User Reviews

Saw this one a few weeks back on the big screen at the American Cinematheque and it has stayed w/ me. Baron was about as short and homely as leading men get but somehow in this bleak and uncompromising piece he's effective (particularly in voice-over). Some striking cinematography (especially the wonderful opening train sequence) and a few long takes (Baron walking an entire rundown city block of a sidewalk with no other business, the stirring snowy pier finale) are memorable. Also good is the sleazy fat bearded character actor whose name escapes me (he also appeared in Fuller's SHOCK CORRIDOR around the same time).

There isn't a lot of humanity in BOS though, and the one moment when Baron opens up to the girl he has befriended, he gets slapped hard with cold reality. A well done scene but it only piles on to the disaffection and malaise already permeating this movie. Don't expect to laugh much or take a date; the proceedings rarely stray from deadly serious. This is a movie full of lapsed morals and betrayal but you can take heart that the system remains firmly in control at the chilling end of this downbeat but solid late entry in the noir cycle.

Blast of Silence is a late noir and a pretty good flick and maybe somewhat of a sleeper since it was a blind Criterion buy. It is the story of a hit man. The circumstances which comprise the plight of the average noir hero (or anti-hero) are probably many and varied. A guy might be living an ordinary life and suddenly be hurled into the mire by fate. Or another maybe a guy who has a dangerous life style but finally makes the mistake that begins the nightmare. In this case, however, the hero has apparently and seemingly been so afflicted since the womb. This is wonderfully depicted in an opening sequence that should go down as a classic, in my view. I shall not reveal it but it is immensely satisfying and an excellent way to begin the show.

This movie made me appreciate the professionalism of what it might be like to be hit man. Not that it would appeal to me, personally, but this guy knows what he's doing. We follow the planning leading up to thing itself but the movie is less about the situation and much more the man, his mental state. To that degree that he is good at what he does, to that same degree perhaps, he is not so good at feeling good and being happy. This is dramatized by a rare second-person narration, which (as a reminder) goes something like this: You open your eyes and it's a new day and the same feeling comes over you just like yesterday, that clammy feeling, and that feeling of hatred, for your old man, for yesterday, for today, for tomorrow, for Christmas, for just about everything, and you wonder will this ever end ...

This voice-over that work quites well and is mercifully not overdone or too overbearing. It works because it tells the viewer what's going through the guy's head and how he is experiencing it, an economical way time-wise of letting us know this guy.

I had never heard of any of the players, and I found that refreshing, no hearkening back to any prior roles. The lead is not a veteran actor and his performance perhaps shows as he comes off rather stiff, even a little dull. The good news is that it works for the character, who is a loner and socially inept with women as well as with prior male buddy acquaintances he comes across, all serving to accentuate his obvious isolation. Some of his lines seem awkward, but as I say, it works. That's just the way Frankie Bono is.

There is a greasy gun dealer that is played by a soft-spoken fat man, a small but juicy role. There is also a sweet girl who is sympathetic to Frankie but to only to a point, she is way too far on the right side of the tracks. I really liked her, both the character and the actress. There are no femmes fatales. Frankie is messed up enough, he doesn't need one of those to do him in.

There is a neo-realistic element. The camera takes to the street of NYC, mostly Manhattan; Rockefeller Center at Christmas time (where everyone seems happy except Frankie), Staten Island (the Ferry) and elsewhere.

I won't say much about the story except that given Frankie Bono's character, the norm for him would probably entail going the job site (if you will, whatever city) and carry out his dastardly task in the time allotted, spending most of his time in a hotel alone. But here, a chance encounter with a old friend from the orphanage leads to involvement with still others including the previously mentioned girl and this drives the story. New conflicts arise in the already troubled mind of Frankie Bono and he considers the possibility of change. Can he do it? This one probably doesn't rise to highest level of the noir genre (or maybe I'm not giving enough credit) but it's certainly a good watch, and again, the opening sequence is superb.

A hard-boiled, uncompromising study of a professional hit-man, "Baby Boy" Frankie Bono. The beginning of the film is menacing; a pitch-black screen and pounding percussion driving a cynically vicious narrative, "remembering, out of the black silence you were born in pain . . . born with hate and anger built in . . . a slap on the backside to blast out a scream!" A small light becomes visible amidst the black like a moving bulls eye on a target and all of a sudden amidst a crescendo of noise you realize you've been on a train in a tunnel and are now being "blasted" out into the world. But it's like being born into a sewer because this world is seen through the eyes of our killer. Frankie Bono is played by Allen Baron (the director himself) who's appearance and acting style are vintage Robert DeNiro. Frankie has the misfortune to run into a girl for whom he once had affection, and for the first time in his career, he's having 2nd thoughts about his profession, but a killer who doesn't kill gets killed. Frankie's on a one way street that cannot go on forever. Unforgettable film.

Someone resurrect this 'lost classic' hardboiled noir! Director/Writer/Lead Actor Allen Baron (whose subsequent career took him into TV-land with the likes of CHARLIE'S ANGELS) turned out this bleak film noir in 1961, and it must surely rate as one of the all-time genre downers (and that's intended as a compliment!). Similar in tone to Irving Lerner's earlier MURDER BY CONTRACT (another must-see!), this features a protracted, yet stunningly appropriate, opening tracking shot through a railway tunnel as an early morning train spits Ohio-based contract assassin Frankie Bono (Baron) out into a wintry New York to carry out a Christmas holiday hit on a second-tier racketeer but, as in MURDER BY CONTRACT, all the meticulous planning and methodical preparation becomes unravelled as fate and his malevolent (and often unseen) criminal fraternity deal Frankie a crueller hand than the one he'd planned for his unsuspecting quarry. OK, nothing new here, but the tone, something like a cross between the cruel randomness of a Cornell Woolrich story (read this guy!) mated with an existentialist and angst-ridden take on the 'We're born in pain, We die alone' school of genre filmmaking, means that you'd need to take in a couple of Abel Ferrara movies like THE DRILLER KILLER and BAD LIEUTENANT to get your jollies after watching this one. Oh yeah, and it's topped off by a pitiless world-weary hardboiled third-person narration which ratchets up the ominous atmospherics that all the doomy foreshadowing brings to this dance of death (example - when Bono tracks his would-be victim to The Village Gate, the jazzy soundtrack switches to a beatnik vocalist/conga-drummer whose set consists solely of death-themed numbers). Atmospheric lengthy takes, often featuring a behatted and raincoated (or alternately dark-suited) Bono stalking the mean streets of the Big Apple dwarfed by the concrete jungle cityscape evoke and prefigure both Marvin in POINT BLANK and Delon in Melville's LE SAMOURAI, and his ruthlessly downbeat demeanour also recalls Henry Silva in the similarly ruthless (and elusive) JOHNNY COOL (see my IMDB review for more on this one - shameless plug!). This may be (by now) an oft-told tale, but what we have here is a true low-budget one-off for fans of the lower depths, and there's even a sweaty, weighty (excuse the pun) and telling cameo from Larry Tucker (Pagliacci in Fuller's 'SHOCK CORRIDOR') for cultists to take in amongst the no-name cast. A must-see - if you get a chance to see it.

Yeah, rememberin' da time when you was a kid and saw this movie on late night TV. Even then you was wise that it was a shabby-lookin' lowdown no-budget job and the cast was not so good lookin' -- but that's OK, you liked it that way. These was the kinda people you could see all around you, every day in da neighborhood, downtown, on the street corner, in the subway. Yeah, this looked like life in the city, but wit' a special kinda danger, a certain mystery. You ain't never forgot this movie, didja? Oh, you didn't remember what it was called or who was in it, but it stuck wit' ya and bounced around yer brain like the beatin' of a conga drum in a Greenwich Village beatnik club. Didn't think it would ever catch up with ya, didja?

Ya seen it again tonight, huh? The actin' still ain't so great and the people still ain't so good-lookin'. But that's OK, 'cause it's still the coolest damn thing ya ever seen. Ahh, Hollywood is for saps. You want somethin' gritty and dark, don't ya? 'Cause that's the way you like it.

Rememberin'.

I thought the movie used the voice-over very well. I like the idea of a character allowing us into his mind and/or thought process while he goes about his daily business, especially an interesting profession such as being a hitman. Overall I thought the movie was suspenseful as well, with me cheering on Bono in the last scenes. I recommend this movie for anyone interested film in general.

The strongest impression left by director/star Allen Baron's 1961 Blast of Silence is that the fabulous postwar years are gone, fini, kaput. The gritty 60s have arrived, and Manhattan is grimy, garish and awash in human as well as inanimate litter -- the 60s in which transvestite hookers started knifing U.N. diplomats in Times Square. Into this nascent cesspool travels tired hitman Frankie Bono; he comes by train, through a dark and endless tunnel which seems to symbolize either the birth canal or the human condition -- or both. He's a full-time loner (like Vince Edwards in the somewhat similar Murder by Contract) out to do a job, collect and move on. But he happens upon some old acquaintances from his childhood in an orphanage and succumbs, clumsily, to some human contact. This proves his undoing. The ending takes place in a desolate shore not unlike the Staten Island locations of Sorry, Wrong Number. Blast of Silence is amateurish and "personal," in the style of the John Cassavettes films that would soon follow -- products of that edgy, verbal New York culture of jazz boites and improvisational theater. It's no masterpiece, but it's worth seeing for anyone tracking the turns the noir cycle took in its last, dying years.

Blast of Silence is a short tense jewel of the genre. The story of a lonesome hitter coming back to NY on Christmas Eve to perform yet another job. Except this time, with NY, there comes back a whole lot of personal moments too. I won't unveil the plot, it's actually very simple and straightforward, and that's precisely why I'm amazed the whole thing just works so smoothly -indeed chillingly. No need for double crossing, double minded gangsters: those unnecessary decoys uninspired directors use to try to spice up their movie and gain 5 minutes!! Here you know the guys are going to play by the rules i.e. bad and simple!

And the suspense is kept at an incredible level just by the sheer darkness of the atmosphere and obviously by the decadent streets of NY which is shown in a very tough manner.

Baron plays Bono and although not an actor, he gives a credible performance. Maybe because he doesn't really have to talk so much. Most of his thoughts are narrated by a great voice over (Lionel Stander -he was cut off from the cast due to McCcarthysm). Note Larry Tucker's cool performance who would go on to win a Golden Globe for Shock Corridor.

Just for the quote because it hit me as an instant cult quote: "Baby Boy Frankie Bono". I'll admit nothing incredible in that, but listen to Standler say it and you'll understand!!

Blast of Silence (1961)

In some ways, the filming and the cool grey timbre of this film are so singular and evocative, you really have to watch it. In this way it reminded me of a gritty, New York version of the 1958 Elevator to the Gallows (set in Paris). They both have some of the most beautiful, evocative scenes of people just walking the streets of the city, day and night. In "Blast of Silence" you get taken to several parts of New York, unedited, shot with a simple but elegant intuition for the place. This is a movie by New Yorkers about New York.

But the plot, about a lone killer on his last dubious assignment, is a strain. Beyond the convincing despondency and isolation of the leading actor (Allen Baron, from Brooklyn, who is also the director), the cast struggles to be relevant. The one other shining performance is the gun dealing and rat lover, played by Larry Tucker with a kind of relish for the unsavory dirty aspects of his part. Great stuff.

If you accept that the story isn't much, by itself, and watch it for the scenes of the city, for the impressions of ordinary New Yorkers at the time of Kennedy's election, you will be really wowed. Right from the first shot, the low budget hand held camera on a train in a tunnel, going on and on until finally finding the light of day, to the last scenes in a a light, windy, driven snow in the Meadowlands, it's a thrilling, original ride. The filming has a gritty, everyman quality that seems to come right from art school without the affectation. It really is worth it just for the scenes, and the urban scenery.

First time director Allen Baron's Blast of Silence begins with a smart visual metaphor for birth, where utter blackness gives way to a pinhole of light that ultimately grows into an entrance into NYC via the opening of a train tunnel. This birth symbolizes the harshness of the world we're entering, a nasty departure from the warm tranquility within the womb (or wherever it is we've come from). From frame #1 we are bombarded by a tough as nails narration written by blacklisted great Waldo Salt. The narration not only establishes we are in a cold and brutal world where thugs like our protagonist, Frankie Bono, prowl, it thrusts us into the goings on in Bono's head.

Despite being a prototypical film noir, BOS also has a documentary feel to it as we spend every minute of the film following every move the hired gun Bono makes, from the mundane to his moment of truth. Bono doesn't say much, he doesn't have to, since the narration relentlessly dictates every thought going through his troubled mind. When watching BOS you can't help but wonder if it would have been more interesting to have not known what Bono was thinking, since the second-person narration leaves nothing to the imagination. Despite being smartly written and sharply delivered by Lionel Stander, the narration fills in too many blanks and ends up smothering the visual merits of BOS. With stark and visceral documentary style authenticity, BOS hints at being a great noir, but it falls well short of the mark. BOS may be referenced as an obscure favorite of certain noir fans angling for street cred, but the truth is it ain't all its cracked up to be. My suggestion to aspiring cineaste hipsters would be to reference the more familiar but far superior Sam Fuller masterpiece Pickup on South Street or even Murder, Inc. the movie Peter Falk chose over BOS despite being cast as Bono.

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Allen Baron didn't make that many films (maybe only two or three at most in a career mostly dominated by TV gigs), but perhaps one near-great film is enough. There are two kinds of directors in this world, my friend: those who make one or two fantastic films that will live on and on, and then those who make several amongst many other excellent or very good films. Allen Baron falls into the former category, and his film Blast of Silence is an example of how to do something right on a super-duper low budget on the streets of New York, with no-name (or not-at-all) actors, and the one big name being Lionel Stander a at-the-time blacklisted actor who was paid $500 to speak Waldo Salt's blisteringly powerful hard-boiled narration.

Indeed the narration here is so good that it at times threatens the scenes it comes in on. It's a "you know it, Frankie" type of voice, a combination of some unseen presence looking on and perhaps just a voice of conscience ripped right off the shelf of a paperback. Stander's gravel-voice, a possible inspiration for Rourke in Sin City, and the real locations and hoppy jazz score, all add to this being a delicious fear of film-making. The story itself isn't that much more different than one might see in Melville (not exactly Le Samourai but close - take away the narration, some of the dialog and chunks of the music and its about the same), as a hired gun, Frank Bono (Baron), comes into the Big Apple on a contract killing, and suddenly finds himself in one of those crises of the existential sort.

Frank is all alone, and is fine that way, until he connects with a group of guys that run into him who used to be kids at the orphanage together. He sees a woman there that he wants to spend some time with, but this all just starts to mess with his head - that and a bad deal done with a shady, fat gun seller (you might remember from Shock Corridor and Angels Hard as They Come, an unforgettable presence if not great actor) that leads him to questioning the whole job he's on. Baron has some familiar ground he's dealing with, but it's all filmed carefully in Frank's following and casing of his target. The tension mounts brilliantly, and the tone is dark without being pretentious. And those shots of Frank Bono walking on the streets in mostly darkness, fedora and hat, jazz and Christmas songs, are for the film-noir fan just about perfect.

If there's a minor drawback, and it should be mentioned, it's that Baron isn't entirely fit in the role of Frank Bono, and as a first time director (save for Lionel Stander and maybe Tucker) he only gets the minimum out of his low-rent cast. On the recent Criterion DVD in an interview Baron said Peter Falk was originally considered for the role. That would've put it over the top, and something out of the ordinary to see Falk in that part. With Baron, doing triple duty as writer, director and actor, he does some decent work in some scenes, but isn't entirely comfortable speaking certain lines of dialog. He works better, and perhaps he himself knew this from seeing early test footage and whatnot, as a silent figure, moving as in Melville like some lone ghost on the streets or looking with a cold, lonely stare like in the jazz club or on a dark street.

Blast of Silence is terrific when it sticks to what it should: take to the streets and buildings in Greenwich Village and Harlem and the East Side in crisp black and white and give it the feel of one of the best paperback pulp books you've ever read brought to life. It's like a slightly rusty but practically unassailable ruby. 9.5/10

Kinda heavy on the blast, light on the silence, wouldn't you say? In other words, between the unrelenting, superfluous narration (penned by blacklisted Waldo Salt under a pseudonym and spoken by blacklisted Lionel Stander sans credit) and the noisome jazz score that just wouldn't stop wailing, banging and bopping I'm surprised I didn't develop a goddamn migraine. Also less than stellar were the two lead performers, Allen Baron and Molly McCarthy, although, to be fair, it wasn't as if Baron's screenplay gave them much to work with which is, aside from the cacophanous music, the most annoying thing about this "cult classic". The narration won't shut up and the characters, when they do speak, have little of interest to say.

So why a 7/10 'stead of a 5 or 6? Simple. Some of the best bleak, wintertime NYC cinematography until "French Connection" came along. And like Friedkin's non cult classic I love that it's perversely shot at Christmas. Kudos to DP Merrill Brody. Also, being a low budget/indie, along with the usual crappy acting and stiff set ups, you get stuff that more expensive studio productions would avoid, like shooting the ending in an actual friggin HURRICANE! Awesome. And, finally, there is no denying the power of the violent scenes, like the strangulation of a rat who keeps pet rats (an oleaginously wonderful Larry Tucker in the film's only decent acting turn) and the hit on a low level Mafioso, killed while on his way to an assignation carrying a teddy bear. It is in these scenes that Allen Baron shows his skills as a director and partially atones for the dull stuff with him and McCarthy and too artsy stuff like an endless shot of a hit man on an empty city street walking toward and then into the camera.

Bottom Line: Good first film from Baron. Comparable in overall quality to "Killer's Kiss".

Grade: B minus.

This has to be the bleakest movie ever made. Nothing I've seen comes close.

It lasts a mere 77 minutes but seems twice as long. Identically filmed tracking shots of the hit-man, Frank Bono, walking along grey winter Manhattan streets as dozens of storefronts pass monotonously behind him take up 20 minutes. There's one static shot of Bono, starting as a speck, walking towards us from a full city block away that doesn't end until he literally almost runs into the camera. Add to these, two prolonged scenes photographed from Bono's car as he trails the man he has contracted to murder. These scenes kill about a half hour, leaving 45 minutes.

From this you can subtract another 10 minutes during which Bono goes into a Greenwich Village nightclub and sits drinking at a bar while his prey hangs with a group at a table. In this sequence, the camera dwells mostly on a bongo-playing singer as he belts out two or three full-length beatnik songs, each as boringly dreadful – and pointless -- as the next.

During all of the above not a single word of dialogue is spoken. Over most of the above is a relentlessly despairing and repetitive narrative voiced by a raspy actor speaking in comic book gangsterese. He provides Bono's boilerplate backstory and what's going through his mind as he endlessly walks and drives the streets of the city. Many, many allusions to hot hands/cold hands.

So, now we're down to about a half hour of actual interaction and (dull) conversation between four (dull) characters, plus three (dull) killing sequences. The last shooting is filmed in the frigid Jamaica Bay wetlands during a perfectly bleak sideways-blowing snowstorm that is the perfectly bleak icing on the perfectly bleak cake.

I know, I know. The movie is meant to be gritty and grim. It's noir, right? But what's its point? What of value is the viewer supposed to glean from this?

This B& W film, set in New York uses its locations and actors with great skill. The sound editing is very effective and adds moments of tension to the atypically dark contrasty lighting. One shot of an exterior street is enormously powerful without any action beside the cityscape. The director has a great eye - not as good at acting as directing though. If you like film noir - this low budget film is worthy of your viewing.

If you like gritty, real noir, and you can't stand cloying Christmas movies, then this is for you! A hitman, a fat gun dealer with pet rats, unrequited dames, and of course the mean streets of Manhattan, what else do you need?

Written, directed, and starring... allen baron. You'll recognize the narrator's voice, lionel stander, as max from hart to hart. Just the right slow, gritty tone voice for a murder. Frank bono has come from cleveland to knock off local boss troiano. Bono meets up with big ralph, who is supposed to help him... but is he helping him? As bono walks around the city, there's a fun, peppy jazz song playing, giving a happy, upbeat feel to such a dark, story. The calm before the storm. We get to hear a couple songs performed by dean sheldon when bono follows troiano into a nightclub. It's pretty good! Which is unusual when the same person writes, directs, and stars. Not bad, for such a low budget film. Some interesting information on the making of the film in the trivia section.

... I got the urge recently to see it again, but I am not sure why. Subliminally, the narrator of this dark flick (Lionel Stander) played a bit role (as an Innkeeper) in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, which I also re-watched last week, but I didn't realize that until AFTER I looked it up here at IMDB. (maybe an inner voice was whispering to me?)

Anyway, opportunities to see this little gem are fading away. I finally managed to get a link to work (instead of pop-up ads for porn or junk), and the only DVD copy for sale on eBay was from a guy in Germany (pricey).

My dad was a classic film lover, and this one won at Cannes back in the day. So, I recalled the gritty NY street scenes, a nasty fat guy who tells the gunman 'You're nothing without a gun in your paw', and an assassin who has lost his way. Yes, my recollection was correct on all counts. What's amazing is that the film is still as gripping as it was 60 years ago when I was 10. If you can score a viewing, and you love film noir, this is a must for you. 8/10. Only 70 minutes- no fat.

A contract killer (director and co-writer Allen Baron) comes to NY on Christmas Eve to do one last job. He meets an old flame (Molly McCarthy) and a dangerous man (Larry Tucker) and things get out of control.

Very interesting if not totally successful film noir. It's appropriately shot in black and white and uses audio in a very good way to make the Christmas time atmosphere at the beginning seem bleak and miserable. There's also plenty (but not TOO much thankfully) hard-boiled narration that fill us in on what the killer is thinking and/or feeling. It's very well made on a low budget...but that doesn't make it a classic! It moves very slow--even at only 75 minutes and Baron shows no emotion throughout the entire film. Some might say that fits the character but it just comes across to me as bad acting. There are plot holes galore and a music score that never even seems to match whats going on in the picture! It has its points of interest--but a classic? No. I give it a 6.

Troubled hitman Frankie Bono arrives in New York City to kill mobster Troiano. The production is minimalist and they probably saved some money. I love the street scenes which are obviously shot surreptitiously. The constant narration fits the harden crime noir style. The most annoying is the bongo singer. He's so bad that it sounds like he's performing sarcastically. He almost kills the movie all by himself.