The Strange One (1957) Queer Film B-

The Strange One (1957) is a stark, unsettling film noir set at a Southern military college, where hazing, hierarchy, and moral cowardice create a pressure cooker of cruelty. Directed by Jack Garfein and produced by Sam Spiegel, the film was adapted from Calder Willingham’s novel and stage play End as a Man. It marked the screen debuts of Ben Gazzara, George Peppard, and Julie Wilson, and is notable for being staffed almost entirely by Actors Studio talent—on both sides of the camera.

Its portrayal of homoerotic tension and at least one queer-coded character was extraordinary for a film released under the Hays Office who insisted that Columbia Pictures remove several lines of dialogue from the script, that more directly implied same-sex attraction. Although the cuts amounted to seconds rather than minutes of screen time, the resulting movie had less impact than the Calder Willingham book and play on which it was based. All of these lines have since been restored

Cadet Staff Sergeant Jocko De Paris (Gazzara) rules the school through intimidation, his father’s influence, and the institution’s tradition of sanctioned bullying. Everyone either fears him or mistakes his swagger for leadership. One night, he frames George Avery (Geoffrey Horne), the son of the base commander, making it appear that Avery got drunk and collapsed on the quadrangle. Avery is expelled, and De Paris ensures that every cadet involved lies to protect him. Eventually, two freshmen (Peppard and Arthur Storch), De Paris’s roommates (Pat Hingle and James Olson), and the regimental commander (Mark Richman) decide they’ve had enough and move to expose him.

Gazzara is electrifying—exuding a raw, unsettling sensuality that he would only match once more, in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). For all the fine work he did over the decades, he was rarely this hypnotic. Peppard, Hingle, Olson, and Richman are all excellent, and Paul E. Richards brings just the right mix of pathos and menace to Cockroach, the queer cadet who worships De Paris and dreams of becoming a writer.

Garfein, a Holocaust survivor, directs with a cold, clinical intensity. He was married to actress Carroll Baker from 1955 to 1969 and is the father of actress Blanche Baker. The film is beautifully photographed by Burnett Guffey (From Here to Eternity, Bonnie and Clyde) and features a moody jazz score by Kenyon Hopkins.

And yes—the film contains one of the great shower scenes in American cinema. Horsing around naked with your buddies has rarely felt so charged.

The only woman in the cast, Julie Wilson, makes a vivid impression in just a few minutes of screen time, as does the always‑reliable Larry Gates as the base commander, a decade before his immortal slap exchange with Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night (1967).

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