The Psychotronic Video Guide calls it "One of the oddest movies of the fifties," Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide deems it a "trash classic," and any movie buff who's ever seen it will probably concur that Shack Out on 101 (1955) is easily the nuttiest B-movie to emerge in the Cold War era when paranoia over communist infiltration provided Hollywood with a new type of villain. In many of these films, "The Red Menace" was a lot closer than you thought. A Marxist enemy agent could be your new husband (The Woman on Pier 13 [1949, aka I Married a Communist]), a family member (My Son John [1952]) or even an alien life form (Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1956]). In Shack Out on 101, the Commie threat is represented, god forbid, by a short order cook at a greasy spoon diner. As impersonated by Lee Marvin in one of his most entertaining performances, this character, known as Slob, passes himself off as a Neanderthal knucklehead but is in reality a cunning and deadly saboteur.

Barry Gifford, whose novel Wild at Heart was adapted to the screen in 1990 by David Lynch and who co-wrote the screenplay for Lost Highway (1997) with that same director, had this to say about Shack Out on 101: "It's as if William Inge were forced by the government to rewrite some Chekhov play, but set in McCarthy-era America, and he took twenty Valium, washed them down with Old Crow, and dashed it off as the drug grabbed his brain and put him in Palookaville." Indeed, the main protagonists of Shack Out on 101 exist in their own tiny, claustrophobic universe which is a grubby little pit stop on an isolated stretch of the Pacific coast. Like some surreal version of The Petrified Forest (1936), most of the narrative unfolds on an interior set where a mounted marlin, fishnets, portholes, a jukebox and a few barstools provide the minimalistic decor. One of the few exterior scenes occurs in the unexpected opening as a sexy blonde (Terry Moore) sunbathes on the beach and suddenly finds herself in extreme lip-lock mode with a stranger (Lee Marvin). Or so it seems. What starts out looking like a potential rape becomes clumsy horseplay as we realize the wrestling couple are co-workers at a hamburger joint and the waitress Kotty is experienced in routinely rebuffing the advances of Slob, the cook.

One of the more preposterous plot devices in a movie that is overflowing with them is the idea that Slob is using the diner as a front for his subversive activities which involve stealing secret formulas from a nearby research facility. His partners in espionage include Perch (Len Lesser), a local fisherman, Professor Claude Dillon (Frank DeKova), a scientist who works at the nearby laboratory, and Professor Sam Bastion (Frank Lovejoy), a nuclear physicist turned traitor against his own country. Additional subplots involve George (Keenan Wynn), the sarcastic diner owner, his old army pal Eddie (Whit Bissell) who is still suffering post-traumatic shock from D-Day, two wisecracking truck drivers, Pepe (Donald Murphy) and Artie (Jess Barker), and Kotty, the only woman in the vicinity, who is lusted after by all the men but is only interested in Sam. Unfortunately, he appears to prefer discussing sea shells with Slob most of the time.

Hardcore fans of Shack Out on 101 are often hard-pressed to pick their favorite scene since there are so many; it's an embarrassment of riches. Still, there are two which deserve some sort of "Hall of Fame" award. The one in which Sam and Kotty do some heavy pawing and kissing while discussing the Bill of Rights is a first of some kind. Likewise, the weirdly homoerotic sequence where George and Slob strip down and work out together, comparing their pecs and then scurrying nervously for their shirts when they are interrupted by Kotty.

A low-budget release from Allied Artists, Shack Out on 101 was directed by Edward Dein from a screenplay he penned with his wife Mildred. While none of Dein's other work approaches the eclectic nature of this, a few titles such as Curse of the Undead [1959], a horror/Western with a gunslinging vampire, and The Leech Woman [1960], with Coleen Gray as a woman who discovers the secret to eternal youth, display traces of a singular and offbeat talent. But the real star behind the camera on Shack Out on 101 is cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who won the Oscar® for his first film (Tabu: A Story of the South Seas [1931]) and also lensed High Noon [1952] and countless films for American International Pictures (Attack of the Crab Monsters [1957], Pit and the Pendulum [1961], Bikini Beach [1964]).

The original poster for Shack Out on 101 was a no-frills affair with the boldly direct tag line - "Four men and a girl!" If I had been the marketing director on this, I would have taken a much more exploitative angle. "Meet Kotty, the blonde bombshell desired by every man," "Sam, seashell fetishist or secret agent?", "See the ferocious mouth-to-mouth tug-a-war with a dirty dish towel!" "Watch as scuba divers practice deep sea fishing in a truckstop bar!" Or you could try capitalizing on your name cast. "See Whit Bissell armed with a deadly harpoon gun!" "Experience Keenan Wynn and Lee Marvin's Hot and Sweaty Workout Routine," or "Frank Lovejoy is Back - Tougher, Braver and Smarter Than He Was in I Was a Communist for the FBI (1959)."

Producer: Mort Millman
Director: Edward Dein
Screenplay: Edward Dein, Mildred Dein (screenplay and story)
Cinematography: Floyd Crosby
Art Direction: Lou Croxton
Music: Paul Dunlap
Film Editing: George White
Cast: Terry Moore (Kotty), Frank Lovejoy (Prof. Sam Bastion), Keenan Wynn (George), Lee Marvin (slob/Mr. Gregory), Whit Bissell (Eddie), Jess Barker (Artie), Donald Murphy (Pepe), Frank DeKova (Prof. Claude Dillon), Len Lesser (Perch), Fred Gabourie (lookout).
BW-80m.

by Jeff Stafford