One Foot in Hell

“How are you gonna live without someone to hate?!” Alan Ladd hates just about everyone in James B. Clark’s One Foot in Hell, a title that perfectly describes Ladd’s character Mitch Barrett, a Civil War veteran who devotes his life to exacting revenge on the people who refused to loan him $1.87. Specifically, in the opening act, while Barrett and his pregnant, young wife Ellie (Rachel Stephens) are traveling west to build a life after the war, they seek shelter in a small Arizona town when Ellie went into labor (the Biblical parallel is hard to ignore); the locals are unwelcoming, the hotelier, sheriff, and pharmacist all delaying Ellie’s care over Barrett’s shortage of cash, the medicine urgently needed costing a mere $1.87. Ellie and the baby both die. Ashamed of the heartlessness they displayed, the town folk appoint Barrett deputy sheriff and even purchase him a house, but the widower’s decision to settle down in town has a giant ulterior motive: revenge. “Wearing this tin star doesn’t change my mind about this town,” Barrett says privately. The cast beyond Ladd is relatively unknown but excellent, especially Don Murray as Dan Keats, an alcoholic veteran suffering from PTSD and one of four people secretly recruited by Barrett to help execute his plot (in particular, Keats knows how to make “liquid fire”). Dolores Michaels plays Julie Reynolds, another of the foursome and Keats’ love interest despite her wretched upbringing of forced prostitution (“There are some things you don’t scrub off!”). Ladd’s famously calm, laconic demeanor makes Barrett even more evil, his sudden acts of violence that much more unexpected, his reflections accompanied by a mournful score. Director Clark made only a handful of films, most of them family fare starring Lassie and Flipper, but he manages here to nail the harshness and cynicism required of the noir universe.