Wait, what the -- Tear Gas Squad? You mean you don't remember that? Neither do I, hardly, and I just watched it the other day. Not that I was planning on watching a musical. Not with that title and its 55-minute running time -- technically, five minutes shorter than what a feature was considered back then. Never was such a baldfaced bait-and-switch perpetrated on ticket buyers.
It must have taken the writers longer to watch the final product than to have written it. Small-time crooner Tommy McCabe becomes a cop to impress Jerry Sullivan (a woman, so don't get any ideas), who comes from a family of policemen. A hothead by nature, Tommy is soon canned when he punches out fellow cop and romantic rival Bill Morrisey. But he redeems himself by catching the gangsters who killed his brother Joe.
Everybody sing! (If you're not too gasp-jammed.) |
Yeah, that has "musical" written all over it. Or at least it does with the four songs McCabe sings. But the numbers he's given here don't even count as forgettable. It's as if they didn't exist to begin with. (One of them, performed at the chintzy tavern where he works, is called, "I'm an Officer of the Law." It's funny because his character has always hated cops. Get it?)
The low budget is betrayed by the seemingly-endless stock footage during police manhunts. (One sharp-eyed viewer over at imdb.com noticed the Warner Bros. water-tower, complete with logo, which gives you an idea of the care that went into this production.) Movies like Tear Gas Squad were made strictly to pump product into the studio-owned movie chains. Thank God the auto manufacturers didn't own repair shops -- the number of accidents caused by second-rate jalopies would have skyrocketed.
Was John Hamilton ever young? |
Hey! Superman don't need no gun! |
"Stop! Or I'll shoot my baby blues at you!" |
The only time Buchanan appeared to have bathed. |
"What am I this time?" |
"Who you callin' 'cro-magnon'?" |
"I'll just have a wee drop o' the wee dram o' the wee whiskey." |
She's the most masculine of the three. |
And you can't help but feel sorry for John Payne (as Bill Morrisey) since he's just too nice for Gloria Dickson's Jerry. I can't figure out why they're battling over her since she doesn't seem worth it. Jerry's been leading Bill on forever even though she has no intention of getting serious with him. In fact, she seems to enjoy watching Bill and Tommy go at it. (I've been there, guys -- forget her!) Add to this the fact that she happily lives with a houseful of cops who watch over her like Stasi agents, and you see this chick has some real issues. And she's not even that pretty, for cripes sakes. She must give off some serious pheromones.
So if you have a thing for inane, schizophrenic, lower-case "e" entertainment, then by all means wallow in Tear Gas Squad's charms. If not, you can regard it as an audio-visual history lesson -- an example of a time when something had to be projected onto a screen for a couple of days. The strange thing is, if you added some new numbers and re-wrote the script, it would make for the next cult off-Broadway comedy -- Tear Gas Squad!: The Musical. Now that might be worth watching.
By the way, the tear gas squad doesn't show up until the final three minutes. Right before Dennis Morgan sings to Gloria Dickson while his horse looks away in utter boredom.
*****************
The original trailer for Tear Gas Squad. Everything about it is a lie. (The video may take a few seconds to appear.)
1 comment:
I remember watching this on TCM when I was about ten years old and loving it. I remember it was playing in the middle of a Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan "Guys from some place or the other" marathon. I still have a fond nostalgia for those films, but I never did watch them for the plot.
Post a Comment