Badmovies.org Forum

I caught Girl On The Run on the generally wretched Decades channel a few hours back and was pleasantly surprised. Actually, I shouldn't have been. I'd seen it before, but like forty years ago. This 1958 movie served as the pilot, more or less, for the 77 Sunset Strip TV series, which premiered the same year, though based on the cars it looks like the movie was filmed the year before. It has the look of an early first season Perry Mason.

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. plays his soon to be familiar (to TV viewers) Stu Bailey character, this time hired by a crooked D.A. who killed a man (creepy Shepperd Strudwick, perfectly cast). Zimbalist's job is to find the girl (Erin O'Brien) who saw the murder, and the guy who's getting in his way is none other than Kookie, of Sunset Strip fame, or rather the same actor, Edd Byrnes. Edd's a hipster badass hitman, and he's very good, as Warners must have realized when they cast him as the carhop on the TV series spun off from the film.

It's not clear to me the movie was ever actually shown in theaters. Since movies of the week were still many years off I'm not sure what happened to the film. I've read different stories about it. Back lot job it may be, Girl On The Run is a first rate mini-Noir, and I mean that as a compliment. Some gifted people worked on it, including Roy Huggins (producer), Richard L. Bare (director), and veteran players Barton MacLane and Vince Barnett. Ray Teal is in it, too, as an honest cop. Noir fans will not be disappointed by this one. It's not a great movie but it delivers.