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Released
1942 · FILM

This Gun for Hire

“A Lone Wolf…dynamite with a girl or a gun!”

Directed by
Frank Tuttle
Written by
Albert Maltz, W R Burnett
Runtime
81 min
CrimeDramaFilm-Noir

Synopsis

Philip Raven, a sadistic killer-for-hire, becomes enraged when he is paid off in marked bills for his latest job. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven boards a train out of town and sits beside Gates' new employee, Ellen. Despite being engaged to marry the police lieutenant who is pursuing Raven, Ellen decides to try and help the hit man, hoping to set him straight as he hides from the authorities and plots his revenge.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 19

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Archie MarshekShot by John F SeitzScored by David Buttolph

Box Office

1942 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.0× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$1.0M

Budget$512K
Worldwide gross$1.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Die Narbenhandde
  • Narbenhandde
  • Tueur à gagesfr
  • Il fuorileggeit

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