Sunday, August 7, 2011

Cop Hater (1958), William Berke.

 
 Heat wave!  Robert Loggia asks Shirley Ballard a few questions.

Cop Hater is a by-the-numbers "post Korean war"crime B that I had to watch just to see Robert Loggia and Jerry Orbach as youngsters.  Funnily enough, I had also seen Loggia recently in a Kojak rerun so now I can proudly claim to have seen him in all stages of adulthood thanks to Joy TV, one of the many Christian networks that buys cheap, completely off-topic serials to play at night when all the preachers have gone to bed.  Hallelujah!  Based on Ed McBain's "love them or hate them" mystery novels about the adventures of New York's 87th precinct, you could say Cop Haters follows the same basic template as later TV crime shows like Kojak-- all the same ingredients are there and they thrive on the likability of their leads.  In this one Loggia is the clever, understated rookie on the trail of a cop killer.  There's at least two completely gratuitous partial nudity scenes and Shirley Ballard complains endlessly that she's hot.  What is there not to like here?

Sometimes cops just get snuffed, Daddi-o.  Jerry Orbach as Hispanic leader of the teen gang, The Grovers.

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