he attempted to kidnap her, that he has second thoughts of doing her dad in! How could, Barron summarizes, Morelli be such a rat when he produced a sweet and lovable girl like Marie! It soon turns out that Barron was right! Not in how sweet & lovable Marie is but that her dad Morelli couldn't have done what he did in killing his wife & child with a bomb planted in the family car! It turned on Buda's orders, who also framed Barron, it was Roxey who did it who's now also in Alaska and on Buda's orders not only planning to knock off Morelli but also his motor mouth girlfriend Lily and frame Barron for it!P.S Mark Steven's first directed film and probably his best right up there with his later big score in the anti-Castro movie, filmed during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, "Escape from Hell Island" that almost had, if WWIII broke out, him and his entire cast nuked in a massive nuclear exchange between the USA & USSR while filming the movie!

Mark Stevens both stars in and directed this movie. He plays a cop who just gets out of jail after being framed for corruption and is determined to kill the gangster he thinks responsible for framing him and for killing his wife and child. His search takes him to Ketchikan, Alaska; the aerial shots of the town are brief but quite beautiful. The supporting cast is strong and includes such familiar faces as Douglas Kennedy, John Doucette, Skip Homeier, and Mort Mills. Martha Hyer really doesn't have much to do as Stevens' new love interest. Skip Homeier with his bleached blond hair is okay as the psychotic killer but not a particularly interesting character. Unfortunately, Mark Stevens' performance is too wooden - we should feel some sympathy for a man who has been so unjustly treated by life but we don't, at least not at an emotional level. For those liking crime dramas, this is certainly worth a watch but is pretty average for the genre.

Mark Stevens was terrific in the earlier (and truer) noir, Dark Corner (1946), with not only the young Lucille Ball but also a masterful one- handed Martini pour. Cry of Vengeance, with Stevens in the main role and also directing, has promise but falls back on a dozen clichés: knocking out a tough guy with one sucker punch; confessing everything to a bartender; the ex-con revealing tenderness to a little kid with a broken doll; a character named Joey; and plenty of bleach blinds (Martha Hyer is, however, excellent). The sets, with flimsy doors and unconvincing wainscoting, are cheesy. Early on you'll note poor dubbing when an outdoor scene couldn't be miked. And Stevens is unrelentingly grim, evidently following his own direction that it wasn't necessary to allow nuances o show through. You could have directed and scripted a better version, and I'll state here that I could as well. Be sure to catch Dark Corner, with its fine performance from Clifton Webb of Laura fame.