I, the Jury (1953)

Dectective Mike Hammer is determined to catch and kill the person who shot his close friend dead, so he follows clues that lead to a beautiful, seductive woman.

Director:

Harry Essex

Writers:

Harry Essex, Mickey Spillane (novel)

Stars:

Biff Elliot, Preston Foster, Peggie Castle

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Biff Elliot	...	Mike Hammer
Preston Foster	...	Police Captain 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	...	Esther Bellamy (as Tani Seitz)
Dran Hamilton	...	Mary Bellamy (as Dran Seitz)
Joe Besser	...	Pete - Elevator Operator
Paul Dubov	...	Marty
John Qualen	...	Dr. R.H. Vickers
Nestor Paiva	...	Manuel

Storyline

It's nearly Christmas, but Mike Hammer is on the vengeance trail when Jack, his wartime buddy, is murdered. Hotheaded Hammer sets out to find the killer, working his way through an increasingly large pile of suspects (and corpses). Along the way, he meets a new love interest, psychologist Charlotte Manning, a treacherous Santa, a gangster named Kalecki, and two weird sisters, the Bellamy twins.

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Plot Keywords:

christmas | psychotronic film | mike hammer | twin | hard boiled | 

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Taglines:

Now! His first motion picture blasts you out of your seat with its naked fury!

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Film-Noir | Thriller

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

14 August 1953 (USA)

Also Known As:

J'aurai ta peau

Filming Locations:

Samuel Goldwyn Studios - 7200 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Parklane Pictures Inc.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

87 min

Sound Mix:

3 Channel Stereo (Western Electric Recording)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Originally filmed in 3D; but, by the time it opened, 3D had lost favor among audiences, and many first run engagements, as well as most second run engagements, opted to offer it in the standard 2D version.

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Quotes

Charlotte Manning: Drink, Mr Hammer?
Mike Hammer: No, I'm not much of a champagne drinker, Doc I...
Mike Hammer: [she shows him the bottle] Beer! Pat tell you about too?
Charlotte Manning: No. Jack Williams did. He talked about you quite a lot.
Mike Hammer: That was while you were treating Myrna, isn't it?
Charlotte Manning: Captain Chambers was asking about Myrna when he was here. He wanted to know how strong she was mentally, and whether there was any chance of her resorting to her old habits again
Mike Hammer: There's no chance of that happening, is there Doc?
Charlotte Manning: Let's say, so far so good
Mike Hammer: I'll drink to...
[...]

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Connections

Referenced in The Many Faces of Mike Hammer: A Personal Recollection by Larry Cohen (2013)

User Reviews

The private-eye thriller and film noir begin their final descent

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.