Anyone who could give this film a bad view, ought to be shot. UC came out in '82, and it was a perfect time, for film noir, especially of this calibre to come out. And as film noir, UC, stands out alone. There's something so fresh and original here, (there's nothing else like it) with it's larger than life characters, boosted by great performance, Lipscomb, an actor you must see more of, if you haven't seen him. Like his magnetic performance in A Soldier's Story, and that '88 b grade horror, Retribution, again he just delivers a dynamic and brilliant performance, of a tenant, who instead of paying attention to his beautiful wife (Harry) who he treats like s..t, he becomes preoccupied, and determined to catch the culprit, (a pretty obvious guess) who's been, stealing his milk, only it backfires, sending him going, one cent, short of the dollar. Harry is a revelation, just proving, there are some multi talented people out there, while Everett McGill as the neighbor love interest, adds strong support. You might remember, he was the bad ass who took on Seagal near the end of Under Siege 2. The music score is great as are all the performances, the late male comer in the last fifteen is a hoot. There are some Twin Peakish moments, but I prefer this style. There is a twist too at the end, but god, how fake did blood look back in the 80's. It's like they used Pepto Bismol, and put acid in it. 90 minute "can't miss" entertainment, and again, sadly, badly criticized.

This low budget film beautifully captures the darkness, obsession and overbearing despair, of Cornell Woolrich's depression era story updated to 1953. The stylistically Noir cinematography, with chiaroscuro lighting, reflections, deep shadows and clashing color schemes enhance the foreboding atmosphere. The tale is about Harlan and Lillian an unhappily married couple who basically exist with each other. Harlan is an alcoholic accountant who works long hours and commutes to his job. Lillian is a bored and ignored housewife who cooks for him. Once dinner is over Harlan heads for the corner bar Tatty's. During her day Lillian comes to life once hubby Harlan leaves for the office. She is frustrated and ripe for the plucking. Lillian and Harlan's latest crisis is the theft of their milk. This story is set back in the time when milk was still delivered by a milkman. I grew up in New York City in the '50s and we had an aluminum box next to the front door of our two family house, and it was into this aluminum box that the milkman delivered our milk. In Union City the milkman delivers to an apartment house, and he carries the bottles of milk in a wire tray stopping at the doors of the various apartments on his route, dropping off full bottles, picking up empties left on the floor outside the apartments. For the last two weeks someone has been drinking Harlan's milk and leaving the empty bottle. Harlan becomes increasingly filled with anger in reverse proportion to Lillian's indifference. Harlan thinks it's someone who lives in their apartment house and he devises a scheme to catch him. The following evening, Harlan gets a unopened bottle of milk from the refrigerator, ties a fishing line around the neck of the bottle, places the bottle outside the door and runs the fishing line back to the bedroom. Getting into bed Harlan winds the line around his finger turns off the light and goes to sleep.A tug on Harlan's finger sends him running to the apartment door. Flinging it open Harlan finds a vagrant sitting on the floor guzzling down his milk. Harlan knocks the bottle out of the young vagrant's hand spilling the milk on the floor. There ensues a violent tussle between Harlan and the man ending with Harlan beating the man's head on the floor repeatedly until he stops struggling. A large flow of blood from the man's head sends Harlan into shock. He must do something with the body, the sound of the apartments elevator spurs Harlan into a panic. He drags the body into the empty apartment across the hall and hides it temporarily in a Murphy bed. When Harlan goes back to remove the body from the empty apartment after he has frantically cleaned up the blood and milk out in the hall, and thrown his bloody pajamas down the incinerator, he discovers that he can't open the door to the Murphy bed, it's jammed. In the days that follow Harlan begins to go slowly insane hallucinating images and thoroughly neglecting Lillian.When no one has yet discovered the corpse and the newlywed new tenants of the empty apartment show up Harlan goes completely over the edge in true Noir fashion. Union City is a low budget production, but that fact contributes to the claustrophobic feel of the film which compliments the Woolrich story. None of the actors really stand out aside from Dennis Lipscomb who gives off a demented Jack Lemmon vibe. This is a must for Cornell Woolrich fans, entertaining but a 6/10 for this DVD.

Several surprises for me in this film. I had never watched it before, rather assuming that it was very much a star vehicle for Deborah Harry. How wrong can you be, she puts in a most solid performance but there is not much star twinkle in this downbeat oddball of a movie. I was also surprised that we did not get, Debbie Harry singing, Union City Blues throughout, maybe this was written later, or considered inappropriate. Biggest surprise of all is just how good the movie is with hardly any 'action' and instead of some big sexy sex scene, a rather sad, lack of sex scene. Runs very much like a low budget independent in a rather 'noir' style and you would be hard put to guess the year, other than from the aforementioned Goddess' presence, of course.

This film was a desperate ode to Film-Noir. Random clichés of a poor 40's thriller were thrown together with no attempt to cover the flaws: poor dialog, misguided acting, poor editing, an amateur synthesizer soundtrack, and a one-note plot that's painfully stretched out and not believable in the first place (corpses rot and smell at room temperature). The actors were simply imitating characters they've seen in old movies. Even the costumes were used incorrectly. For example, men didn't wear their hats indoors. The camera is mostly static and many dialog scenes have jarring editing.This is what a 40's thriller would look like if had been done by a student on a very limited budget and schedule.