The Killer is Loose

Perhaps a kind of precursor to Cape Fear (1962) in story and theme, Budd Boetticher’s The Killer is Loose is a consistently suspenseful revenge noir whose impact largely stems from Wendell Corey’s brilliantly understated performance as the mentally unstable escaped convict on a mission to kill. Having been sentenced for bank robbery, Leon Poole (Corey) murders a guard to escape from a prison work camp and exact revenge on Detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotten), the man who accidentally shot Poole’s wife dead while apprehending him. The clever Poole deceives his way through police blockades and surveillance and enters the heart of the city where Sam and Lila Wagner (Rhonda Fleming) take for granted their domestic tranquility as did so many 1950’s American households. While the famished Poole breaks into the home of his former Army sergeant and forces his wife to cook for him, Wagner covertly delivers Lila to a friend’s home to keep her safe while he leads the manhunt. Corey boils as the soft-spoken but unpredictable Poole, his smoldering psychosis like dynamite that could blow at any moment; in the final sequence, he dresses up as a bare-legged woman in a checkered raincoat, creepy even by today’s standards. Boetticher maintains tension moment by moment, shifting into nail-biting suspense with regularity (the drive with the prison guard, the homecoming of Otto Flanders, the final sequence with Lila as bait) while still allowing plenty of humanity to shine through.