RanchoTuVu

As the detectives tell wrongly accused bass player Manny Balestero (Henry Fonda) (picked up for holding up an insurance office at gunpoint) that if he's innocent he has nothing to fear, you realize that once placed in the criminal justice system, he has everything to fear, especially the prospect of losing his wife and family who adore him. Unlike Marnie (Tippie Hedrin) or Marian Crane (Janet Leigh's part in Psycho), who actually did take the money, Fonda is so completely innocent that that aspect is what provides this film with its most compelling force. How could such a decent guy be thrown into such an impersonal and seemingly coldhearted system, as he's arrested, fingerprinted, jailed, transported in a paddy wagon with other felons to his arraignment, and a lot more, all done during a bleak looking New York winter in vintage 1950s black and white, set to a Bernard Hermann score that fits perfectly the mood. Not your typical Hitchcock film, but an excellent role for Henry Fonda.

Attractive accountant Marnie (Tippie Hedrin) moves from post to post, gaining enough of the confidence of her employers to rob them of the cash in the office safes. She assumes new identities with fake social security cards and hair dye. The heart of the film is an exploration into why she does this. "Marnie" is a bit of a masterpiece in style and the way it uncovers why she steals from her employers. Set in a set made out to be Baltimore, the film may look fake, which could be intentional just for the purposes of distinctive styling, because at this point in Alfred Hitchcock's career (1964) it would be safe to assume that what you see on the screen must have been what he intended, and, nevertheless, the photography by Robert Burks is some of the best, as is Bernard Hermann's score. This basically turns out to be the master's sleeper classic, mixing a story of sex and criminality, not too unlike what Hitchcock did with Psycho. Attractive women rob their employers in both films, and both masterfully explore the lingering and smouldering sexual hang-ups.

Two thousand people live in the town of Pleasant Valley, an out-of- the-way place on a back road, somewhere on the way to Atlanta. All of them are maniacs, which is a decent premise for a film, and which illustrates Hershel G. Lewis's talent for what it takes to make a memorable exploitation film. Rather than being Confederate sympathizers these folks are like the ghosts of the town, which had been the scene of a Union (or Yankee) massacre exactly 100 years to the day on which all the action occurs. It's a film whose premise is a borderline sickening vengeance the maniacs inflict on four northerners (two young couples) who are detoured by two of Pleasant Valley's leading citizens, into its trap to make them the town's special guests for its one-hundred year anniversary of the massacre. Things get increasingly gory, in a kind of gratuitous way, but the storyline is almost substantial enough to hold it all together. Lewis also did the cinematography, which has many Confederate-flag drenched scenes to go along with bright red blood and a pretty blue sky.