Dial 1119

The disturbed veteran became a staple character of the postwar noir cycle. In Dial 1119 -- the equivalent of 911 today -- clean-cut Marshall Thompson plays the most whacked-out of the bunch, a cold, disengaged psycho who kills without reaction or remorse. Riding the Big Dog into town (the aptly named Terminal City), he steals the bus driver's gun and, when confronted, plugs him dead. Then he holes up in a bar containing a cross-section of small-town America; the liveliest of them is Andrea King as man-hungry barfly Helen. Seems he returned to town to meet with the police psychiatrist who knows the "real" story behind his shell-shocked persona....Dial 1119 is an engaging (if never quite gripping) drama, part of MGM's low-budget, black-and-white early 1950s productions under Dore Schary