HIT AND RUN

US, 1957, 87 minutes, Black and white.
Cleo Moore, Hugo Haas, Vince Edwards, Dolores Reed.
Directed by Hugo Haas.

Hit and Run is the last film by Cleo Moore, a B-budget actress of the 1950s. She had worked with Hugo Haas, with a striking femme fatale role, in The Other Woman.

Hugo Haas had been a celebrated comedian in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, fled to the United States in the 1940s and helped with propaganda broadcasts. His films, mainly in the 1950s, seem to have some autobiographical aspects, an older man, entangled with scheming women, generally brought down by them – though, in this one, he is triumphant at the end. Vince Edwards has an early role as a mechanic involved in the triangle relationship.

The plot is fairly straightforward. A drunken garage owner gets entangled with a dancer who wants out of show business, meets her again when sober, is a widower and declares he will never marry again – and immediately to the wedding. Cleo Moore portrays the dancer.

The film shows a fairly conventional married life, the woman wanting nice things and being generally indulged by her husband who has quite some standing in the local community and local organisations.

However, Frank, Vince Edwards, the mechanic, is attracted to the young woman, tangles with her, she trying to resist. The mechanic then concocts a plan whereby he does up one of the old cars on the lot, takes the woman with him, kills his boss in a hit run, then altering the car back to its previous state.

The complication arises when the owner’s twin brother is released from prison and scares the woman. The reading of the will, the whole property and wealth of the owner is divided between his wife and his brother – who resents neglect while he was in prison.

Eventually, the wife realises that the brother was killed in a hit-and-run accident and this is really her husband returning, testing her, testing Frank. And, ultimately, the truth is revealed, the wife and Frank are arrested and the owner is left triumphant. There is some sympathy for the woman who is entangled with Frank but also quite devoted to her husband and an unwilling passenger in the car at the time of the hit run.

Of historical interest for the careers of Hugo Haas and Cleo Moore.