This was second on Steve Buscemi's Top 10 list of films in the Criterion Collection.

Melodrama tends to miss more than hit with me, and that was overall true here. I lost interest in the backstory flashbacks after the second. I was relieved that we didn't have to sit through one for Kid Coy, a one note joke that stopped being funny early. Jack Overman does what he can to inject some levity into the picture as the big lug, but it just felt like the wrong brand of levity.

Art Smith and John Hoyt, however, did infuse the film with the right brand of levity as Dr. Walters and Spencer, respectively. The humor befitting these people and this world has to be worn out, not to actually elicit laughter but merely to reassure the speaker that his ability to construct a joke still functions long after it's made anyone laugh. This is a defense mechanism I know well, having used it reflexively throughout all manner of crises, including both of my inpatient hospitalizations for suicidal depression.

Smith's Dr. Walters is the film's conscience, the only real protagonist we have since the two leads are the sadistic Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn, as chilling as any screen villain I've yet to see) and inmate leader Joe Collins (Burt Lancaster, intense but not particularly inspiring). It's easy to root against the totalitarian Munsey, but it's hard to root for Joe. The best we have to work with is that somehow or other, Joe has to get out to persuade poor innocent Ruth to undergo some kind of lifesaving surgery because no one else can talk her into it.

If I was invested in Ruth, maybe that would have been enough. As it is, she's little more than a shorthand for giving Joe (and by extension, the entire film) the impetus for the jailbreak. I was reminded of the sequences in Bride of Frankenstein with the hermit...except that I managed to care about the hermit enough that watching his world torn apart bothers me. Watching Ruth say goodbye to Joe, oblivious to what will come of him or their relationship, meant nothing to me.

I was significantly more invested in Tom Lister (Whit Bissell). I suspect many, if not most, viewers dismiss Lister as being pathetic and weak, too worried about a wife who doesn't return his devotion to take care of himself and therefore not particularly worth their consideration. He was, of course, the one I related to the most. I can appreciate the kind of desperation that drove him to steal money for a fur coat for his wife in the first place, to send her letter after letter from inside, and ultimately to take his own life in light of being told she wanted a divorce.

There's something I'd love to see: Cora Lister demanding an inquiry into the death of her husband, particularly if her filing for divorce was a fabrication of Munsey's. Maybe she was going to leave Tom. She admits to choosing materialism over decency. On the other hand, there's Munsey filtering their entire relationship.

I will say that as the film wore on, I became increasingly mindful that the rules of that era dictated that wrongdoers must be punished onscreen, and that meant that somehow or other, Joe and Munsey both would have to go down. The climactic battle isn't so much primitive as it is primal. It's terribly simplistic, but this works in the film's favor, as it isn't fixated on trying to impress us with how clever it all is. Instead, we simply get on with the relentless cruelty.

I live in the same county as one of our state's penitentiaries. It's a major employer in this area, and I've grown up knowing quite a few people who have worked in corrections in various positions over the years, including members of my own family. The thesis of Brute Force is every bit as valid today as it was in 1947. As Dr. Walters put it:

Do you know what this prison is, Mr. McCollum? One big human bomb! And you say, "Kick it, and it'll be quiet. Smash it, and it won't explode."

One of the people I know who has worked in corrections has been caught up in a major prison riot. It wasn't at the facility where he worked, though. He was one of quite a few state corrections workers who were called in to assist when a privatized prison erupted. He was adamant that what led to that riot was precisely the draconian ruthlessness personified here by Captain Munsey and Mr. McCollum. The morality of Brute Force may be simplistic and it may be delivered clumsily in places, but it's sadly every bit as relevant today as at the time of its release 69 years ago.

Star Trek aside: This ensemble features three actors who appeared in the original series; Whit Bissell ("The Trouble with Tribbles"), Jeff Corey ("The Cloudminders"), and John Hoyt (Dr. Boyce in the original pilot, "The Cage").

Brute Force entered my Flickchart at #1016/1846

The Honeymoon Killers is third on Steve Buscemi's Top 10 list of Criterion Collection titles. I can appreciate its sensationalist blending of grim brutality and gallows humor, the intensity of the performances by leads Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco, and the stark black and white photography by Oliver Wood.

There's the film's economic storytelling to be appreciated, too. Writer/director Leonard Kastle was judicious in what information to give us. For instance, we witness the selection process for each mark, and then we cut to just before the end of her fate, whatever it may be. We don't have to endure the ritualistic courtship each time. We've already seen how Ray worked on Martha; we know what every other woman experienced with him without us having to sit through it.

And yet....

Somewhere along the way, the movie just began to feel too episodic for me. Though I could see for myself the escalation from merely robbing Doris to murdering not only Delphine but her daughter Rainelle, somehow I didn't feel any escalation. Before we even got to Delphine, I'd already begun to wonder how many more of these sequences stood between where I was in the film and its end credits.

According to Gary Giddins in his Criterion essay, "The Honeymoon Killers: Broken Promises", by time Janet Fay meets her demise, "...the film has already disposed of her humanity, mining for laughter her penny-pinching deceits and Jesus icons, defying the most saintly among us to forswear thoughts of homicide every time she chirps, 'Innat cuuuute?'”

This is the key element that eluded me. Giddins emphasizes how morosely comedic the film is, and this aspect just did not engage me. It's not that the jokes were over my head. They just didn't land for me. Perhaps if I saw this with an audience, the humor would have engaged me more, and if that had been the case, perhaps the film itself would have engaged me more.

I was intrigued by the recurring jabs at American patriotism and Catholicism. They're played for laughs, and of course they're also there to signify to us how indecent Martha and Ray are, but there's something about the specificity that did catch my eye. For instance, that Doris should sing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the bathtub, or the one portrait of Jesus that basically looks like it would be His Tinder profile pic. Smooth Operator Jesus is one of the lesser discussed Jesuses.

I can, however, see this turning out to be another of those films that initially underwhelmed me but germinates until I find myself fascinated by it. It certainly has enough of the elements that tend to get under my skin.

The Honeymoon Killers entered my Flickchart at #1007/1847