Transformation, whether of theme or person, lies at the heart of Joseph H. Lewis’s cinematic identity.
This is an otherwise solid presentation of a beautifully perverse noir staple.
The film’s biggest asset is its unusual stable of auteurs.
It’s not the obsession with Freud that’s the problem with Rudolph Maté’s 1948 noir The Dark Past.
Any film connoisseur worth their salt knows that the purveyors of this genre aimed low but shot high.
It’s a damned good thing that Joseph H. Lewis had as exciting a visual flair and as much a taste for zero-flab pacing as he did.
So .38-caliber erections aren’t exactly as subversive as they once used to be. Gun Crazy is still drenched in Lewis’s B-movie finery.