Forgotten Film Noir: Without Warning! (1952)
A low-budget surprise that's worth 77 minutes of your time
Without Warning! looks like a super low-budget picture (which it is), one you’d probably pass by, but you shouldn’t. It's surprisingly good. Although you can find it for free on YouTube, I picked up the DVD years ago and recently revisited it.
The first thing I noticed about the cheesy-looking DVD cover was Adam Williams – a somewhat familiar actor during the 1950s – holding a pair of garden shears. Does that ring a bell? It should. (More on that in a moment.) By the way, I’m going to exclude the exclamation point in the film’s title. I get tired of yelling.
Of his many appearances in movies and TV shows, Williams (a distinguished WWII veteran) is probably most famous for his role as Valerian, one of Phillip Vandamm’s (James Mason) henchmen in North by Northwest (1959), where he also handles a pair of garden shears, albeit a larger pair than the ones used in Without Warning. That’s Williams on the right, trying not to get upstaged by Cary Grant. Sorry, Adam… You don’t stand a chance, dude.
Hardcore film noir fans will also remember Williams (far left) as Larry Gordon, another henchman for another bad guy, this time working with Vince Stone (Lee Marvin, far right) in The Big Heat (1953).
The woman on the DVD cover looked enough like Lizabeth Scott for me to get my hopes up, but alas, it was not to be. It’s actually Meg Randall who also appears in Criss Cross (1949) in the above photo. But no matter… I also wasn’t sure what the “Lost Noir” designation on the cover meant. Was this truly a lost film? Is it a true film noir or a police procedural? Or one of the first psycho killer movies?
The film opens with a generic jazz soundtrack underscoring some nighttime L.A. scenery (also generic) until we settle on a seedy-looking motel, the type of place where bad things tend to happen.
They’ve certainly happened here. Just ask this woman. Well, unfortunately you can’t, not anymore, thanks to the killer (Williams), whom we clearly see. As the murderer makes his escape, we’re treated to pure noir: darkness, shadows, and a corpse waiting to be found by a motel manager. I was pleasantly surprised that a low-budget movie looks this good: the lighting, pacing, camera angles, the whole package. (It also doesn’t hurt when you’ve got Oscar winner Joseph Biroc as your cinematographer.) Don’t get me wrong: we’re not talking about a masterpiece, just good solid noir.
Then we see the killer, now revealed to be Carl Martin, quietly working at a local gardening supply store. All is well (or as well as it can be when you’re a psycho with a fixation on blondes) until Carl discovers that the store owner’s daughter (Randall) is in town to help out with the family business. And as you can see, she’s a blonde, which creates an unfortunate tendency in Carl to want to engage in some serious pruning.
Once the police procedural point of the film has been introduced, we meet our good friend the voiceover narrator. Soon the police begin to see a pattern in other blondes who have been killed in a similar manner. The film also stars Ed Binns (right) as the investigating police lieutenant. You’ll probably remember Binns from his most famous role as Juror #6 in 12 Angry Men (1957) or maybe as a police detective in the aforementioned North by Northwest. (He just can’t stop pursuing Williams…) Williams and Binns square off once again in Vice Squad (1953), also directed by Arnold Laven, and also shot by Joseph Biroc, proving that film noir is just one big happy family.
Yet I digress. The police procedural scenes are handled just about as well as they are in bigger budgeted films. Without Warning adds a little something extra with Byron Kane as one of the crime lab guys who’s just weird enough to brew coffee with his lab equipment. (I guess you find these simple pleasures wherever you can…) There’s also a few nice, tension-filled scene involving a little girl (Connie Vera) with a broken doll she keeps trying to get Carl to fix for her. Sweetie, this ain’t the guy for doll repair…
Without Warning has to be one of the earliest instances of movie policemen asking civilians (totally untrained!) to pose as bait for the killer as in this scene. Of course I’m not going to tell you how it turns out, but what could possibly go wrong?
I also won’t tell you about the rest of the film, except that Arnold Laven delivers a successful thriller. Call it thriller, film noir, a police procedural, a psycho killer film, or all of the above – it’s effective and suspenseful, even if the ending doesn’t quite measure up to the rest of the film.
Laven did pretty well for a guy who started in the mail room at Warner Brothers. Laven and producers Arthur Gardner and Jules Levy all served together in the Army Air Corps’ First Motion Picture Unit. After the war, they decided to form a production company, Allart Pictures (which initially became Levy-Gardner-Laven). Without Warning (reportedly made for $15,000) was the company’s first production, followed by Vice Squad (available on Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XVII), and Down Three Dark Streets (1954) with Broderick Crawford.
Laven made more films but went on to direct television for more than 30 years. If you’ve ever watched The Rifleman, Mannix, The Big Valley, The A-Team or a whole list of other TV shows, you’ve probably seen Laven’s work. (You can read more about Laven’s interesting career here.) I really hope you’ll seek out Without Warning. If you do, let me know what you think.