The film opens with a teenager, Bart (a young Russ Tamblyn), ogling a revolver in a shop window in the rain before smashing the window and running off, only to slip on the rainy street and the gun slides to the feet of a cop. Cut to court, where his older sister, who raised him, is arguing to the judge that he's a good kid, just obsessed with guns. His two buddies, one of whom is the son of the town sheriff (and who will grow up to replace him), argue that, although he's a crack shot, he wouldn't harm a fly (at least, since the incident his sister recounts of him shooting a chick in the farmyard and bursting into tears) - refusing to shoot a mountain lion for the bounty when the three of them were out camping. However, the judge is unconvinced, and sends him off to reform school. Cut to about five or six years later and the now young man (John Dall) comes back to town. His two buddies and his sister (who now has two children) are overjoyed to see him. After reform school he went off to the army but got bored of teaching shooting and wants to get a job with Remington or some gun-maker demonstrating the product. Eager to re-live their youth, the buddies invite him out to the carny that's just rolled into town. It is there that he meets the real reason to watch this movie - Peggy Cummins as Annie Laurie Starr, who is the Annie Oakley of this particular carnie. After some very dangerous demonstrations of her markwomanship with a very game assistant, she challenges someone from the audience to put up $50 to win $500 if he beats her. Well, after some sexy gunplay, Laurie misses one match on a crown of matches on Bart's head, while he gets them all.
Instead of the $500 Laurie offers him her ring, but he politely declines it, but does take her offer of a job with the carnie. Although he accepts, her boss, "Packie" (who looks like Joseph Cotton gone to seed) is none-too-pleased at the evident animal magnetism between his two star shooters, because he regards Laurie as his girl. And he's got something he can hold over her, too - apparently she killed a man in Louisville! Nonetheless, of course they run off together, and after some idyllic sightseeing, they're out of cash and Laurie starts needling Bart to try her scheme of becoming stickup artists. Well, of course he caves, especially after her speech about intending to live a little, and needing a man who has guts (while pulling on her stockings in her bathrobe)
but not after she marries him at a desert chapel. Initially you get the impression she's just playing along because he's a useful stooge, but it's not long before we're in full-blown amour fou territory, and you see the inspiration for Bonnie and Clyde. It would take too long to describe their various jobs (a notable one of which involves Laurie hitchhiking only to steal some poor sap's car at gunpoint, a car they then use to rob a bank in town. This robbery is very strikingly shot, with the camera in the back seat of the car the whole time, and real driving, not the usual sitting still in front of a back-projection) but eventually the law is closing in and they decide to do one last job to set them up to retire. And they will split up and go their separate ways for a few months before reuniting in "Miami or New Orleans, or somewhere like that". The job actually requires a good deal of preparation - Laurie embeds herself as a secretary at the Armour meatpacking plant, while Bart is a delivery man. Then one day he claims the boss has asked to have choice cuts of meat delivered to his office for a barbeque, and Laurie comes with him claiming to be trying to stop him, and, once they are both in the boss's office, they rob the place. As they're running out, the head secretary trips the alarm and... Laurie turns and shoots her and the boss,
although she denies she hit them to Bart. It's only later that he discovers (although he forgives her).
But that's after a key scene where their fate is sealed by their unbreakable bond: they escape in one car and arrive out of town to where their other car is stored. They say inadequate goodbyes and he climbs into the other car and they drive off in opposite directions...only to turn around, he to abandon his car and climb into hers, and off they go together. If they were better actors (particularly him - Jami was incredulous that he was one of the Leopold & Loeb avatars in Hitchock's Rope) this would be an amazingly affecting scene - iconic, even. Anyway, they make it into LA, but Packie has named them and the noose is tightening. On the night before they are to be smuggled across the border, cops find them by tracing the banknotes from the Armour job and they have to jump the train back to the only place they know someone will hide them - Bart's old town, where his sister still lives. But his old buddies work out something's amiss when the sister keeps her blinds down and tells the neighborhood kids that her kids can't play because they're ill, and everything culminates in a misty swamp up in the mountains where he once refused to shoot that mountain lion. But will the buddies be gunned down by the truly "Gun Crazy" Laurie? Watch it and see. As I said, I look on it more kindly than Jami, and it has a legendary reputation, which parts of it certainly deserve. (But then again, so does Detour, and that one's charms largely escaped me. I guess when it comes to noirs, there's a certain level of acting competence I regard as a minimum prerequisite.)
Still, the heist scene is great, and the ending is pretty perfect, too.
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