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I've mentioned elsewhere before that my favorite movie genres are westerns and old film noir. Maybe it's the bad attitude and loose guns that turn me on, but crime stories (and most westerns are more or less crime stories) always grabs my attention so absorbingly I can almost smell gunpowder emanating from these movies. At the same time, I have a real soft spot for romance stories, and what on earth could be more evocative of fiery romantic passion than the fast and hard life (or death) of criminals on the run?

The premiere movie on this subject, of course, is Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde, as those two was the most notorious crime couple of all time. For children of the 90's, remember Quentin Tarantino's twofer scripts Natural Born Killers and True Romance, both of which owed much to Bonnie & Clyde. Predating even the 1967 classic, however, was the daring Gun Crazy, a story of two gun-toting lovers on the lam. The movie was inspired by the real Bonnie and Clyde, but then in turn provided some inspirations for Arthur Penn's movie. Gun Crazy is my favorite of this bunch.

Although also known as Deadly is the Female, Gun Crazy is the perfect title for the film considering its fetish-like fascination with roscoes, fiercely alluding to a link between guns and sex in many of its scenes. In fact, our dangerous lovers Bart and Annie met over a mutual love for guns. Bart was an ex-Army deadeye with a lifelong obsession towards guns—the film opens with a 14-year-old Bart caught stealing one from a hardware store—though he refuses to use guns to harm even animals. Annie was a carnival sharpshooter doing gun tricks to make money. When the two kindred spirits fall for one another, they decide to leave their mediocre lives and use their trigger expertise to go on a crime spree. Though they start with petty hold-ups, all the while Bart insisting on not killing anyone, their new career very quickly escalates into nationwide headlines and a massive federal manhunt.

Gun Crazy is known best for its impressive one-take bank robbery scene shot guerrilla entirely from the backseat of the getaway car, where reportedly only the two actors and the bank employees knew that it was just a movie shoot (poor clueless bystanders and drivers); but the true brilliance of the film is in how director Joseph H. Lewis got the two leads John Dall and Peggy Cummins to treat their outlaw love affair as irresistible lust rather than the idyllic courtship.

This is what Lewis said of his direction to the actors:

I told John, "Your cock's never been so hard," and I told Peggy, "You're a female dog in heat, and you want him. But don't let him have it in a hurry. Keep him waiting." That's exactly how I talked to them and I turned them loose. I didn't have to give them more directions.

Early on, it's easy to see Annie as a manipulative woman who's using Bart to get what she wants, but it couldn't be more obvious by the end that they were both equally crazy about each other as well as the guns they possess. In one post-heist scene where the couple abandon their carefully thought-out plan to jump back into each other's arms, we get it: they'd rather die in a hail of bullets, ravaging each other's bodies in ecstasy, rather than staying safe apart. Romance, lust, murder—graphically tame as it may be by today's standards (do remember when this was made), Gun Crazy is still a whirlwind of sexually charged suspense, a distant precursor to movies like Natural Born Killers and yet capable of going toe-to-toe today. Simply put, it rocks. It rocks very hard.

This film is available on DVD and can be rented from both Netflix and Blockbuster.

Watch Out! is a feature on JustPressPlay where Arya Ponto showcases lesser-known, lesser-appreciated and often bizarre small films that are cool and deserve to get some attention.

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