It’s not unusual to find in a film noir a depiction of post-war America as a place of cynicism, brutality and ruthless self-interest.
It’s in the nature of the genre to follow our hero as he (and sometimes she) navigates such a world while trying to hold on to his sense of right over wrong, good over evil, battling against his moral, spiritual or physical death.
What is rare is a film noir in which there exists no opportunity for redemption, where there is no chance for the protagonists to show their better side or find an escape from a corrupt society and the corruption of those who inhabit it.
Dial 1119 is such a film.
The plot involves a psychopathic killer, Gunther Wyckoff, who has been released early from the insane asylum and makes straight for the psychiatrist who he believes got him locked up. The madman embarks on a killing spree before holing up in a neighbourhood bar. There, he is recognised, but before the bartender has a chance to alert the police, the killer’s suspicions are aroused and he shoots his would-be betrayer in the back.
The sounds of gunfire bring the police, too late to arrest the murderer as he barricades himself inside the bar and takes hostage an assortment of customers and staff.
What follows is not heroic camaraderie among the hostages or crafty work by the police to end the siege without further bloodshed, but a fulsome display of misanthropy – human idiocy, hysteria and selfishness – as each character under duress unravels and shows us the ugliest versions of themselves.
Thus we have Freddy (played by Virginia Field), the ageing lush; Helen (played by Andrea King), the jittery woman worried that her life is rushing by and her chances of romance and marriage are diminishing; Skip (played by Keefe Brasselle), the young barman, who believes the fact that his wife is in hospital about to have a baby should trump the predicament he and the others find himself in; Harrison D. Barnes (played by James Bell), the verbose newspaper man, who has quit the job he hates for the hundredth time only to find himself right in the middle of the biggest story of his career; Earl (played by Leon Ames), a sleazy, middle-aged salesman hitting on Helen; Dr John Faron (played by Sam Levene), the psychiatrist who believes he can rationalise with the insane gunman; and Captain Henry Keiver (played by Richard Rober), the gung-ho cop who wants to storm the bar and do what should have been done to Wyckoff when he first came to the attention of the police, before do-gooding psychiatrists got involved.
