Impact (1949)

Impact
Directed by Arthur Lubin
Written by Dorothy Davenport and Jay Dratler
1949/USA
Cardinal Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Walter Williams: In this world, you turn the other cheek, and you get hit with a lug wrench.[/box]

This odd film noir had an intriguing premise.  The execution not so much …

Hard-charging industrialist and automotive wizard Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy) has a soft spot for his wife Irene (Helen Walker).  He showers her with flowers, presents, and sweet talk.  He is so much in love with her that when she begs off from a romantic trip to Lake Tahoe due to illness and asks him to give her unemployed cousin Jim a ride instead he gladly agrees.  We soon find out that the “cousin” is actually her lover and as soon as he gets Walter in an isolated place he conks him over the head with a lug wrench and dumps him into a ditch.

When Jim speeds off in Walter’s car, he gets hit by an oil tanker and goes up in a ball of flames.  The corpse is unrecognizable.  Walter is not dead but manages to crawl into the back of a moving van.  Lt. Tom Quincy (Charles Coburn) of the police starts to investigate the murder.  All the circumstantial evidence seems to show that the victim was Walter and the murderer was Irene.

In the meantime, the heartbroken Walter painfully makes his way to Idaho where he adopts an assumed name and gleefully keeps abreast of his wife’s murder trial.  There he helps out war widow and gas station owner Marsha Peters (Ella Raines) with his prowess as an auto mechanic and soon they are in love.  Marsha’s mother finds out the truth.  The rest of the movie is devoted to homespun wisdom about doing the right thing supplied by Marsha and her mother and Walter’s trial for Jim’s murder.  With Anna May Wong as a star witness.

I knew this was not going to end well as soon as Charles Coburn started speaking in a bad Irish brogue.  The story is really a mess.  The tacked on Capraesque corn in the second act is bad enough but a lot of the developments just defy logic. Too bad, this had definite possibilities.  Most of the actors did fine with the material.

It is old home week on flickersintime!  First we get Buster Keaton in In the Good Old Summertime and now the cruelly underutilized Anna May Wong makes a reappearance in this.   So good to see a familiar face.

Trailer