Daily Archives: February 1, 2015

Decoy
Directed by Jack Bernhard
Written by Nedrick Young from a story by Stanley Rubin
1946/USA
Bernhard/Brandt Productions
First viewing/Film Noir Classics Vol. 4 DVD

[box] Sergeant Joe Portugal: People who use pretty faces like you use yours don’t live very long anyway.[/box]

This poverty-row film noir was thought to be lost for years and now enjoys a kind of cult status.  The movie is all over the place, but it is easy to see why fans longed to see it for all that time.

The story is told in flashback to policeman Joe Portugal (Sheldon Leonard) by dying femme fatale Margo (Jean Gillie).  Margo’s boyfriend Frankie Olin (Robert Armstrong) had been on death row for several years having killed a security guard during a bank robbery. Margo’s one aim in life is to get her hands on the $400,000 Frankie hid away before being arrested.  Frankie is obsessed with Margo and is unwilling to part with the money’s location until he is released from prison and they can spend it together.  The fickle Margo has already convinced her gangster lover to finance Frankie’s appeals with promises that he will share in the proceeds.

When all the appeals fail, Margo learns of a drug that is an antidote for cyanide poisoning, such as that used in California’s gas chamber.  She sets about seducing altruistic free clinic doctor Lloyd Craig, who officiates at executions to bolster his meager income.  The doctor, despite his Hippocratic Oath, is putty in her hands.

Craig just happens to be well equipped with the necessary stuff to revive the dead.  The spoilers will stop here but I can let you know that we get a lab scene vaguely reminiscent  of the one in Frankenstein (I’m ALIVE … I’m ALIVE!!!) and multiple violent murders and double crosses.

One can overlook quite a lot of bad acting when a story is as fun as this one.  The dead spots and poor pacing – not so much.

Five-minute documentary on the film

Deadline at Dawn
Directed by Howard Clurman
Written by Clifford Odets based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich
1946/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 5 DVD

[box] June Goth: This is New York, where hello means goodbye.[/box]

This entertaining film noir seems to rely on wildly improbable coincidences.  Only some of these are explained by the twist ending.

The camera focuses on a fly crawling on the face of a sleeping woman.  We are instantly plunged into the seedy side of life in nighttime New York City.  The drunken woman is a “bad girl” who evidently owes her gentleman caller $1400.  When she looks for it, it is nowhere to be found.  But she says she knows where to find it.  It must have been taken by a sailor she invited there earlier.

We start to follow the naive young sailor, Alex Winkley (Bill Williams), who comes to from his alcoholic blackout with $1400 in his pocket.  He knows he will be the first place the woman and her gangster brother (Joseph Calleia) will look for the dough.  He runs into a world-weary dance hall girl named June (“rhymes with moon”) (Susan Hayward) who reluctantly agrees to help the boy return the money.  But the two only find the woman’s strangled body.

The sailor is due to be back to his ship by dawn and the pair begin a desperate effort to find the real culprit.  Some amazingly slim clues lead them to a soda fountain.  Outside the place, they get their lucky break when they are picked up by a kindly cabbie (Paul Lukas) who earlier picked up a mystery blonde they are looking for.  He can tell by one look at the sailor’s face that the boy is incapable of murder and agrees to help them.

The best thing about this picture is Susan Hayward, who is dynamite with the hard-boiled Odets dialogue while somehow being softer than she usually is.  The story is too unlikely and complicated to be completely engaging but the movie is enjoyable in its pulpy way nonetheless.

Clip – cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca