Dan Duryea’s New York Times obituary phrases it this way: “As movie publicity agents loved to point out, Mr. Duryea’s personality was quite the opposite of the one he displayed in films.” Duryea was married thirty-five years, was a member of the PTA, led Boy Scouts. He was an excellent student. He liked gardening. From all accounts, he was the quiet type who minded his own business. To my mind, Duryea possessed a number of the virtues which are foundational to, and being eroded from, the United States. But man, that guy, just to look at him, he’s the kind of guy you walk past and get the heebie-jeebies from. You want to throw a baseball at the mechanism that sends him into the dunk tank. You want to throw a baseball at his face, or if you’re close enough, just get all your weight into a nice hook and go for the KO.

This revulsion is not uncommon in horror icons. Just as all reports tell you that Duryea was a highly respectable man, all reports will tell you that Gunnar Hansen is a sensitive man and a careful thinker, or that Robert Englund is unfailingly kind and generous. At least those guys get to be “Leatherface” or “Freddy Krueger,” though. There’s one being to attach those men to. They have created an icon. Dan Duryea worked as a type, not as one guy. One can cosplay as Freddy Krueger. No one goes to a convention and says, “I’m Slim Dundee from Criss Cross” or “Can’t you see, I’m Heidt from The Woman in the Window.” Duryea was a volume shooter, and a great one. Over and over again, Fritz Lang used him as a personification of evil, which is like getting picked first for kickball by the coolest, strongest kid in the fifth grade.

Out of all his performances, Slim Dundee is probably my favorite. It’s one thing to tie Edward G. Robinson in knots, at least when Edward G. Robinson is leaning into being a rumpled little shrimp rather than Rico. It’s quite another to hustle Burt Lancaster into hysterics, with Dundee using those naughty human emotions as a way to put the ring in Steve Thompson’s nose. Thompson can’t give up Anna, his ex-wife, now Dundee’s bride. Dundee is jealous but not insensible to the benefits of having an armored truck driver in the family, as it were: money for cucking, and your cheeks for free. He can use Thompson as a piece in his criminal enterprises. Throughout the movie, Dundee makes business decisions, leering and sneering as only a guy with a squat face and a BMI of 19 can do. That nasally voice rankles. That smirk itches. What makes Dundee different from these other guys who Duryea played is that he can’t help but fall victim to human emotions too. Shooting down Steve, lured one more time into danger by Anna, is easy for us to imagine. Shooting down Anna as well because his pedestrian jealousy has bloomed into a true lover’s fury, because he makes a decision with his heart instead of his previously cool head, makes him fascinating as few like noir villains are. With apologies to De Carlo, who makes Lancaster’s stupidity comprehensible, the villain I can’t turn away from in Criss Cross is Dundee.