Pin-Down Girl, Dance Hall Racket: Exploitation flickers so bad, they're good - in wonderful ways      

                                                      

Appreciators of gutter-grade flickers pray that somewhere, in an all-night, ratty-rug grindhouse, this b/w pair streams neverendingly. And the two have more in common than just enjoyable awfulness.

Umberto Scalli is one of shoestring cult movies' more distinctive neer-do-wells. The pencil-mustached, skid-row hustler -- he of thrift-store pin-striped suit, greasy comb-back, and squinted, shifty peepers -- was played to scummy perfection by Ed Wood player Timothy Farrell. (Farrell had initially played Scalli in 1949 George Weiss exploitation caper "The Devil's Sleep.")

Scalli fired off rat-a-tat commands in a razor-edged monotone that signaled he cared for no one. His 'torpedoes' (more like Dead-End sling shots) did the same. Many were the wisecracks ricocheting off faded walls.

Pin Down Girl (1951) was also marketed as Blonde Pick-Up and Racket Girls. Metric scads of footage dwell on femme ring tusslers, whether on the canvas or in an age-stained, Scalli-operated gymnasium. A meager plotline -- in which Boss Scofflaw and his unshaved underlings do what low-lifes do -- sporadically punctuates the sweaty pulchritude.

Scalli, having purchased the contract of wrestler "Peaches" Page (played woodenly by that for-bucks grappler, herself), soon runs afoul of the small-pond crime world's Mr Big. 

One of Scalli's boys plays both sides of the illicit street. A witness- stand appearance by the sleazy promoter (it looks like a humongous flag was hung on someone's guest room wall; the judge sits at a modest, letter-writing desk) illustrates that the walls are closing in.

But the climactic gunning down of chin-high, no-good Scalli -- as he fled in a sedan -- was not fatal. Like a bad penny, he turned up again, and plied further underworld grubbiness.

In 1953's Dance Hall Racket, Umberto Scalli is abetted in back-alley skullduggery by sneering, blade-wielding Lenny Bruce. ("Big deal! I killed a guy -- that makes me a criminal?!") 

The infamously danger-tongued, social critic / punchline-slinger (who suffered establishment slings, arrows, and court dates -- and whose mores-shattering example was aped by countless subsequent Georges and Richards) ushered into the seedy spectacle his real-life shikse paramour, runway peeler Hot Honey Harlow.

A federales manhunt was launched, following a seaman's murder -- meaning black-hats were in official spotlights. As was so in Pin Down Girl's case, Dance Hall Racket's characters were uniformly cardboardish, and the 56:48 offered nothing in the way of cinematic splendor. (But then, who needs magnificence?) 

When he wasn't dealing with dime-a-dance oddballs beside a rickety bar, or ordering hits on cheap-suit rats, Scalli was scowl-deep in a jewels black market. A badged dick, in the dingy dance hall to pick up anything on the seaman's killing, uncovers the smuggling operation. Mayhem predictably ensues, and in the picture's concluding minutes, Scalli and Bruce both give up the ghost. Those who live by the gat...

Dance Hall Racket bore the distinction of having been scripted by Bruce, spotlighted several blowsy saloon fraus, and was directed by Phil "Robot Monster" Tucker. 

Two other notable points: Bruce's mother, Sally Marr, throws herself into a flapper-era Charleston, and cheap-laffs Punchy the Swede does a "Tahitian Love Dance," that likely would have killed Vaudeville, were it not already on the slab.

Direct my future mail to that fantasized grindhouse.

Pin Down Girl 

Dance Hall Racket