Enjoyed this 1958 film dealing with a serial cop killer on the loose in New York City and a horrible heat wave which has most of actors always complaining about the heat. Robert Loggia (Detective Steve Carelli) is a very dedicated policeman and he works with Teddy Franklin, (Ellen Parker) who is an attractive gal. Alice Maguire, (Shirley Ballard) plays the role as a very sexy wife to Detective Mike Maguire, (Gerald O'Loughlin) but Alice is getting tired of being married to a cop and she wants her husband to quit because of all the cops being killed by a mad man throughout the City of New York. There are some sexy scenes which were considered very naughty to see a girl naked with a towel wrapped around her and a few other scenes with girls showing plenty of their legs. This is a great mystery and very good acting by Robert Loggia. Enjoy.

Very interesting, well done look at the late 1950's in NY, on the streets, in the precinct house. What is so amazing is that you really can tell which actors will end up stars or at least significant players. Charisma is very real and evident here. Robert Loggia is a revelation. I've never seen him so young and yet he is very macho and attractive. The camera loves him and I'll bet that a lot of viewers do as well. A boyish Jerry Orbach is certainly an eye full as well. Recommended as a very interesting exploration of the past that is now just receding beyond easy recollection. Cannot say that the female performers are as memorable but then, one can't have everything but this dishes up quite a lot and the author certainly deserves his subsequent career.

****SPOILERS**** Graphically brutal movie for a film released in the 1950's about a cop killer on the loose with the entire city police department mobilized to track him down. When two policemen are shot and killed in two days who happened to be partners at the same police precinct for no apparent reason, other then being policemen, the word is out on the street that whoever knows anything about those murders better talk. Or else the full heat of the police force will come down on them. After checking out every hood and punk gang member in the city the police department came to the conclusion that whoever committed those killings did it only out of his personal hatred of policemen and are looking for a cop hating psycho. What they don't know is that the person behind these murders is a lot closer to them then they think.Det. Carelli and Maguire, Robert Loggia and Gerald S. O'Loughlin, are assigned to the case but unknown to them one of the detectives is the real reason behind this slew of killings. Later Det. Maguire gets gunned downed in the street and his partner, Det. Carelli, starts to put together what he knows of the case. Det. Carelli comes up with an unbelievable theory to who's doing these killings from his talking to Det. Maguire and his wife Alice, Shirley Ballard. Going through the motions looking for the killer Det. Carelli is at the bar one night with reporter Hank Miller,Gene Miller. Who's meddlesome actions with this story about a cop killer to get his big scoop almost cost the life of a cop who was mistaken for him. Thats when Miller tried to get a story out of a local teenage gang member by threatening him and his gang with unwanted media exposure. Det. Carelli drunk and not thinking tells Miller what he thinks is going on with the police killings and who's behind them. Miller irresponsibly prints the story that tips off the killer. Miller also foolishly prints the address of Det. Carelli's fiancée the pretty but hearing-impaired Teddy Franklin, Ellen Parker. Busting into her apartment the cop killer Marcer, Hal Riddle, finds Teddy alone and waits for Det. Carelli to show up and murder him. Alerting Carelli when Teddy sees the door light go on, thats the way she can tell if someone is ringing since Teddy can't hear. Det.Carelli surprises Macer and after having it out with him beats a confession out of Mercer not only to his killing the three cops but who was really behind and had him do those killings. This is in 1958 before the Supreme Court's passing of the 1966 Miranda decision. For a person to be read his rights and be presented with a lawyer before he says anything. Fine big city police drama that plays like an episode of "Naked City" but is far far more realistic as well as brutal without being filmed in city of New York, the name New York City is never mentioned in the film. Even though "Cop Hater" does look like it was filmed there.

Even longtime fans of Ed McBain's evergreen series of police procedurals set in the 87th Precinct may be startled to learn that they started out back in the1950s (and they're still coming). Cop Hater was the first of them to reach the big screen, in a bare-bones production directed by genre-movie veteran William A. Berke.A heat wave has settled over The City (it's New York, but McBain never identifies it as such), bringing tempers to the flashpoint. An alarm clock wakes a cop for his midnight shift; when he descends into the soupy night, a shot fells him. The entire precinct mobilizes immediately - one of their own has been killed.We encounter the familiar names of the Precinct's detectives (or some of them), most notably Steve Carella (here, Carelli), played by a young Robert Loggia; he's the bright cop engaged - not yet married - to the beautiful deaf-mute Teddy (Ellen Parker). His partner Maguire (Gerald O'Loughlin) has already tied the knot, but when he tries to keep cool in his undershorts to the whirr of a feeble fan, his wife (Shirley Ballard) brushes him off (`You're wet - oozing wet,' she sniffs).When a second cop is gunned down in cold blood, attention turns to members of one of the gangs of young punks that were a fixture of post-war New York, but it's a dead end. Next, it's Maguire's turn to meet his very own dead end. Loggia, made indiscreet by too many `splashes' of Scotch to slake his thirst, tells his theories to a callow newspaper reporter and inadvertently puts Teddy in jeopardy....Cop Hater gets the feel of the grimy streets and cramped apartments of a sweltering urban jungle just right (it also preserves the film debut of Jerry Orbach and very early appearances by Vincent Gardenia and Loggia). The puzzle of the murders may seem a little mechanical (it's a riff on Agatha Christie's The Alphabet Murders), and personalities don't emerge as vividly as we might like. But then this was early in the series, and McBain had only begun to sketch out the quirks of his recurring characters. McBain, of course, is the pseudonym of Evan Hunter (born Salvatore Lombino), who wrote the screenplays for Blackboard Jungle and The Birds. In Cop Hater, his anonymous City takes pride of place.