gun crazy
High Contrast Cinema launch their 'Femme Fatale' season with the thrilling lovers-on-the-run Gun Crazy from 1950.
John Dall plays Bart Tare, an ex-soldier with a firearm fixation who finds himself bewitched by Peggy Cummins’ Annie Laurie Starr, a carnival sharpshooter who lures him into a violent crime spree that can only ever end in tragedy.
Directed by Joseph L. Lewis, Gun Crazy is a wildly entertaining B-movie that influenced the French New Wave to the New Hollywood movement and much more besides. Annie Starr is widely considered to be one of the most dangerous and iconic femmes fatales from the classic film noir period - so who better to start the season off with?
John Dall
Peggy Cummins
Joseph H. Lewis
John Dall
​​
John Dall was an American actor best known for his work on stage and screen from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Born in New York City he gained recognition for his talent and versatility in the theatre, and he went on to earn a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his film debut in The Corn Is Green (1945).
​
Dall is perhaps most famous for his role as one of the two intellectual killers in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948). He also starred alongside Peggy Cummins in the film noir Gun Crazy (1950), playing a firearms-obsessed character.
Despite his promising start, Dall's film career didn't reach the heights expected - he appeared in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus but following that he mostly worked in television and theatre.
​
He passed away in 1971 from cardiac arrest, aged only 50, at his Beverley Hills home.
​
Peggy Cummins
​​​
Peggy Cummins (1925-2017) was an Irish actress born Augusta Margaret Diane Fuller in Prestatyn, Wales.
She began her career in the theatre, making her London stage debut at just 13 years old. Her early roles in films like Dr. O'Dowd (1940) and Salute John Citizen (1942) paved the way for her Hollywood journey.
Cummins is best known for her role as Annie Laurie Starr in the film noir classic Gun Crazy (1950), where she played a trigger-happy bank robber. This performance cemented her status as a femme fatale icon.
She moved back to Britain following this role and her marriage to businessman Derek Dunnett. She went on to star in a number of British films, including alongside Edward G. Robinson in Who Goes There! (1952) and in Jacques Tourneur's cult classic, Night of the Demon (1957).
​
Cummins had retired from acting by the 1970s and dedicated herself to charitable work, particularly supporting children with disabilities. She passed away in London in 2017, 11 days after her 92nd birthday.
​
Joseph H. Lewis
​​
Joseph H. Lewis, born on April 6 1907 in Brooklyn, New York, was a distinguished American film director known for his work in B-movies during the mid-20th century.
He began his career as a camera assistant and later moved onto film editing, making his directorial debut in the late 1930s with low-budget westerns and action films.
Although comfortable working in a variety of genres - from horror to musicals to war pictures - he truly made his mark in film noir, his most acclaimed works being Gun Crazy (1950) and The Big Combo (1955), both of which are celebrated for their intense storytelling and striking cinematography.
Towards the end of his career Lewis directed numerous television episodes, particularly in the western genre, including The Rifleman and Bonanza. He retired from directing in 1966 and later received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.
Joseph H. Lewis passed away on August 30, 2000, at his home in Los Angeles, aged 93.