My Gun is Quick

One of the more interesting and cynical of the low-budget 50’s noirs, Victor Saville’s My Gun is Quick features the relatively unknown Robert Bray as the iconic lady killer and private eye Mike Hammer, this time caught up in a hunt for German jewels that, for some reason, are racking up a significant body count. (Here we have film noir’s only death by a hook-for-a-hand!) As is often the case for a Mickey Spillane tale, the film unfolds in the order of women Hammer meets: first, the young, starving prostitute named Red (Jan Chaney) of whom Hammer feels immediately protective, then the Hispanic striptease dancer Maria (Gina Core) who takes Hammer back to her dilapidated slum, then the wealthy widow Nancy Williams (Whitney Blake) living alone on the beach, having escaped a scandal in Europe. Bray’s acting is wooden at times, but his Hammer projects the proper attitude of hopelessness (“Just crawled out of a sewer; there’s not a decent person left in the world”) even as his actions offer a glint of hope, like when he buys Red a bowl of soup and gives her money to go home to Montana. Worth noting is the jazzy, playful score and frequently innovative sound design, like when percussion, wind, and waves battle for prominence while Hammer stares from outside a window as police soundlessly congregate inside at a murder scene. My Gun is Quick is fun, fast-paced, and highly entertaining, rising above its budget limitations to create an ambience of depravity in nearly every scene.