Edward L. Cahn's Guns Girls and Gangsters 1958

"lean and mean."
Danilo Castro describing Guns Girls and Gangsters in  "Noir City" no.26

Edward L. Cahn's career lasted from 1931 to 1961, during which he directed over 100 films, nine in 1958 alone!  The quality of course varied (see my previous posts about his work) but Guns Girls and Gangsters was one of the best of his later films, just as Law and Order and Afraid to Talk (both from 1932) were among the best of his early work.  Guns Girls and Gangsters (there was only one girl and no real gangsters but everybody has a gun) has a gritty intensity and integrity.  The Girl is played by Mamie Van Doren at her slinkiest, singing two single-entendre songs -- by Buddy Bregman and Stanley Styne -- "Anything Your Heart Desires" and "Meet Me Halfway, Baby" and crooks Gerald Mohr (who was terrific as Philip Marlowe on the radio) and Grant Richards are in love with her and planning to rob an armored car carrying cash from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.  Van Doren tells Mohr to wait, her husband is in jail, and he says "fine; I don't mind waiting as long as I'm first in line."  Van Doren agrees to take part in the robbery and helps to case things while staying at The Stagecoach Inn (suggesting the film's relationship to Westerns), run by a pleasant Korean War vet and his wife. Unfortunately Van Doren's husband -- played by the sleazy Lee Van Cleef -- escapes from jail just before the robbery takes place and insists on being a part of it; the body count rises as everything goes wrong.

There is impressive imagery in this film, from a fistfight entirely inside a motorcar to Van Doren driving an Edsel and pulling a horse trailer loaded with electronic gadgets to use in the robbery.  There is a stentorian narration that helps to fill the holes in the plot and a mood of passion and fatalism as well as a grim ending that helps to qualify this low-budget film as a film noir.  The film was written and photographed by, respectively,  B veterans Robert E. Kent and Kenneth Peach.  Guns Girls and Gangsters is currently available on Amazon Prime.