Great Film overall

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

There is a remarkable scene toward the middle of 'The Sniper': when it's clear to the police they've a serial killer of women on their hands, a dragnet hauls in every known sex-crime perp in town. Line-up after line-up is brought in, each fidgety gonif is subjected to a barrage of sarcastic and genuinely funny stand-up comedy from the head cop re their respective proclivities: rapist, peeping tom, child-toucher, etc., a smoke-filled audience of police and reporters guffawing throughout. The film's p.o.v., when it's good, is that of the compulsive criminal maniac -- the film makes a case that public ridicule poses an exacerbation to their madness, and this scene serves well to demonstrate how making them pariahs creates obstacles to crime prevention.Nice surprise at this scene's conclusion to see a very young Richard Kiley as the forensic psychiatrist. He is tasked with delivering exposition regarding psychological theory behind profiling the serial killer -- a bit of a thankless job for an actor, but Kiley gives it dignity and gravitas, and an active intelligence.Frank Faylen as the crusty chief of detectives defines hard-boiled -- the kind of guy who starts his day hopeless and angry and goes downhill from there. He's a master of humorous despair. (I wonder if this role got him cast a few years later as Dobie Gillis's irascible Dad?) At the core of the film is the Edward Dmytryk/Arthur Franz collaboration in creating the title character -- it's a wonder to see. Franz is a skilled and subtle technician -- much of the film is ostensibly his character reacting silently to a world he experiences as hostility and pain. Dmytryk stages the killer's subjective perception realistically, but the add-up informs us we are looking through a damaged lens: to the killer, every interaction is a slight or humiliation, every woman is a bullying harpy -- even little girls, and every mother is cruel to her children. Every look is a dirty look. The heartbreak is that Franz, as the monster, maintains a childlike expectation of approval; his constant disappointment in this regard feeds his rage. The killer's wandering through his tortured wallflower life contrasted with the cops and the shrinks and the public at a loss to identify him makes for a terrifying symmetry. That the film is mostly shot on location in San Francisco gives it a gritty urgency.Added plus: George Antheil's beautiful original music. Antheil was a young avant-garde composer in 1920s Paris, famous for his revolutionary and disturbing 'Ballet Mécanique', utilizing airplane propellers and ambulance sirens, etc. It did my heart good to discover Antheil picked up solid Hollywood paychecks from the '30s to the '50s . . .***Fun factoid: The director of 'Sniper' was blacklisted 'Hollywood Ten' lefty Edward Dmytryk. He cast crusty old Adolphe Menjou as a chief cop in the film. Menjou was a staunch right wing Republican. When asked how he could appear in a film directed by a communist, old Adolph replied tersely: 'I am a whore.' Allegedly. :D

All of the reviews I have read say it well. It is an astoundingly well made movie.But the hair-raising part is that it so closely resembles the SON OF SAM shooting spree that it looks like the authors used the Son of Sam crimes as a model for the story.SPOILER ALERT---in order to show the similarities, I have to describe what happens in the movie as compared to the real life SoS happenings-- SPOILER starts HERE ---The two on-camera shootings happen with the bullets hitting and shattering glass---reminiscent of the auto windshields shattered by the .44 bulldog pistol.The fictional Sniper writes a note to the police, and Son of Sam is famous for the letters he wrote to the police and the media.Much is made both in "The Sniper" and SOS shootings, that the victims were all brunettes.The final victim in the movie is sitting with her boyfriend, just like the final victim in real life.In the final scenes, there is panic in the streets, as crowds gather to demand the sniper be killed. This looks like the scenes in New York when angry crowds screamed for Son of Sam's life. The real panic in New York, which happened over two decades later, is astoundingly portrayed by the man on the smokestack screaming for someone to pay attention.And, just as SoS was spooked by a dog, there is a scene where the fictional Sniper is spooked by an animal.And in the movie, as in SoS real life, the killer is apprehended without a fight. SPOILER ENDS HERE-----If this movie had been made yesterday, I would have thought the authors just took the SoS story, and adapted it to fiction. The fact that it was made over two decades before the SoS shootings, and so closely resembles them, is really breathtaking, and a trifle spooky. It is a really well-made movie, and actually wears its "age" very well. It does not seem like an "old" movie.

Almost twenty years before San Francisco was terrorized by another sniper in Dirty Harry, this well received B film from Columbia Pictures painted a far less glamorous picture of a mentally ill individual taking his problems out on the world. Arthur Franz got his career role in The Sniper and a pity it didn't elevate him to stardom although he certainly had a distinguished and long career.Franz paints us a portrayal of a socially challenged man who just can't get anywhere with the opposite sex. He conceives a pathological hatred of all women and an innocent encounter with a nightclub performer played by Marie Windsor finally triggers him off. After that Franz is on a rampage, killing women almost at random from various San Francisco rooftops. The film was shot on location in San Francisco and The Sniper bears a whole lot of resemblance to The Naked City where Jules Dassin made New York's mean streets as much a star as the human players. Director Edward Dmytryk does the same for San Francisco.And the cops here are much like Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor from that film. Watching the film I wonder how much persuasion it took to get Adolphe Menjou to shave off that famous wax mustache of his, a remnant of fashion from a bygone era. It certainly wouldn't have gone with his role as a homicide cop. But the voice is distinctive and Menjou put it over. Acting as his younger sidekick is Gerald Mohr.What's ironic in The Sniper is that the whole thing is a desperate cry for help to a world to busy to care. The minor key ending of The Sniper brings that point home quite vividly.The Sniper is a noir classic, not as glamorous as Dirty Harry Callahan's pursuit of another twisted individual through San Francisco, but a whole lot more realistic.

A serial killer stalks brunettes in San Francisco. It is a rare film of the period in that it is told mostly from the perspective of the killer. Why he kills is explained within the first few minutes with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. His mama was mean to him when he was a child. The reason for his hatred of women is further magnified in exaggerated vignettes where women are mean to him. Typical of producer Kramer, the film is rather preachy in espousing its views on crime and punishment. The gritty San Francisco locales are good, but not enough to overcome the contrived plot. The acting is uneven, with Menjou and Kiley (his second film) coming off best.