Shack Out on 101 (1955)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Edward Dein

Writers:

Edward Dein (story) and
Mildred Dein (story) ...

Release Date:

4 December 1955 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

Four men and a girl!

Plot:

At an isolated, seaside greasy-spoon cafe live George, the sarcastic owner; Slob, the potentially violent cook; and Kotty...

Plot Keywords:

Waitress | Cook | Professor | Violence | Dishwasher

Cast

Terry Moore	...	Kotty
Frank Lovejoy	...	Prof. Sam Bastion
Keenan Wynn	...	George
Lee Marvin	...	Slob / Mr. Gregory
Whit Bissell	...	Eddie
Jess Barker	...	Artie
Donald Murphy	...	Pepe
Frank DeKova	...	Prof. Claude Dillon
Len Lesser	...	Perch
Fred Gabourie	...	Lookout

Also Known As:

Shack Up on 101 (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

80 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Company:

Allied Artists Pictures

Trivia:

Title was supposed to be "Shack Up on 101", but star Terry Moore objected on the grounds that it was too suggestive.

Quotes:

[While in a passionate embrace]
Prof. Sam Bastion: Will you tell me something?
Kotty: Anything, Sam, anything.
Prof. Sam Bastion: What are the first amendments to the Constitution called?
Kotty: The Bill of Rights.
Prof. Sam Bastion: That's right. What form of government is this?
Kotty: The best!

Movie Connections:

Featured in "TCM Underground: Shack Out on 101/Nightmare Honeymoon (#1.62)" (2009)

Soundtrack:

A SUNDAY KIND OF LOVE

Almost a genre unto itself: Red Scare Farce

The shack out on Highway 101 just north of San Diego is an oceanside greasy-spoon hung with nautical bric-a-brac like a Red Lobster franchise. It's also the regional headquarters for an subversive spy ring and the claustrophobic setting for one of the oddest fish spawned during the Red Scare paranoia of the post-war years.

Keenan Wynn owns the joint, with short-order cook Lee Marvin and waitress Terry Moore as his live-in help, an arrangement as uncomfortable for Moore as it is convenient for Marvin, who can't keep his hands or lips off her. Regulars include Frank Lovejoy (as an unspecified 'professor' romancing Moore), salesman Whit Bissell, an old fisherman making 'deliveries' right off the boat, and a couple of drivers for theAcme Poultry Company who come in for coffee and cherry pie. In this entrepôt big wads of cash get traded for tiny slivers of microfilm. And operatives losing their nerve or asking too many questions get dead.

Few of those movies which the studios felt constrained to issue in testimony to their rock-solid Americanism were much good (and audiences shunned them like week-old mackerel). But they shared an utter lack of humor and a suffocating tone of moral urgency. This one is more perplexing. The prevailing tone remains light, at times veering toward farce, to an extent that the very real possibility presents itself that the whole thing is a very sly put-on.

One morning when Wynn and Marvin, stripped to their waists, engage in some weight-lifting, Wynn insists that his chest muscles be referred to as 'pecs.' Marvin retorts 'I'm very happy with my pecs,' whereupon they call in Moore to judge which of them has the better legs. In another scene, Moore, lighted through the holes of a hanging colander, looks like she contracted some exotic contagion. But then the movie shifts abruptly into cloak-and-dagger episodes right out of B-movies of the international intrigue genre. Towards the end, the heart sinks as it becomes clear that the movie means us to take it seriously. But serious about what? Never is the word 'Communist' uttered.