The Big Caper

Robert Stevens’ The Big Caper is not a great film but it’s an entertaining example of late 1950’s low-budget noir: suburban invasion, lots of daylight, increasingly psychotic supporting characters, and a director better known for television (this film is a relative masterpiece compared to Stevens’ four other feature films). The penultimate film produced by Pine-Thomas Productions, the prolific B-film division of Paramount, The Big Caper stars Rory Calhoun as con man Frank Harper, but the more commanding screen presence is arguably James Gregory (also better known for television) as gangster Flood, who teams up with Harper to rob a San Felipe bank that will be holding a million-dollar payroll for the local Marine base. The heist is an elaborate enterprise: Harper and Flood’s younger wife Kay (Mary Costa) move to San Felipe, set up house as make-believe newlyweds, and buy a local gas station for Harper to manage (absolutely nobody will be shocked to learn that Harper and Kay end up developing feelings for each other). A good rapport with the locals will make them less suspicious, and the house will provide a local base of operations for the whole gang, which includes an alcoholic, pyromaniac explosives expert named Zimmer (Robert H. Harris), a septuagenarian safecracker named Dutch Paulmeyer (Florenz Ames), a blackmailing, two-timing blonde named Doll (Roxanne Arlen), and a bodybuilding sociopath named Roy (Corey Allen) who talks to himself and periodically earns a whipping from Flood. It’s all a pretty weird trip, but what else could we expect when noir shows up at the neighborhood cookouts and Scrabble games of Eisenhower’s America?