Minä olen tuomari

I have just recently finished reading the source novel by Mickey Spillane for this movie. It was in fact the first of his Mike Hammer series of harder than hard-boiled detective thrillers. Now my old dad is, like me, a fan of Raymond Chandler, but when I asked him his opinion of Spillane, he dismissed him with one word "pornography". I get why he would say that as there is a lot of sex in the novel, but I still enjoyed the book and I was curious to see how it was represented on film back in the time when the Production Code still ruled.

I shouldn't have been surprised then at just how eviscerated it would be, for example the Bellamy twin sister's nymphomania is greatly down-played, the smuggling operation which acts as its sort of McGuffin changes from cocaine to jewellery and the climactic final scene (I won't spoil it by painting a picture of it) is also greatly watered down.

These alterations I could accept given the times but for many other reasons the film just doesn't work and that despite the present or the normally excellent John Alton behind the camera. Even he can only work with what he's given it would appear and he just can't elevate this low budget adaptation to what I had hoped for.

The biggest let-down has to be newcomer Biff Elliott as Hammer, who has all the charisma of a used match as he blusters his way around, wearing a belted raincoat it seems, in almost every scene. Peggie Castle does better as the femme fatale of the piece but her wiles are sadly wasted on our wooden hero.

The direction too is unimaginatively static and very studio-bound hence Alton's dilemma and if you want an idea of how cheaply made the film was, look no further than the device to cuts to shots of Christmas cards of all things, to indicate time passing.

Spillane's novels were very popular at the time and a well-made movie of his first book could well have led to a veritable cash-cow of follow-up features but it was no great surprise to me that this turned out to be the end of the line with the character for old Biff.

To paraphrase the old song, if I had a hammer, it wouldn't be this one...