I taped Pressure Point (1962) on TCM.
I’d call it a curio except that usually implies a bad movie with intriguing casting/prescient subject matter.
However, Pressure Point isn’t horrible enough to be called that, even though it really is of its time, with its Playhouse 90/Twilight Zone look-and-feel, Saturday Evening Post Freud and fake Saul Bass opening titles.
And yes, Bobby Darin plays an American Nazi sympathizer circa 1942, who ends up in prison. The prison shrink is played by Sidney Poitier, so you can guess how that goes.
Except there are some surprises: the “tick-tack-toe” scene is the kind of shocking sequence Quentin Tarantino thinks he puts in his stupid movies but never does.
It is one of many scenes that retains the power to disturb: there’s a Kristallnacht style attack on a Jewish butcher shop, and another butcher shop scene involving a giant piece of liver (!)
The sequence involving the young Darrin and his imaginary friend is also disconcerting. Obviously, so is the racially blunt dialogue.
Has Sidney Poitier ever given a bad performance?
Meanwhile, Darrin is perfectly cast and entirely convincing as a weasely, Lee Harvey Oswald type (a year before Dallas.)
Not a must-see, but Pressure Point is still compelling viewing.
Pressure Point | Sidney Poitier | Bobby Darin | Hubert Cornfield | Movie Trailer | Review
