IMDb > I, the Jury (1953)

I, the Jury (1953) More at IMDbPro »

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Overview

User Rating:
6.2/10   59 votes
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Director:
Harry Essex
Writers:
Harry Essex (writer)
Mickey Spillane (novel)
Contact:
View company contact information for I, the Jury on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
14 August 1953 (USA) more
Genre:
Film-Noir | Crime | Drama more
Tagline:
MICKEY SPILLANE'S Kind of Fury, Savagery, Temptation and Man-Woman Violence in 3-D !
Plot:
It's nearly Christmas, but Mike Hammer is on the vengeance trail when Jack, his wartime buddy, is murdered... more | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
User Comments:
The private-eye thriller and film noir begin their final descent more (6 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)
Biff Elliot ... Mike Hammer
Preston Foster ... Capt. Pat Chambers
Peggie Castle ... Charlotte Manning
Margaret Sheridan ... Velda
Alan Reed ... George Kalecki
Mary Anderson ... Eileen Vickers
Tom Powers ... Milt Miller
Frances Osborne ... Myrna Devlin
Bob Cunningham ... Hal Kines (as Robert Cunningham)
Tani Guthrie ... Mary Bellamy (as Tani Seitz)
Dran Hamilton ... Esther Bellamy (as Dran Seitz)

Joe Besser ... Pete, Elevator Operator
Paul Dubov ... Marty
John Qualen ... Dr. R.H. Vickers, Veterinarian
Nestor Paiva ... Manuel
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
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Runtime:
87 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Color:
Black and White
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
3 Channel Stereo (Western Electric Recording)
Certification:
Norway:16 | Finland:(Banned) (1954) | USA:Approved (PCA #16555) | Sweden:15
Company:
Parklane Pictures Inc. more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Originally filmed in 3D. more
Movie Connections:
Followed by I, the Jury (1982) more

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User Comments

   (Comment on this title)
17 out of 18 people found the following comment useful.
The private-eye thriller and film noir begin their final descent, 20 April 2003
5/10
Author: bmacv from Western New York

In 1953, I, The Jury became the first of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series to hit the screen, but it takes its cues from movies of 1947, when the book hit the kiosks. The yuletide cards serving as scene dividers, the violence counterpointed to Christmas carols recall The Lady in the Lake, while the duplicitous female psychiatrist reprises Helen Walker's Dr. Lilith Ritter in Nightmare Alley (the final, fatal tryst comes from the even earlier Double Indemnity).

These echoes may have been attempts to invest Hammer with some respectability, linking him to the more subtle and textured characters of the 1940s. It's clear something had to be done with him, because Spillane went for raw sensation in a way that caused a sensation of its own. His private eye is uncouth, short-fused and randy but misogynist, bowing to no authority save his own (hence the title). Spillane luckily or shrewdly had as readers of his punch-drunk prose men who had survived overseas combat and were making up for lost time in the footloose, post-war prosperity; he gave them not just sex and violence but sex-and-violence.

So in one sense, Biff Elliott makes an ideal Hammer, closer to Spillane's lout than his (relatively) spruced-up successors Ralph Meeker and Robert Bray (plus Armand Assante, in the marginally better 1982 remake of this title). He comes across as a Dead End kid grown up with a license and a gun, slow-witted but fast with his fists and his trigger.

When his best friend, an insurance investigator and combat amputee, gets himself coldly killed, Hammer scours New York to avenge him. The urban locales bring out the talents of director of photography John Alton, who here tried his hand at the 3-D process (thus I, The Jury, along with Man in the Dark, The Glass Web and Second Chance, becomes one of the few noirs so filmed).

The shoot-from-the-hip action, however, rides roughshod over any intricacies of the plot. Characters Hammer encounters stay generic, with the exception of Peggie Castle as the shrink. The film's last scene is hers, not Elliott's, as she moves into a languorous striptease that comes to a quick finale. For better or worse, it's an emblematic image that showcases Spillane's coarsened sensibility, his fusion of brutality and eroticism, and spells an end to the more freighted ambiguity that was a hallmark of the noir cycle.

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