The Big Caper

The handsome guy , the tough guy and the inebriate
When i saw who headlined this tight little caper film , i kept thinking , Rory Calhoun ? Rory Calhoun ? Well after i'd settled into the film , beyond the mid point to be sure , it hit me! "It Takes All Kinds Of Critters To Make Farmer Vincent's Fritters" . HOTEL HELL . I'd never seen Mr. Calhoun so young before (to my knowledge) . Good looking young guy he was too . I've always been a fan of James Gregory and got a kick out of watching him do his thing . I can't summon the name of Uncle "gin mill" , the explosives expert ? No matter . I think that gentleman made a pretty fine living playing the lush on the big and small screen , if memory serves ? The film has a few unintended laughs but was obviously shot on a tight budget in about nine days or so . The other characters are interesting too . The homicidal , blond fitness freak . The bad girl spoiling to go good . The kind and inviting community our heist folk insinuate themselves into . The vault cracker who settles for fifteen grand...

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night
Sure a guy, a guy like Frank, who came up the hard way, a coal-miner father taken by the dust, and a bereft mother left to raise six kids helter-skelter with no dough, had dreams, big dreams of that one big score that would settle accounts, settle accounts with society, and settle accounts with that nagging empty feeling of always being short of dough. Frank though did not see those dreams coming true from working nine to five and saving his pennies, or maybe making some big invention to wow a candid world or hitting a big score on the horses over at Santa Anita (truth to tell he was on something of a losing streak just then). No, our Frank, a good- looking young guy with plenty of black hair and blue eyes, was nothing but a hustler, a Bunco guy, you know a con artist, a flimflam man and so with larceny in his heart he kept trying to figure out the road to that big score.

And Frank found it, found it like finding gold on the ground in his sunny California homeland ; a...

An average storyline with a contrived Hollywood ending.
In 1957, the heist film "The Big Caper" was made. Featuring an adaptation of the novel by Lionel White, the film is directed by Robert Stevens ("Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Never Lose a Stranger") and a screenplay by Martin Berkeley ("Tarantula", "Revenge of the Creature", "The Deadly Mantis").

The film would star Rory Calhoun ("Texan", "How to Marry a Millionaire", "River of No Return"), Mary Costa ("Sleeping Beauty", "The Great Waltz") and James Gregory ("The Manchurian Candidate", "Beneath the Planet of the Apes", "The Lawless Years").

"The Big Caper" revolves around Frank Harper (played by Rory Calhoun), a man who is in debt for gambling and wiped out his money on horse races.

Frank decides to pay his good friend and former bank heist professional Flood (played by James Gregory) to rob a small coastal town bank which is the bank used for the payroll for a nearby army base. But unfortunately, Flood has no intention of going to prison again and...

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