Tetrady not as good as all the hype

Konterr Brilliant and touching

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

gordonl56 THE LINE-UP 1958 This 1958 Columbia Pictures release is a film version of the popular police series of the same name. The series ran between 1954 and 1960 and was a no nonsense police procedural along the lines of, DRAGNET.Don Siegel directs with Eli Wallach as a hit-man slash muscle type with Robert Keith as his handler. Richard Jaeckel plays the pair's local driver. There has been a foul up with a shipment of heroin being smuggled into San Francisco. Wallach and Keith have been brought from out of town to trace the "misplaced" product and retrieve said item.Wallach is a man who loves his job and is only kept in check by the older Keith. There is soon a string of bodies left littering the city as Wallach and Keith do their stuff.Called in at the start are San Francisco Detectives, Warner Anderson and Emile Meyer. They are of course one step behind the hit-man and his handler. Once the bodies and clues fall into place the chase picks up steam. Needless to say there are going to be more bodies along the way before Anderson and Meyer can close the matter.This is top flight noir which moves along at a nice pace. Director Siegel keeps things on an even keel as he goes back and forth between the crooks and the pursuing Detectives. Siegel really has a firm grip on what is needed for this kind of film. His work included, THE VERDICT, RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11, THE BIG STEAL, PRIVATE HELL 36, CRIME IN THE STREETS, EDGE OF ETERNITY, THE GUN RUNNERS, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, THE KILLERS (1964), THE SHOOTIST, CHARLIE VARRICK, TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA and DIRTY HARRY.Handling the look of the picture is the talented cinematographer, Hal Mohr. The three time Oscar nominated, and two time winner, Mohr, worked on films such as, DESTRY RIDES AGAIN, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, WOMAN ON THE RUN, THE WILD ONE and BABY FACE NELSON.This one is well worth the time invested to watch it. Wallach is fantastic as the off kilter in the head killer.

Claudio Carvalho In the harbor of San Francisco, a porter throws the suitcase of a passenger that has just arrived from Asia into a taxi and the driver hits a truck and a police officer that kills him before dying. The owner Philip Dressler (Raymond Bailey) explains to the police Lieutenant Ben Guthrie (Warner Anderson) and Inspector Al Quine (Emile Meyer) that the content of the suitcase are antiques that he bought in Asia from a street vendor. However the police laboratory discover that one statuette has heroin hidden inside and the inspectors replace the drug per sugar and return the suitcase to Dressler, who is a citizen above suspicion. Meanwhile the gangster Dancer (Eli Wallach), who is a psychopath; his partner Julian (Robert Keith) and the alcoholic driver Sandy McLain (Richard Jaeckel) are hired by the kingpin The Man (Vaughn Taylor) to collect the heroin packages that have been smuggled hidden in the luggage of three other innocent tourists. They succeed to retrieve the two firsts, but the load of the third one vanishes and they panic. Meanwhile the police is hunting them under the command of Lt. Guthrie. "The Lineup" is another great police story directed by Don Siegel. The story is original and the action scenes in San Francisco are impressive for a 1958 film. The dysfunctional criminals are peculiar and Eli Wallach performs a psychopath killer; Robert Keith takes notes of the last words of Dancer's victims in a notebook; and Richard Jaeckel is an alcoholic driver. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "O Sádico Selvagem" ("The Wild Sadist")

blanche-2 Don Siegel was a fine director, and here he has made a film based on a TV show, The Lineup, which ran on CBS for six years, and using its stars, Warner Anderson and Marshall Reed as Lt. Ben Guthrie and Inspector Fred Ascher. The show was similar to "Dragnet," meaning that it had a lot of police procedural work, which Siegel didn't want in the film. He lost that argument with Colombia.Robert Keith and Eli Wallach are gangsters employed to retrieve narcotics that are hidden in items coming into the country -- unknown to the people who actually purchased them. This means either finessing the items from them on some excuse, breaking into their homes, or whatever needed to be done. The Wallach character elects to kill as he goes. When he gets to a woman (Mary LaRoche) and her daughter, the heroin is is supposed to be inside a doll, except it isn't. Now they have to tell the big boss what happened.If you're from San Francisco, this is the film for you, as it uses San Francisco locations circa 1958, which you will find fascinating. The city gives the film a great atmosphere, too.Pretty good film noir, with a dramatic, wild ending.

screenman I actually saw this movie at the cinema, hauled off by my father who was an avid gangster-junkie. That was way back when you got two movies in the programme. I'm not sure if this was the 'A' or the 'B' item, but its unmemorable companion was called 'The Gun-Runners'.It was also my introduction to Eli Wallach. And I never forgot it.The plot entailed heroin-smuggling, something most people didn't quite understand in those days. Wallach and his mentor were using innocent mules to take bags of the stuff ashore to avoid suspicion and capture by the customs. Then they had to get them back. But the best laid plans, etc etc.Wallach's character is evidently pathological, and he plays it with a frightfully convincing panache. Don't ever get him angry...His older sidekick is scarcely less bonkers, and whilst counselling restraint on the one hand, eagerly keeps a journal of every victim's last words.People get killed in the drug business. An intermediary who they try to meet is so furious at his exposure that he slaps Wallach's face. He pays for it by being kicked through a balustrade onto an ice-rink 2 or 3 floors below.In another extremely harrowing scene, they try to retrieve a bag of dope from the child of a young widow they befriended en-route. The bag is supposed to be hidden in her doll. Unfortunately, she has discovered it and used it all up, supposing it to be a toy face-powder. The rapid disintegration of their urbane bonhomie into a doll-shredding black fury as the child and her mother look on in tearful horror, is one of the most frightful scenes in movie drama. Tarentino couldn't better it. But it's all the more shocking for its appearance in the staid 1950's.And there's plenty more where that came from.This is one of the hardest-edged noir movies and its absence from DVD is incomprehensible. Believe me; if you haven't seen it and you're a fan of the genre, you've no idea what you're missing.Don't go talking to strangers, now.