Shack Out on 101 Backdrop Blur
Shack Out on 101 Poster
United States
6.0 1h 20m

Shack Out on 101

"Four men and a girl!"

A greasy spoon diner provides a base for a spy smuggling nuclear secrets.

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Top Cast

  • Terry Moore

    Terry Moore

    Kotty

  • Frank Lovejoy

    Frank Lovejoy

    Prof. Sam Bastion

  • Keenan Wynn

    Keenan Wynn

    George

  • Lee Marvin

    Lee Marvin

    Slob / Mr. Gregory

  • Whit Bissell

    Whit Bissell

    Eddie

  • Jess Barker

    Jess Barker

    Artie

  • Donald Murphy

    Donald Murphy

    Pope

  • Frank De Kova

    Frank De Kova

    Prof. Claude Dillon

  • Len Lesser

    Len Lesser

    Perch

Overview

A greasy spoon diner provides a base for a spy smuggling nuclear secrets.

Rating

6.0 / 10
19 Reviews
0 Popular

1 Reviews

  • John Chard
    John Chard
    9 Dec 15, 2019

    Slob's got an eight cylinder body and a 2 cylinder mind. Shack Out on 101 is directed by Edward Dein and Dein co-writes the screenplay with Mildred Dein. It stars Terry Moore, Frank Lovejoy, Lee Marvin, Keenan Wynn and Whit Bissell.Music is by Paul Dunlap and cinematography by Floyd Crosby. An isolated diner on California's 101 highway provides the backdrop of for nuclear secrets, spies, federal agents and sexual boiling points. What a wonderful hot-pot of the weird and wonderful world of the era's "red scare" momentum. Often inserted into film noir dictionaries or "commie" thriller paragraphs, the truth is, is that it's a film very much of a kinky oblique niece section of film making. This is the kind of picture that will either have you utterly giggling away with a knowing sense of enjoyment, or conversely have you annoyed and possibly thinking you should have spent your time some place else. It's low budget stuff that's mostly confined to the diner of the title, but Dein brings a joyous combination of genuine menacing thrills and sequences that make you feel you have stepped into another movie (witness the whole snorkel wearing sequences). Moore is a sensuous treat as the waitress babe right in the middle of things who is making every male on the premises unscrew their brain and lob it into the dep fat fryer. There's a slight touch of misogyny in the air, but the female half of the Dein film making duo ensure it's actually kept in check. Marvin steals the pic, where we get an early glimpse of what we would come to know as a dominant screen presence. Moore would speak very highly of Marvin, which obviously goes against the grain of the character he plays (Slob!), and Marvin and Wynn would form a friendship that lasted their lifetime. These are nice tid-bids form what is a love it or hate it film. So go on, watch it and see if you can pigeon hole it. I loved it. 9/10

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