Cry Vengeance (1954)

After being released from prison, an ex-cop (Mark Stevens, who also directed) sets out to find the man (Douglas Kennedy) he believes is responsible for the death of his wife and child in a car bomb explosion, an explosion which left the right side of his face badly scarred. The journey takes him to a small town in Alaska where the man is living under a new identity. I don't know if Stevens and his screenwriters Warren Douglas and George Bricker had seen Fritz Lang's THE BIG HEAT which came out the year before but the storylines are uncomfortably similar. Even Gloria Grahame's boiling coffee scarred face is transposed to Stevens here though Joan Vohs gets the Grahame floozy part. It's a "B' film which is not without interest and I wish I liked it more but it's poorly acted and features one of the most inept killers, (Skip Homeier in a variation of BIG HEAT's Lee Marvin role). He's the kind of killer that calls the victim's name out before he shoots them thus giving them time to duck rather than just shooting them. I don't want to be too hard on the film. I actually rather enjoyed it. With Martha Hyer, John Doucette, Richard Deacon and Mort Mills.