cult film freak: KATHRYN GRANT & RICHARD KILEY GAMBLE 'THE PHENIX CITY STORY'

Title: THE PHENIX CITY STORY Year: 1955 Rating: ***1/2

Since the entire first act of the film noir docudrama THE PHENIX CITY STORY consists of interviews with actual citizens recalling when one seedy downtown street of vice and gambling ruled the otherwise peaceful and rural titular Alabama town, when the second act rolls in, we get right to dirty business...

With actors now, beginning with good girl Kathyrn Grant dealing the central casino's marked cards to losing-streak boyfriend Biff McGuire... at which point everything's literally on the table since the joint's not only wholly dishonest, but bare-knuckle dangerous...

John McIntire and Richard Kiley in THE PHENIX CITY STORY

Mainly despised by the weepy/melodramatic wife of returning young lawyer Richard Kiley, whose veteran lawyer father John McIntire... a kind of unnamed town mayor type... is sought after by the one intrepid group trying to take down the string of mob-run casinos...

At one point, one of these honest fellas is carrying a pistol, which ignites a lot of discussion, unusual in a crime-centered noir where gunfights would have already come and gone... but the violence finally occurs in a viciously-sneaky fashion, mostly by thug John Larch working for casino-owning Edward Andrews (backed by fatale Jean Carson)...

Kathryn Grant in THE PHENIX CITY STORY

Strange since Andrews, herein a slow-burn/cold-blooded, formidable crime boss, usually overplays offbeat passive dolts while hero Richard Kiley's more apt as sinister villains...

Herein he's the true main character trying to get his stubborn yet beloved father to join a cause that will eventually kill him... dad, that is... after what's basically a courtroom-drama sequence in-between murders: including local James Edwards's young black daughter...

Kathryn Grant, Edward Andrews and Truman Smith in THE PHENIX CITY STORY

Meanwhile Kathryn Grant, mostly known as Kathryn Crosby, married to Bing Crosby and who later appeared in classics ranging from ANATOMY OF A MURDER to THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, remains the semi-undercover, idealistic card dealer... as the 11th hour tension relies more on her character hopefully surviving than what's predictable from those opening (annoyingly overlong) townspeople discussing how things have changed for the better...

But PHENIX has enough raw savagery to where what's deliberately obvious is never entirely predictable since 99 RIVER STREET director Phil Karlsen makes this 1950's jazz-soaked expose feel more like an edgy 1930's gangster flick: where any god-awful thing can happen, at any given moment.