THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 29

Four dramas -- two American, two British -- made across the span of five years. Three are worth your time. The fourth... well, only to appreciate how good the others are.

SO DARK THE NIGHT (1946): It took me a while to discover that plenty of fine noirish mysteries came out of Columbia Pictures' B-unit in the '40s, and So Dark the Night ranks with their best. Henri Cassin, a middle-aged French police detective, goes to a country inn for a well-deserved rest. While there, he meets and falls in love with Nanette Michaud, 20 years his junior. The night before their wedding, Nanette's ex, Leon, threatens to destroy their happiness; as he storms away, Nanette follows him. A week later, their bodies are found. Cassin determines they were strangled to death. Soon, threatening notes appear at the inn. When Nannette's mother is murdered in a similar fashion, Cassin finds himself at wit's end. Only when he returns to Paris and discusses the case with his superior does he figure out who the killer is -- and that Nannette's father Eugene is next on the hit parade.

For the first couple of reels, So Dark the Night feels like it was meant to be the first in a series of movies about Henri Cassin. The story itself isn't necessarily remarkable, and the same set seems to stand in for both the inn and a barn where a body is found. But director Joseph Lewis elevates the movie's look by a factor of 50, thanks to his unerring sense of where to place the camera and how to light the actors. (The climactic moment when Cassin sees the killer in a window is damn near brilliant.) Unlike many B-directors who simply made sure the camera was in focus and printed the first take, it's clear that Lewis cared about his job and was determined that the result wouldn't just be filler for the bottom half of a double bill.  He's the kind of director who makes the kind of movie that the kind of fan like me delighted to share. (He would soon be responsible for the classic Gun Crazy.)

Presuming Lewis was responsible for casting So Dark the Night, he excelled there, too, filling it with mostly unfamiliar yet excellent character actors. Steven Geray makes Cassin more like a beloved, gentle older relative than a detective -- until the bodies start piling up, that is. Two characters are the obvious suspects, the first being the inn's maid who's in love with Cassin and jealous of his young finance. The second is the village hunchback (all European villages having one, if old movies are any indication) who happens to discover Leon's body. Pretty convenient! Or is it? Without giving anything away, So Dark the Night's final reel had me reeling with shock. A terrific movie deserving of a revival.

BONUS POINTS: Theodore Gottleib, who plays the hunchback, would later become famous/notorious on talk shows as Brother Theodore, the explosive, pseudo-philosophical alleged monk who appeared perpetually on the edge of going mad. His clash with Jerry Lewis on The Merv Griffin Show is worth a watch: (4) Brother Theodore & Jerry Lewis- Interview/Argument 1966 [Reelin' In The Years Archive] - YouTube)

THE SHOP AT SLY CORNER (1947): Descius Heiss is a gentle antiques dealer, whose daughter Margaret is a classical violinist. He's also an escapee from Devil's Island and a fence for jewel thief Corder Morris. Heiss' loathsome employee Archie Fellowes uses this information for blackmail purposes. When Archie eventually decides he's going to marry Margaret, Heiss murders him, and gets Corder to help dump the body outside the city. A police investigation ensues, leading to a car chase which kills Corder.  Without any definite proof for the cops to go on, Heiss feels pretty good -- until Maragret's upstanding boyfriend Robert learns what's up. 

The Shop at Sly Corner --pretty good title, that -- must have been a big deal in the UK back in the day. Starting in 1945, the stage version ran over two years. It was made as an early TV movie in 1946; this theatrical version a year later; and a live TV broadcast of the play in 1948. What all these had in common -- and was likely the key to its success -- was co-star Kenneth Griffith as the incredibly creepy Archie, a character who's bad enough on paper. But when brought to life by Griffith -- who looks nutty to begin with -- he doesn't just make your skin crawl, he seems to rip it straight off your bones. If he wasn't so scary, he'd be hateful. Wait, he is hateful. 

Part of that hatefulness is due to his emotional torture of Heiss, played sympathetically by Oscar Homolka. Sure, Heiss was found guilty of murder in his youth and is fencing hot goods today. But he's a good father, fair to his customers, and wants to move to a farm and raise chickens. You like the guy. When he kills the horrible Archie, you want him to get away with it. And he does, kind of, sort of -- that is, he's never arrested. Still, it's not like he's going to see his daughter's music career take off the way it's predicted to, either. As with similar movies, The Shop at Sly Corner could have been elevated a few notches with Alfred Hitchcock at the helm, although makes for a decent viewing as is. Just be prepared to hate Kenneth Griffith.

BONUS POINTS: I have no idea what kind of sports car Archie buys with his blackmail money, but I want one. 

DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS (1948):  The women in the Irish village of Ballyconnen have it in for Emmy Baudine, the parish priest's servant girl, believing her to be an evil influence on the menfolk. Under pressure, the priest gets her a new servants job at a family farm in England. One of the farm residents, Bess Stantforth, gets the same weird vibes from Emmy as the Irish women did, despite the girl seeming so innocent and shy. Bess' intuition jumps to 11 when her sister's boyfriend puts the moves on Emmy... and a couple of other guys in town are mysteriously murdered... and the barn burns down... and an abandoned German Shepherd can't stop baring his fangs around her... 

Daughter of Darkness is evidence primo that some movies live or die by the lead actor. And while the whole cast is up to par, Siobahn McKenna knocks it out of the park as Emmy, the strange young woman who initially seems to be the victim of petty small-town jealousies of nasty old women. Yet with a glance of her eyes or a twitch of her mouth, it gradually becomes obvious there's something... off about her. Nothing you can put your finger on, just a feeling. McKenna's performance is all about subtlety; you can't tell if she's under some satanic spell or just cray-cray. Whatever it is, you almost feel guilty for hoping she gets what's coming to her by the end.

Not that one guy isn't asking for it. Dan (played by Maxwell Reid) is a boxer in a travelling carnival who tried raping Emmy in Ballyconnen, and tries again when passing through the village she now lives in. She actually might have found some sympathy if she hadn't gone ahead and deliberately seduced another guy in order to kill him, too. (It's possible that today Emmy would be considered an extreme feminist hero.) Siobahn McKenna's brilliant performance makes Daughter of Darkness a strange, discomforting experience, yet one worth watching to remember how terrifying a character can be with just a tilt of the head. Watch it with a woman who doesn't know what it's about, just to see how long it takes her to get creeped out by Emmy. (Two different YouTube pages uploaded it, but this one is in the correct screen ratio: Classic Thriller Movie 1948 📽️🍿🥤Crime, Drama, Suspense. Anne Crawford Maxwell Reed George Thorpe (youtube.com)

BONUS POINTS: Co-star Barry Morse went on to greater fame in the U.S. as David Janssen's relentless pursuer Lt. Philip Gerard on The Fugitive. I knew he looked familiar!

RADAR SECRET SERVICE (1950): The A-bomb provided Hollywood with a whole new kind of criminal: the atomic materials thief. FBI agents Bill Travis and Static (no last name) are on the trail of a gang headed by Michael (another no last-namer), who have stolen a cache of Uranium-238 (because Uranium-237 isn't good enough, I guess). The usual investigations, chases, fist fights, and double-crosses follow, along with a couple of floozies with upswept peroxide-blonde hair providing alleged sex appeal. 

The story, which isn't much more complicated than that outline, takes second place to Radar Secret Service's vaguely science-fiction angle. In what would put New York's traffic cameras to shame, here the Feds have a communications tower/radar combo that can track any vehicle within a hundred miles or so from the office. Not only that, it relays live images to a desk-size monitor so that the license plate can be read. Then there's Travis and Static's souped-up police car, which, with the tracking device on its roof, resembles a proto-Google Earth car. Only they didn't realize the freaking thing is really easy to see in the rearview mirror of anyone they're tailing. 

Thanks to a plethora of fedoras and thin moustaches, it takes a while to tell the Feds from the felons. Sad sack Tom Neal plays a bad guy for a change, which actually helps his performance; his stilted delivery is better suited to the wrong side of the law. Sid Melton is a gang member named Pillbox (he's a hypochondriac, in case you couldn't guess). There's no explanation as to why such a dodo is part of this crew other than providing comedy relief, which criminal gangs usually don't need. Ralph Byrd is Static, a comedown from his 1940s Dick Tracy movies. (He even makes a crack about Tracy, which isn't so much an in-joke as it is a bad one.) Keene Duncan, a future member of the Ed Wood movie ensemble, appears near the end, while Adele Jergens and Myrna Dell prove that dames can be criminals like their boyfriends. There's a heck of a lot of actors in Radar Secret Service's 57 minutes, all of whom do their best to take this nonsense seriously. Oh, and at no time are we told who the uranium thieves are selling the stuff to. I bet they're commies!

BONUS POINTS: The Feds' model-360 Hiller helicopter is way too cool-looking for a B-movie like this, and probably took up most of the budget.

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THE EARLY SHOW. PT. 19

 No major studios here. Just the almost-finest that Tiffany-Stahl, Reliable Pictures, PRC, and Screen Guild Productions have to offer. 

THE LOST ZEPPELIN (1929):  Commander Donald Hall is leading an exploration to the South Pole when his Navy airship is caught in a storm and crashes without any means of communication with the outside world. One by one the crew dies until the only survivors are Hall and his second-in-command Tom Armstrong. Just as it looks like the two are becoming human Klondike Bars, a rescue plane lands... with room for only one of them. Oh, I forgot to mention: Commander Hall caught his wife in a clinch with Armstrong the night before the expedition started! Who's going back to the little lady now?

If newspaper ads of the time are to be believed, The Lost Zeppelin broke box office records (at one theater, anyway), likely more for the spectacle in the sky than the melodrama on land. The zeppelin-related special effects are what you'd expect from almost a century ago -- primitive by 21st-century eyes, yet charming in their own 1929 way. It's only when the action moves to the South Pole that the movie resembles a George Melies short from a decade earlier, with slide whistles standing in for the sound of wind. Another problem with studios like Tiffany-Stahl is the occasional dubbed dialogue that neither matches the actors' lips nor sounds like it's coming from the set. Despite those faults, The Lost Zeppelin could be mistaken for an early, not-bad RKO production.

While the performances of Conway Tearle and Virginia Valli (as Commander Hall and his wife Miriam) often feel like the already-vanishing silent days, Ricardo Cortez (Tom Armstrong) paves the way for a more naturalistic style of acting that sound required. He's no Brando but is still one of those actors whose movies I catch when they turn up. Outside of the zeppelin itself, he's the one thing worth watching here. If you're a Ricardo Cortez fan like me, I mean. Otherwise, you probably won't particularly enjoy anything about it. 

BONUS POINTS: Just to make sure audiences at the time got an extra thrill from sound, a lengthy montage of international newspaper headlines is spoken in about a dozen different languages, from French to Hebrew -- the latter always good for a laugh back in the day.

STEP ON IT (1936): Former motorcycle cop Larry Evans takes a job with Frank Banning to find out who's been hijacking the Banning Fuel trucks. 

There's no reason to delve further into Step On It's logline any more than there is to the Fast and Furious movies. All you have to do is look at the tagline on the three-sheet to the right to find out who was responsible for lines at the box office. The now-forgotten Richard Talmadge was a stuntman in several silent movies before becoming a B-movie action star in his own right. Talmadge isn't much to look at, and his voice would never have gotten him into A-pictures. And, oddly, the guy can't even throw a punch convincingly, his arms swinging back and forth like a rag doll; when he's not punching with the side of his fist, he's hitting people's backs rather than faces. 

But when Talmadge is required to jump from a car onto a driverless runaway fuel truck, hoist himself upside down onto the roof of a house, fly over the handlebars of his motorcycle when he crashes into a fence, or jump down an entire flight of stairs onto the bad guys, you can definitely imagine the excitement 1930s audiences felt. For once, you see an actor face-on when he risks his life, rather than the back of a stuntman's head. Take that, Vin Diesel! Fast forward through Step on It to see some genuinely impressive stunts that hold up today, even if the movie itself doesn't.

BONUS POINTS: Talmadge was 44 years old in Step on It, which to me seems kind of old for a guy doing these impressive stunts.  (Yeah, I know Tom Cruise is 60, but I'd like to see him fly down a flight of stairs.)

THE BLACK RAVEN (1943): It's a dark and stormy night at the Black Raven Inn. Over the 
course of an hour, its proprietor Amos Bradford will play host to his former criminal sidekick Whitey Cole; gangster Mike Bardoni; eloping couple Allen Bentley and Lee Winfield; Lee's father, powerbroker Tim Winfield (who wants to prevent her marriage); mousy bank teller/embezzler Horace Witherby; and the shoot-first-don't-ask-questions-later Sheriff with no name. When the storm ends, four people will be dead, including Winfield. Did Allen murder him in order to marry Winfield's daughter? Was it Withersby, because Winfield took the embezzled money? Or was it Bardoni, who wants the now-missing dough? Whoever it was, the survivors will probably book an Airbnb next time. 

You can usually count on a PRC movie to resemble a B-movie Hall of Fame, and The Black Raven is no different. George Zucco! Glenn Strange! Byron Foulger! Noel Madison! Charles Middleton! I. Stanford Jolley! Robert Middlemass! For the cast's lone femme, the oft-uncredited Wanda McKay, the Black Raven Inn must have been her own Grand Hotel. I would have been happy just to spend lunch hour with them at the PRC commissary. No doubt Zucco had a good time ribbing his co-stars that he was the only one who didn't have to get soaked under the rain and wind machines. 

The introduction of Method acting was all well and good, but something was lost: the sheer delight of getting what you were expecting when slapping down your quarter at the box office. Zucco & company didn't know from sense memory, unless they were remembering how they played their last 50 roles. No one, save Lionel Atwill, could deliver a line like, "He's suffering from rabid delusions aggravated by a moronic mentality" like Zucco and make it sound classy. When Byron Foulger -- the actor who looks like his name -- explains his embezzlement by whimpering that he was tired of riding to work in subways that smelled like "sweat and garlic", you believe he's a little guy with too-big dreams. Are movies these days better today than The Black Raven? OK, sure, fine, whatever you say. But they aren't better. 

BONUS POINTS: In a reminder that there was more to life in 1943 than double features, a message at the end of the credits calls on "30,000,000 Moviegoers" to purchase war bonds at the theater. Remember when Americans pulled together for a good cause? Me neither.

THE CASE OF THE BABYSITTER (1947): If there's such a thing as a C-picture, this is it.  Private eye Russ Ashton sends his idiot sidekick Howard "Harvard" Quinlan to keep an eye on the valuables -- and the baby -- of a visiting Duke and Duchess while they're out to dinner. The "royal" pair are actually a couple of jewel thieves named Phil and Mamie who are in possession of a stolen diamond very much wanted by another criminal gang. A couple of knockout drops later, the diamond is stolen yet again -- or so people think -- leading to Russ, his girlfriend Susie, and Harvard to try to figure out why this script was even written.

The only reason I bothered watching The Case of the Babysitter is because it's the sequel to a movie discussed a while back, The Hat Box Mystery (did producers think these titles would bring in audiences?) and felt compelled to complete the Russ Ashton trilogy duology. Tom Neal, Allen Jenkins, Pamela Blake, and Virginia Sale (as Harvard's hash-slinging girlfriend Veronica) repeat their roles from Hat Box; all are as IQ-deficient as ever. Ashton still appears to be the worst gumshoe in town; neither Harvard nor Susie make any attempt to hide their contempt for him, even as they, too, are equally incompetent. 

Movies like The Case of the Babysitter never played the first-run theaters; I'm not even sure they hit the second-runs, either. Like The Hat Box Mystery, this seems to have been made for the bottom of a triple-bill for the more undemanding winos looking for a place to nap before getting thrown out to the street. Ace character actor Allen Jenkins was probably happy to collect a paycheck for dreck like this, secure that there would be quality work from time to time to balance things out. But the ill-fated Tom Neal must have known it would never get any better than starring in a movie that no person in their right mind would sit through without one or two better ones at the top of the bill. Which explains all you need to know about me. (Further proof: I paid 15 bucks for an original Babysitter one-sheet!)

BONUS POINTS: At 39 minutes, The Case of the Babysitter is 180 seconds shorter than The Hat Box Mystery. If only it seemed like it.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 11

 Having just finished several consecutive 12-14 hour days of background work on a much-anticipated, high-wattage cable miniseries, I have only now gotten around to finishing another entry in my you-may-or-may-not-want-to-see forgotten movies and TV shows of decades ago. And I think I already know what your choice will be. Ring up the curtain!

CLUB HAVANA (1945): It's a busy night at Club Havana. A medical intern is on his first date with a clothing store salesgirl. A middle-aged couple are reuniting after a year's separation. A financially embarrassed money manager is wining and dining a wealthy widow in hopes of handling her millions. A young divorcee learns that the man she's in love with is no longer interested in her. And a customer is recognized by one of the club's musicians as a murderer. By closing time, there will be an arrest, attempted suicide, two killings, a marriage of convenience, and five musical numbers. And no cover charge!

Kind of a musical version of Grand Hotel on a Cracker Jack budget, Club Havana is a genuinely entertaining B-picture from PRC Pictures and semi-legendary director Edgar G. Ulmer. Because of its 62-minute running time, the stories have to move quickly. But take into account those five musical numbers scatted throughout, plus the credits, you have roughly 45 minutes to jam these mini-dramas in -- all but the last five minutes told in real time!

Never have I seen so many people in one movie where I knew the faces, yet almost nobody's name. The exceptions to the latter were Paul Cavanaugh as the investor, and Tom Neal as the lovesick doctor. You could consider Neal as Leonardo DiCaprio to Edgar G. Ulmer's Martin Scorsese, but that might be giving them both too much credit. Whether lovey-dovey with his date or saving a woman from a sleeping pill OD, Neal's constant expression registers as mild concern -- as if he's wondering how much to tip the coat check girl. (His character's treatment for the barbiturate OD: a quart of strong black coffee and a walk in some fresh air. Thanks, Doc, you're a genius!)

Club Havana's raison d'etre seems to be cashing in on the watered down Latin American big band music craze that was sweeping the US, due to Xavier Cugat and his former band member Desi Arnaz. The low-rent musical acts featured were probably scouted from various L.A. nightclubs, giving an idea of what your average patron saw in 1945 as they sipped pina coladas on a night out on the town after taking in Club Havana as the bottom half of a double feature. I'd have been one of them.

BONUS POINTS: The wealthy widow turning the tables on the desperate money manager, as her three bespectacled teenage children watch with fascination, is worthy of an A-picture from any major studio of the time; it's likely the wittiest moment in any PRC production.

FOR YOU I DIE (1947): After being forced into a prison break by fellow convict Matt Gruber,

Johnny Coulter makes his way to a lodge where Matt's ex-girlfriend Hope Novak works. As he waits for Gruber to show up so they can plan their next move, Johnny finds himself the objection of affection by another lodge worker, Georgie, even as he and Hope fall in love. Gruber eventually arrives, when a fight and a shootout ensue. Johnny drives the wounded Gruber to the police. Gruber confesses to forcing Johnny to break out of stir; Johnny is taken back to prison to serve the one year remaining on his sentence, when he will return to start a new life with Hope (and hope).

For You I Die -- now that's a great title for a '40s B-picture. Perhaps too great considering the final product. I guess I was expecting the "sap falls in love with a bad dame" story, minus the prison break angle. You know, a good guy who falls into crime in a frenzy of lust. Adding to the story reversals is character actor Mischa Auer as lodge guest Alec Shaw, a Russian-born cab driver/aspiring actor/amateur artist providing comedy relief and philosophical musings in equal measure. Now, you can never go wrong with Mischa Auer, although his performance is a little out of place in what's supposed to be a dark movie. And when I say dark, I mean literally as well as figuratively; I'm thinking the producers set many of the scenes at night to save on the electric bill.

Speaking of dark, Paul Langton (as Johnny Coulter), whom we last saw as a gumshoe in Murder is My Beat, is something like Humphrey Bogart without the range or charisma. In the few roles I've seen him in, an air of an impending doom hangs over him like an especially heavy fog. Even when his characters are on the right side of the law, it seems like he's hiding a very dark secret. Yet, like Tom Neal, that kind of personality fits these low-budget dramas, as if it was too strong for A-pictures. 

As for the rest of For You I Die's cast, only Jane Weeks really goes toe to toe with Langton as far as style is concerned. Brusque, strident, trampy rather than sexy, Weeks dishes it out but good as the no-good Georgie, who tries blackmailing Hope while wanting to skip town with the unwilling Johnny. (It's shocking that she's only 29 here.) Either she was too realistic for her own good, or decided movies weren't her thing -- of her seven roles, four were uncredited. In other words, she's perfect for a worth-one-look movie like For You I Die. 

BONUS POINTS: Mischa Auer was also the movie's associate producer. As he probably said in half of his movies, How you like that?

VIOLATED (1953): Who is murdering and scalping innocent women in New York? Is it low-rent photographer Jan Verbig?  The creepy, sex-obsessed Joe Summers, just released from Bellevue Hospital? Convicted child molester George Mastro? Or could it be anyone of the suspects Police Lt. McCarthy rounds up at the station house? He better find out soon, before innocent aspiring teen model Susan Grant and zaftig dancer Lili Damar find themselves on the wrong end of a fatal pair of scissors. 

I really have to hand it to everyone involved in this sleazy, low-budget excuse for entertainment -- I felt violated just watching Violated (there's a line that will attract an audience). All the genuine New York locations seen throughout, whether Greenwich Village exteriors, bars, the studio apartment doubling as the photographer's studio, even the Staten Island ferry, look grimier than they really were. This is an Ugly-with-a-capital-U movie.

And the actors! Well, "actors" might be too strong a word. The people being paid very little to walk and talk in front of the movie camera aren't just unphotogenic -- they're actively grubby, shabby, and unkempt. When Lt. McCarthy spits out, "What a buncha crumb-bums!" at a roomful of suspects, you get the feeling they've heard the same thing in real life. Even the "exotic" dancers are repulsive.

Technically, Violated provides everything you'd expect -- simple camera set-ups, sloppy editing and lighting, claustrophobic sound -- that were hallmarks of the grindhouse genre. Then there's the scene with Lili Damar in a tub with a phone and radio on a shelf directly over her head -- did no one think this was an electrocution just waiting to happen? Or was the director hoping to ultimately avoid her paying her salary just to save a few more bucks?

BONUS POINTS: Thanks to one of the Greenwich Village scenes, we can see that furniture movers were still using horse-drawn wagons as late as 1953. You can learn history in the strangest places.

THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR (4/15/1951): There's some irony that the most popular form of entertainment in the early days of the futuristic medium of television was vaudeville. The most popular series of this type was The Colgate Comedy Hour, hosted by a rotating roster of entertainers; this episode features loud singer Tony Martin. Perhaps because Martin lacked what would be called comedy chops, Fred Allen was brought on not only as the unofficial co-host but head writer as well. 

And this is what makes this episode kind of fascinating. Having hosted his own weekly radio comedy series almost continuously from 1932 to 1949, Fred Allen loathed TV, particularly the Colgate format. Known as a dry, urbane wit, Allen must have squirmed at having to put up with the old-fashioned musical numbers, especially one featuring a little girl fantasizing that Tony Martin was her father. Had Allen presented the same idea on his radio show, the little girl would have sued Martin for bellowing a song into her ear as he does here before switching her allegiance to Frank Sinatra.

Still more irony!  Allen revives one of his radio characters, Chinese detective One Long Pan, in a sketch with Martin and guest Celeste Holm. One Long Pan had been a radio audience favorite; here, seeing Allen -- a strange looking guy to begin with -- in full make-up is actually scary. Naturally, he never misses an opportunity to mangle the stereotypical Chinese accent. (His long-time running gag of pronouncing "revolver" as "lelowler" is revived here.) People today offended by the benign Charlie Chan movies would be positively apoplectic by what goes on here. One wonders what the Chinese/Hawaiian actor Richard Loo thought being in this sketch as, you guessed it, a houseboy (he was 48 years old).

Fred's alleged friend Tony Martin seems aware of Fred Allen's new position in show business, introducing him as "a gentleman you've enjoyed many, many times in the past". It's no surprise announcer Don Pardo excitedly informs us that the hot young duo Martin & Lewis will be emceeing The Colgate Comedy Hour two weeks hence, in addition to being the special guests the week after that when another young up-and-comer, Jackie Gleason, hosts. A former vaudevillian himself, Fred Allen -- whose droll humor peeks through from time to time in this episode -- likely realized he was being overtaken by the kind of new generation of comedians he once symbolized. 

BONUS POINTS: This episode was produced by Sam Fuller, later known as the writer and/or director of non-comedy classics-to-be including Shock Corridor, Pickup on South Street, Crimson Kimono and House of Bamboo. Maybe he saw in Fred Allen what he would become if he didn't carve a new path for himself.

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE HAT BOX MYSTERY" (1947)

How, you may wonder, can a mystery be created out of a hat box? Easy, if you made Poverty Row nonsense like this.

Two-bit private dick Russ Ashton has been called out of town on a case when his secretary/mistress Susan is arrested for shooting socialite/criminal shill Marie Moreland. But don't blame Susan -- she thought the gun inside her client's hat box was a camera, which was going to take an incriminating photo of his philandering wife. 

Yeah, the cops don't believe it, either. Russ puts on his gumshoes to prove that not only didn't Susan pull the trigger, Moreland was actually shot by one of the members of a criminal gang. If the cops had been doing their damn job, they would have discovered the bullet had fired from a completely different angle. But then the movie would have been a one-reeler.

The cop sees nothing strange about this.

The Hat Box Mystery appears to have been angling to be a little different from the average B-crime movies of the day. For one thing, it clocks in at 42'55" -- even shorter than Hal Roach's "Streamliner" comedies. Another difference is that the Roach movies were supposed to be funny. The only time The Hat Box Mystery isn't funny is during the comedy relief. In fact, the only relief the movie offers is when it ends. 

"Hi, folks. We've put armed guards outside the
theatre, so don't even think of leaving."

Too, in the opening scene, immediately following the title card, Russ Ashton addresses the audience, explaining, in so many words, what a lousy detective he is. He then goes on to introduce Susan and his sidekick Harvard (named,we learn, because he didn't go to Yale. That's as good as the jokes get, folks), and Harvard's idiot girlfriend, Veronica, a burger-flipper who feeds them for free. 

But then he takes it one step further by introducing himself and the others by their real names -- Tom Neal, Pamela Blake, Allen Jenkins, and Virginia Sale -- before the rest of the credits roll. This is without doubt the most interesting part of the movie, giving it the feel of a very early TV pilot. However, it was more likely the first of a proposed series of movies with these characters -- if there was audience demand. Since there was no sequel titled The Dress Bag Mystery, we should assume the obvious.

"I love you, honey. Now just go out and get a brain."

Unlike, say, classic private eyes like Phillip Marlowe, Russ Ashton's attempt at clever banter doesn't rise above personal insults. (He confides to us that his pal Harvard is "plenty D-U-M-B" right in front of the guy.) His treatment of Susan borders on the psychologically and emotionally abusive, forever reminding her how bad she is at her job and how much she's screwed up in the past. He willingly partakes of Veronica's free food even while complaining about it and borrowing money from her. He even has the nerve to physically threaten a repairman who calls him out for the phoney-baloney that he is. No wonder why he never gets any work.

Ashton puts his lion-taming skills to good use.

The closest Ashton gets to wit -- and by "closest," I mean halfway from here to Jupiter -- is when he's kidnapped by the criminal gang. While tied to a chair, he spins a few yarns to his captor to kill time, winding up at fairy-tales. "Didja ever hear the one about the momma bear, the poppa bear and the baby bear?" he asks in his usual sarcastic delivery. "Momma Bear was a Democrat, Poppa Bear was a Republican. Baby Bear was too young to vote." Make that halfway to Betelgeuse.

Character actor Allen Jenkins is always worth a look, but it's Tom Neal who's the real draw for me here. Not that he's particularly good. If you've read this blog long enough, you'll know he's the star of the greatest of all film noirs, Detour, where his wooden style works for the one time in his career.

Tom started at the top as a contract player at MGM, only to bounce down the ranks to Warners, RKO, and finally landing in Poverty Row studios like PRC. (The Hat Box Mystery was released by the even more obscure Screen Guild Productions, whose other epics include the previously-discussed Scared to Death.)

Never more than a competent actor -- he at least follows Spencer Tracy's dictum to know your lines and not trip over the furniture -- Neal seems out of place in his early movies at the major studios. He appears far more at home in his Poverty Row pictures, where his dime-store Gable looks and vaguely uneasy demeanor fit well with the low-rent surroundings.

You can almost feel his bad luck vibe -- he was convicted of shooting his wife in the back of the skull in 1965 -- as his career petered out over time. The Hat Box Mystery, not even strictly qualifying as a feature with its brief running time, wouldn't have been worth watching without his doomed presence. Desperate to be a movie star, Neal would probably be happy to know that.

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