Product Details

• Actors: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, Tully Marshall
• Directors: Frank Tuttle
• Writers: Frank Tuttle, Albert Maltz, Graham Greene, W.R. Burnett
• Producers: Buddy G. DeSylva, Richard Blumenthal
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Universal Studios
• VHS Release Date: October 24, 1995
• Run Time: 80 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 1558802010
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,162 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Gun for Hire, November 16, 2004

By 

Steven Hellerstedt "SH" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Gun For Hire (Universal Noir Collection) (DVD)

Wonderful character actor Laird Cregar plays the oily and overfed Broadway angel and hulking Lothario to singing magician Veronica Lake. By day he's a squeamish schemer, eager to contract out crime most foul just so long as he isn't subjected to recitals of any disturbing details. That he'd double cross Alan Ladd's Raven was as inevitable as his bedtime box of mints and book of racy French stories. That Raven would resent it was unfortunate, indeed.
Cregar died at the tender age of 30, two years after THIS GUN FOR HIRE was released. For old movie fans unfamiliar with him, he was a combination of a bulked up Vincent Price and Sydney Greenstreet with a little more bounce in his step.
As delightful as Cregar is, discussion of THIS GUN FOR HIRE starts and stops with Alan Ladd, who catapulted to stardom with his portrayal of the cold-blooded killer Raven. The emblematic scene occurs early on, when the hired Ladd enters an apartment building to fulfill his end of the contract. He meets a young girl wearing leg braces as he walks up the stairs. What occurs next, and continues on until he leaves the building, is simply a brilliant bit of minimalist screen acting. Raven's face is an expressionless, cold-blooded, inscrutable mask. Ladd plays the sequence almost solely with his eyes. They dart menacingly from the crippled girl to the apartment door, assessing the risks, flashing for a split second before smoldering to a colder temperature. It's a justifiably famous scene, one of the best tough guy sequences ever, a star maker.
The plot bends and twists just enough to throw Ladd and Lake together for most of the last half of the movie. She a hostage with a secret or two, he obsessed with getting back at Cregar. The camera liked what it saw when they shared a frame. Ladd and Lake oozed chemistry, enough for a handful of future teamings. Their characters dance an uneasy minuet in this one - Ladd never lets Lake's considerable charms breach his tough guy shell, she's reminded more than once why he's named for a ruthless carrion killer. The only time this movie stumbles, I believe, is when Ladd talks about the "psych-something doctor" who can make his bad dreams go away. By then the movie was in a hurry to get to the final scene, and it needed to humanize Ladd some before getting there. Still, it feels awkward and stilted.
THIS GUN FOR HIRE is an exceptional movie, one of the best tough-guy crime thrillers ever made.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars RAVEN A CHILLING SCREEN CREATION, July 6, 2004

By 

Nix Pix (Windsor, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Gun For Hire (Universal Noir Collection) (DVD)

"This Gun For Hire" is a watered down, glammed up version of Graham Greene's novel A Gun for Sale. It represents the first of four cinematic outings that teamed sultry Veronica Lake with the stoically handsome Alan Ladd, a potent cocktail of personalities that proved to be much in demand over the next decade. Perhaps a tad heavy on sentimentality than most film noirs, the plot concerns Philip Raven's (Ladd) obsession with Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake) a nightclub dancer with a rough and rumble cop boyfriend, Michael Crane (Robert Preston). Ellen is supposed to be working on exposing Alvin Brewster (Tully Marshall), a chemical company CEO who sold poisonous gas to the Japanese. But an odd and Freudian driven relationship surfaces between Ellen and Raven when she senses his childhood pain and angst. Ellen becomes Raven's willing captive, in the process transcending his nightmares and making him more human. The very first scene in this film is so incredibly chilling it begs special mention. After having been double crossed by ne'er-do-well, Williard Gates (Laird Cregar), Raven (Ladd) contemplates killing an innocent little girl who has seen him. Even though the resulting decision is typical "golden age" morality, Ladd makes one believe, if only for a moment, that such cold blooded silencing might be possible.
THE TRANSFER: Universal's DVD transfer is remarkably solid and clean. The gray scale is very well balanced with deep solid blacks and whites that are almost pristine. There's a hint film grain and some age related artifacts. Also, some edge enhancement and pixelization occur, but nothing that will distract from a visual presentation that is a considerable improvement over previously issued VHS tapes. The audio is mono and very well represented.
BOTTOM LINE: There are no extras on this disc. Nevertheless, it is a good disc to add to your library of classic cinema.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greed, Patriotism & Murder Intermingle in WWII-era Film Noir, April 23, 2005

By 

mirasreviews (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: This Gun For Hire (Universal Noir Collection) (DVD)

"This Gun for Hire" is an early film noir adapted from the novel by Graham Greene. Phillip Raven (Alan Ladd) is a stone-faced assassin whose only sympathies seem to lie with cats. He murders a blackmailer for industrialist Alvin Brewster, but Brewster's assistant Willard Gates (Laird Cregar) pays him in "hot" money. When Raven spends one of the $10 bills, it puts the police on his trail. In the meantime, lovely nightclub singer Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake) has been approached by a Senator who is investigating Brewster's collaboration with enemy powers. The Senator asks her to take a job at Willard Gates' Los Angeles nightclub in order to spy on him. She accepts the mission, and leaves for L.A. on the same train that Raven is taking to flee town. Gates see Raven and Ellen together on the train and assumes she's in cahoots with Raven, who's determined to kill Gates' for setting the police on him. Ellen's boyfriend, police Lieutenant Michael Crane (Robert Preston) follows them to L.A. in pursuit of Raven, whom Brewster and Gates claim robbed their payroll.

If the plot sounds convoluted, it is. That's just the set-up. Every character is either ignorant or mistaken about the others' role in this web of treachery. Ellen is privy to the most information, but she can't tell anyone. Veronica Lake has a lot of charisma, even if Ellen's role is convoluted. Ellen is a different thing to every person in the film, to the extent that the audience has to think at times to keep it all straight. It's interesting that she plays the role of a femme fatale to the assassin Raven, but her actions are selfless and righteous. Ellen isn't an ambitious seductress; she's a steadfast, practical woman who loves her boyfriend, her country, and wants a family. Raven is the film's protagonist, but he's a bad guy, so when Ellen manipulates him, it's a good thing. It's not a good thing for Raven, who suffers for having acted selflessly for once. Alan Ladd gives a wonderful performance that makes Raven ruthless, cruel, and frightening, but not at all superficial. Laird Cregar is also memorable as the thoroughly criminal Gates, who nevertheless abhors violence and loves peppermints.

"This Gun for Hire" has a mixture of indoor and outdoor location scenes. Its undisguised allusion to film noir's gothic roots surprised me. There is a sequence in Willard Gates' gothic mansion that takes place at night during a thunderstorm. It could have been the set of a gothic horror picture. I halfway expected a lecherous nobleman or terror-stricken maiden to come running into the scene. Of course, Gates and Ellen are a perversion of that theme. The gothic theatrics are eye-catching and a little creepy. "This Gun for Hire" is an entertaining World War II-era noir with a memorable cast of characters.

The DVD (Universal 2004 release): There are no bonus features. Captioning is available in English for the hearing impaired. Subtitles are available in Spanish and French.