You Have to Run Fast (1961) Is Plaid Madness
Wardrobe Coordinator: We’ve got a movie that takes place in the mountains somewhere. What do people in the mountains wear? You know, hunters and tourists and people that live there…
Assistant: I dunno…plaid, I guess.
Wardrobe Coordinator: Hmmmm….plaid…that works. Go buy some plaid.
If you like plaid, you’re going to love You Have to Run Fast. This new release from the MGM “Limited Edition Collection” is most memorable for its use of plaid--shirts, hats, jackets, bathrobes--if there was a plaid boom in the early sixties, the credit belongs to You Have to Run Fast (the title does not refer to the dyes in madras plaids).
As the story opens, two hoods bring a well-beaten man to an all-day/all-night doctor’s office. It is late at night. The front room of this little establishment is also the treatment room. The doctor sleeps in the room behind it, and answers the knock on the door wearing his plaid bathrobe (don’t worry, it gets plaider). The hoods take off, the man is dead, and Dr. Roger Condon (Craig Hill) calls in the police.
The doctor looks through mug shots and identifies Big Jim Craven (Grant Richards) and one of his minions. The cops arrest the minion but Craven disappears, only to make attempts on the doctor’s life. After his police escort is gunned down in his office, Dr. Condon informs the police he’s not sticking around; when (if) they arrest Craven, he’ll return for the trial.
Fast forward ten months and Dr. Condon is now living in a hunting lodge in the land of plaid owned by Col. Maitland (Willis Bouchey) and his lovely-but-incredibly-nosy daughter Laurie (Elaine Edwards). The doc is known as “Frank Harlow” and he’s working as a clerk in a hardware/hunting supplies store. Meanwhile, Big Jim Craven is holed up in some tiny apartment with his cute, blonde moll who is much nicer than he deserves.
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