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Good movie but grossly overrated

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

She's opportunistic, bad tempered, trampy and possibly murderous. She's Beverly Michaels, whose tough girl image started off when she got into a fist fight with Van Heflin in the 1949 MGM melodrama "East Side, West Side", and as one of the tallest women in Hollywood in the 1950's after Hope Emerson, she's a force to be reckoned with. This story centers on Hugo Haas, a small town whistle stop train maintenance person who, as a widower of two years, longs to find someone to marry but makes the wrong choice when he meets Michaels in a greasy spoon and begins to spend time with her. After she's kicked out of her apartment for not only not paying rent but selling items which belonged to the landlady, Michaels makes a beeline for Haas, and while we don't get to see the events which lead up to a proposal, they are soon married, as evidenced by the presence of a wedding cake on a messy table in Haas's humble cabin right after the ceremony. She's grumbling from the start, and when a young acquaintance (Allan Nixon) of Haas's stops by, it's apparent that she's in the mood to cheat on her new hubby, and maybe even arrange for his accidental death, falling over a cliff near the whistle stop he takes care of.A mesmerizing and fun piece of pulp trash, "Pickup" makes no bones about the fact from the moment you see her that Michaels is no good. She's one of those entitled broads that thinks that she can use her womanly wiles to get a man, even if its one she personally abhors. At certain times, there are hints that deep down, she cares for him in a fatherly like way, but there's obviously no love there. When he suddenly loses his hearing after having some sort of recurring seizure, Michaels realizes that she's trapped in a loveless marriage with a sick old man, and decides to manipulate Nixon into doing her bidding to get rid of him. But a sudden return of his hearing causes Haas to learn the truth about his wife, and he brilliantly leads her and Nixon on in believing that he's still deaf, even in one scene where she insults him with laughter directly to his face, and he laughs back, even though he knows exactly what she's saying. There are some great photographic effects when Haas has his seizures and when he learns the truth about what is going on. As a viewer of their unfixable situation, the audience gets to see through Haas's point of view the torment he faces, and it's absolutely riveting,Even so, there's an element of unbelievability that Haas could be so naive as to not see through Michaels' machinations, especially with old pal Howard Chamberlain looking in and giving his own warnings, and simply the obnoxious way that Michaels acts when she can't get her own way. But the performances of Haas and Michaels are amazing, especially Haas who brilliantly acts simply by staring off into space and revealing through his eyes how let down he feels, especially realizing what a complete fool he is. Chamberlain, too, is outstanding, reminding me of an older John Qualen. This is a great example of how a simple man can be pulled in over his head, like Edward G. Robinson in "The Woman in the Window" and the cuckholded husbands of Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner in both "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice". Also standing out in a small role as Michaels' friend is Jo-Carroll Dennison. It's nice to read that "bad girl" Michaels had a happy and normal life after leaving the movies, unlike a similar 1950's vixen, Barbara Payton, whom I often mistook for Michaels, and vice versa. I won't make that mistake again.

Railroad worker and widower Hugo Haas is looking for a new companion after his dog died. But instead of a new dog, he finds golddigger Beverly Michaels. When she discovers he has thousands of dollars in a savings account, she digs her fangs deep into him and they get married. When Haas loses his hearing all of a sudden, and early retirement seems imminent, things are looking up for Michaels, who's unable to get to the money, and unhappy living in a remote house next to railroad tracks. She turns her female attention to fellow railroad worker Allan Nixon, to get him to push Haas off a cliff to his death, which seems to be the only way to get to the money. What they don't know however is that Haas has regained his hearing.Haas ('Bait', 'Hit And Run') does not have the best reputation as a director/actor, but he's really not that bad, he's just not that good either. Maybe I'm too nice tho, but there is something likable about Haas, as if he almost cannot contain his enthusiasm for his projects. And truth be told, he's quite good here as the naive and friendly widower. His wife at the time, Michaels ('Blonde Bait'), is not exactly the best actress, but she knows how to effectively use her abilities here. She brings the same lurid sexiness to the table as his future muse Cleo Moore, and it fits the character to a tee. Nixon is simply not that good, which might explain why his career never really went anywhere (tho apparently his off-screen behavior didn't exactly help either).Haas and experienced B-movie DoP Paul Ivano ('Black Angel', 'The Suspect') do some pretty decent work behind the camera, even tho visually the movie isn't all that striking. But it's a really competently made movie that doesn't have any dragging parts. In fact, the main negative for me was the sudden and overly sappy/happy ending, which felt out of place. Thankfully that was only a few minutes of an otherwise decent watch. Solid stuff overall tho. 7/10

Was Fritz Lang a fan of Hugo Haas? Distinctive elements of both Lang's Clash by Night and Human Desire are foreshadowed in Haas' Pickup (there's also an element left over from Jean Renoir's Woman on the Beach). But Czech-born Haas, a starvation-budget auteur of the 1950s, lacked the depth and style of his European colleagues. That's not so terrible, except that he also lacked their nerve, and as an actor rooted in comedy, the nerve for noir.Towering Beverly Michaels finds herself on queer street and spots in lonely widower Haas a way off of it. He mans a milk-run railroad pit-stop but has $7300 in the bank; she knows because she snuck a look at his passbook and married him for it. Trackside life soon proves a drag for the high-maintenance blonde, however, and she nags him to fake a disability so they can take early retirement and move back to the comparatively bright lights of town; she also strikes up a romance with his relief man Allan Nixon.Fate intervenes when Haas is suddenly struck deaf, putting his pension within reach. But just as suddenly he gets a face full of fender on a trip into town and regains his hearing – unbeknownst to his wife and his assistant. He listens impassively as they boldly exchange endearments, and just as mutely when Michaels works the flirtatious talk around to murder....The strongest hand Haas has going for him in Pickup is Michaels, his off-screen wife at the time. Her grasp of the gold-digger's ways was as firm as that of any actress, and her physical stature was exceeded only by Hope Emerson's. But otherwise the film's cheapness shows; apart from scenes at a carnival which look like stock footage, the action is confined to Haas' shanty and a stretch of railroad track. And, having indulged himself in a masochistic fantasy, Haas seems too timid to follow it where it seems bound to go, taking abrupt refuge in a jarring change of tone just at the end. And that end, too, foreshadows the final shot of another Beverly Michaels film, Russell Rouse's Wicked Woman: Her bags packed, she hits the road.

The reviewer who said "Citizen Kane it ain't" got it right. This is lowbrow stuff to be sure, but for what it is, Haas demonstrates a surprisingly keen eye for both dialogue and characterization, two things supremely lacking in the cheaper and lesser BAIT produced a few years later. Best of all, this is a highly entertaining ride, with a solid and credible performance by Haas as the pigeon who all but begs for a plucking until he sees the light (or rather hears the dark) when he overhears the plotting and venomous bile directed at him by his conniving and venal wife, who believes him to be deaf.Trumping all however is the bravura dominatrixesque performance of Ms. Michaels as the throaty pointy-bra'ed femme fatale. Here's one of the few broads I've ever come across who might be able to actually compete with Ann Savage's mouthy and devouring DETOUR chippie for supremacy over a castrated male race. And leave the male species begging for more.Also in the movie's favor is a reasonably tight storyline which features some nice twists and reveals with great gusto the true depths of treachery to which Michaels gleefully stoops to get her $7300 out of Haas. Again, this isn't DOUBLE INDEMNITY and it certainly isn't Shakespeare but it's charmingly pulpy and has an agreeably creamy evil nougat centre.