This Gun for Hire

1/10/2019

I like Cats! So says the icy cold broken wrist killer! Phillip Raven is a hit man of no obvious moral fibre, he literally will kill anyone for the right price. After fulfilling a contract for the chocolate munching Willard Gates, he finds himself pursued by the law on account that he was paid by Gates with stolen money. Raven sets out for the ultimate revenge and dovetailing towards the explosive finale with him is sultry conjurer Ellen Graham and honest cop Michael Crane. Based on the Graham Greene novel "A Gun For Sale", this is not a straight out adaptation, the plot has been re-jigged with very impressive results. The most enlightening thing I found when reading up on the film was that the studio were so blown away by the efforts of Alan Ladd as Raven, they turned the script arou

2/9/2026

“Raven” (Alan Ladd) is a meticulously capable contract killer whom we meet bumping off not just a blackmailer, but an innocent girl who just happened to be with him at the time. His boss, “Gates” (Laird Cregar) rather foolishly pays him off with dodgy cash and that earns him the enmity of his former employee. Meantime, the authorities are suspicious of “Gates" and his own wheel-chair bound industrialist boss “Brewster” (Tully Marshall) and so they ask chanteuse "Ellen” (Veronica Lake) - who just happens to be dating the already interested detective “Crane” (Robert Preston) - to help then entrap him via a nightclub he owns. When “Raven” and “Ellen” meet on a train, the dynamic between them gradually changes from cat and mouse to cat and cat - with revenge, a little espionage and perhaps eve