Noir Watch: Shield for Murder (1954)

Watched:  01/26/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Edmond O'Brien and Howard W. Koch

This movie has some really interesting stuff, and maybe exploits some of the actual issues cops deal with for entertainment and shock value.  It's not the best movie - it drags in some places and feels like it's stretching to reach feature length once you kind of see where all of this is going.  But thematically, it's right there in the mix with the darker noir films.

Police detective Barney Nolan (Edmond O'Brien) kills a man in an alley and takes a stack of money off of him - $25,000 (roughly $300K in 2025 dollars).  He tells his pal and fellow cop Mark (John Agar - the ex Mr. Shirley Temple) that he was trying to bring in the bookmaker, but things got messy and shots were fired.

Soon after, Barney is picking up his young girlfriend, Patty (Marla English) and showing her a model home he says he'll buy.  Meanwhile, he hides the money beneath the house.

A pair of Private Eyes, thugs from the gangster who the money belonged to, start snooping around.  And a witness comes forward who saw everything, and Barney can't have that.

The movie has a scene with a platinum blonde Carolyn Jones as a bar fly.  

The basic gist of the film is a character study of a cop who has always been a good guy, but he's worn down by everything he's seen, and the knowledge he'll never get ahead while the crooks run around with $25,000.  How far will he go for his slice of the pie?  And how crazy will it make him?

As Eddie Muller hinted at during the intro, it just doesn't seem like Edmond O'Brien is anyone's favorite - and I'm probably in agreement.  He's not a bad actor, he's just not a favorite, but he's in enough noir films, he starred in two of three I watched this weekend.  Clearly this movie meant a lot to him, and he directs himself just fine here.  But never has it been more clear that a star was twice the age of the woman he's paired with and with so little chemistry.  It's just hard to buy.

There are some dynamite sequences, like a brutal sequence where we realize how far gone O'Brien is when he's cornered by the detectives in an Italian restaurant.  And a shoot-out at an indoor pool.

Anyhoo, I've seen that poster above for years and never came across the movie itself, so it's a delight to finally watch the thing.  

Texas Noir Watch: The Houston Story (1956)

Watched:  01/25/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director: William Castle

The funny thing about The Houston Story (1956) is that there's probably a good idea for a movie in here, somewhere between a less dumb and horny Landman and less intense There Will Be Blood, but the script is so phoned in, it's both a mess and a little too pat.  But it does make Della Street (aka: Barbara Hale) seem like a bombshell, so it has that going for it.

It took me a minute to realize this is the kind of movie where our lead is a true noir protagonist - he's not on the side of the angels, he's a guy who's seen an angle and he's pursuing it to the top.  I read Lee J. Cobb was originally slated to play the role, and I can see that completely.  Instead we get Gene Barry - who is good! - but who didn't give "morally ambiguous POV character" in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Essentially, Barry plays an oil-field worker.  He gets the attention of the Houston mob by identifying a corpse found beneath the "docks of Houston" as a woman he know in Oklahoma.  However - that isn't who it is.  Barry happens to know that the woman he's named is actually living in Houston under the name Zoe Crane and mixed up with a second-banana mobster.  

Totter Noir Watch: Man In The Dark (1953)

Watched:  01/24/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lew Landers

I always like a movie that's entire premise is based on 1950's-era psychological science.  

Edmond O'Brien plays a former gangster who has been pinched.  Facing a minimum 10 year stretch, he agrees to a bit of Clockwork Orange scientification.  A doctor is going to perform surgery on his brain to remove his criminal element or some such.

On the other side of the surgery, he can't remember who he was or what he used to do, and is no longer a shady crook, I guess.  From a detective for an insurance company, we learn O'Brien boosted $130K prior to his incarceration, but nobody knows where it is, and now that includes O'Brien himself.*   O'Brien coming along fine when his old gang kidnaps him/ liberates him.  

For reasons that amount to "we're real dumb", the old gang thinks for way too long that O'Brien is faking his amnesia.  They trot out his girlfriend, Audrey Totter, to convince him to play ball.  Eventually, she realizes he doesn't remember she was his girlfriend - and, if I may, that would seem like a welcome surprise.

Anyway, Totter never really liked O'Brien before - or at least knew she was disposable to him.  But she likes this new version.  

But as the crooks (led by Ted de Corsia) start to press, O'Brien has a dream with clues!  Memory clues!  And they find a slip of paper with a number that must mean something.  

Anyway - it means going to the Oceanpark Pier pier you see in one in every 20 film noir movies, and having a face-off.  

Highlights of the movie include:  

• it has a dream sequence that isn't a patch on Spellbound, but is still entertaining
• plenty of Laffing Sal
• Audrey Totter in smashing dresses
• an extended "getaway" flashback sequence with no story impact that I am pretty sure is on the roofs of the backlot at the studio
• the only fistfight I've ever seen on a roller-coaster track while it's operational.  Some real stunt work here.

I wouldn't say the movie is great or essential, but Totter feels weirdly too good for this movie, putting depth into her character that I'm not sure the movie earns. So if you're looking to catch another solid role for her, here you go.

If the movie seems a bit odd, visually, it is a 2D presentation of a 3D movie.  So that might explain the long escape sequence and a few other scenes.  I am very curious how the roller coaster sequences would have looked.  Pretty good, I expect.

There is a curious "will he go back to his wily, crooked ways" tension to the movie, but it's really just about survival.  Why O'Brien doesn't just go to the cops, I do not know.  It does mean he punches a dude off the hill of a rollercoaster track, so...  it's not like this is entirely a "on the side of the angels" ending.

*I would think handing over the money would have been key to the court agreeing to let O'Brien be a scientific subject, but the ethics of experimenting on prisoners is at best a gray area in this movie

I think I did a phenomenal job not making any jokes about Totter in 3D.  Please clap.

Noir Thriller Watch: Diabolique (1955)

Watched:  01/19/2026

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Henri-Georges Clouzot

Diabolique (1955) hangs heavy over so much of cinema that, like many other films I've both finally watched - or still haven't seen (hello, Bicycle Thieves) - the very weight of it made it seem like homework instead of watching something for the sake of watching a movie.  

It also makes these movies difficult to write about.  I don't guess I'm ever breaking new ground, but when it comes to something with the gravity of this film, what's the point of writing about it, really?

But even I thought it was ridiculous I'd never seen Diabolique.  Spousal murder movies are part-and-parcel for noir, from probably before Double Indemnity.    

Anyway - TCM's Noir Alley programmed the movie, and what better way to frame the movie than with Eddie Muller's brand of bar room rather than classroom?  

The film is both familiar - it's been ripped off endlessly in the ensuing 71 years - and yet it remains unique and surprising in other ways.  A post-WWII France, still sorting itself,makes for an interesting locale.  The economic situation is still rough, and the occupation has left its shadow and scars.  It's also made in France and therefore the Hayes Code isn't so much a factor.  But I'd really point to the characters and performances.  Grade A stuff riding a Grade A script..

At a boys' boarding school - the principal is carrying on with a teacher with the full knowledge of his wife, a timid woman with a heart condition.  However, the principal abuses the teacher, and somehow - the wife and the mistress have fallen into a conspiratorial friendship.  Even as we meet them, they're planning how to kill the principal and make it look like an accident.

Vera Clouzot - wife of the writer/ director - plays the wife of the principal.  She is, frankly, stunning in a complex, conflicted role, asked to play so many things, and she pulls it all off brilliantly.  It's simply one of those roles that will never play as outdated and because of the legacy of the film, will keep Clouzot in the public mind despite having only three film roles to her resume (she passed 5 years later).

I don't know what to say - yeah, the movie met expectations.  Windy, twisty, unrelentingly tense...  and, of course, with an ending good enough that they ask the audience not to share the end with anyone right there at the film's conclusion - something I'm respecting here in 2026, and so I'm not discussing the film too much more.  

Anyway - that one is now checked off. 

Riff-Trax Watch: Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957)

Watched:  12/28/2025

Format:  Riff-Trax on YouTube

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Edward D. Wood, Jr.

There's no good reason to watch Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957) again, or right at this moment.  But I sure did.  It didn't hurt to watch with what seemed like a 20-year-old Rifftrax over a colorized version of the film.  

It's just a good time, every time.  Especially once the monologuing really kicks in during the back half of the film.  

Y'all pour one out for Bela.

True Crime/ Noir Watch: The Phenix City Story (1955)

Watched:  12/14/2025

Format:  TCM on HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Phil Karlson

The Phenix City Story (1955) was not at all what I was expecting from brief descriptions I'd read over the years when making a choice for what to watch.

First - Phenix City is a real city in Alabama on the Georgia state line.  Second - this is a true crime movie that was made in the wake of the assassination of a recently elected new Attorney General from the State of Alabama who was voted in on his promise to clean up the vice and corruption in Phenix City.

Phenix City sits across the Chattahoochee River from the larger Columbus, Georgia and near a very large Army Base, Ft. Benning.  Apparently, for decades and decades, that was enough to make the small town (about 24,000 people) into a place where one could gamble and pick up hookers while the locals looked the other way.  While Phenix City also had more churches per capita than anywhere else in Alabama, somehow the city basically turned a blind eye to the economic engine that is allowing your town to be Pottersville.  

The movie is wildly frank about this for a Hayes Code-era movie.  They murder children, on screen.  There's other acts of terrible violence.  It mentions and shows prostitution, gambling, etc...  and even discusses and shows prostitution offered in return for votes for the corrupt politicians.  I'm kind of shocked this movie isn't a much bigger deal just as a counterpoint to what people think is both the squeaky clean media of the Eisenhower era and a counterpoint to the dumbulbs who think things were all Mayberry in ye olden thymes.  

Christmas Classic Watch: White Christmas (1954)

Watched:  12/09/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Michael Curtiz

I always wonder how contemporary audiences received the Michael Curtiz movie, White Christmas (1954), when it came out.  It's not exactly The Best Years of Our Lives, but does speak to the post-war era as people moved on with their lives, from enlisted soldiers to retired Generals.  But also is aware of the camaraderie forged among pairs of men in war, as well as that of whole battalions.  And, the people who waited at home and their relation to the fighting men and women.  

People may not be nostalgic for getting shot at constantly, but they do miss the people they knew who got them through.

The movie opens on the last December of the war as Bing Crosby - playing an analog of himself - performs alongside Danny Kaye, who is not famous back home.  They' salute their outgoing General Waverly, knowing he actually cared about all of them.  

Noirvember Watch: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Watched:  11/22/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Billy Wilder

If you ever wanted to crush the human soul with a pair of slick mid-century movies, you could do worse than to schedule this movie alongside The Sweet Smell of Success.  

The movie probably seems a little over the top in some ways, but holy christ, you kind of know it's more accurate about our relationship with the media and how the media keeps us invested than any of us really want to admit.  

Kirk Douglas plays a talented journalist who has been run out of every decent newspaper on the East Coast.  He rolls into town in Albuquerque in a broken down car and takes a job at a small paper that insists he publish only the truth.  

A year later, he's sent to go cover a rattlesnake roundup but en route stumbles across an accident.  At a roadside shop and restaurant they find that across the way the owner of the place has gone into an old cave where he often finds Native American artifacts, and the place had collapsed on him.  Douglas smells a story, and calls it in.  It's the first time he's really been able to cut loose with some real sensationalism, and the story gets picked up by the wire.

Noirvember Watch: Winchester '73 (1950)

Watched:  11/03/2025

Format:  Criterion Disc

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Anthony Mann

I don't think I've seen Winchester '73 (1950) since Jamie and I rented it circa 1998 when a Hollywood Video opened near us, and unlike Blockbuster, Hollywood prided itself on having a section for older films.  And the nice thing about that was that they had limited shelf-space, so if they had it in, the movie was pretty solid.  

The movie often gets mentioned in the discussion around "Western Noir", and seeing it now, I can absolutely see why.  It doesn't hurt that director Anthony Mann rewrote the film to better suit his interests, and his prior films included noir classics like Side Street, Border Incident, T-Men and plenty of others.  At any rate, Mann was familiar with putting a lead through the ringer and understanding that they can have an irrational obsession and still be a compelling protagonist.  

In this case, all we know is that Jimmy Stewart is playing Lin McAdam, who comes to Dodge City looking for Dutch Henry Brown, and it's a vendetta.  In Dodge City, he and his partner (Millar Mitchell) have to hand in their guns just as they come across Brown, also without a gun.  A lengthy shooting competition for a prized Winchester '73 rifle takes place with McAdam winning, but Brown steals the gun and makes off.

Soon, the gun is changing hands from Brown to an Indian Trader to a chief on a warpath, to a cowardly would-be criminal.  It's great stuff.  And along the way, we see early appearances of Rock Hudon as a war chief and Tony Curtis as a young cavalry soldier.  

Stewart's obsession will be reflected in 6 years in Johns Wayne and Ford's The Searchers, but here it feels like pure noir.  Millar Mitchell's sidekick is there to comment upon said obsession as well as keep our hero on the straight and narrow.  And even the ending, where our hero has accomplished his task (spoiler) sure feels like noir with Stewart looking haunted and having to realize even as he holds the female lead (Shelley Winters), he has no idea what to do now, or if the murder of his brother did anything at all to soothe the rage.

Yes, the movie co-stars Shelley Winters, and this may be the movie where she's totally fine.  At no time did I want to shoot her out of a cannon.  Dan Duryea shows up to add to the noir flavor and play Dan Duryea, even letting his hair flop in a scene.  God, he's an amazing asshole on screen.  It's amazing.*  Charles Drake plays "Steve", the world's greatest coward.  Character actors John McIntire and Jay C. Flippen are used exceedingly well.  

It's also shot (in monochrome) in the Tucson area, and makes excellent use of the western landscape.  Gorgeous stuff.  

I guess this movie was a sort of career-saver for Stewart, and allowed him to start playing more complicated roles.  I need to check out his re-teaming with Anthony Mann on The Naked Spur.  But I certainly think of Stewart as a guy who can and did do everything in his work, from Vertigo to Harvey.  I mean, come on.  

Anyway - I kind of loved it.  On the disc there's actualy a commentary track with James Stewart and I want to give it a listen ASAP.  

*I would pay $400 to watch a movie that was just 1950 Duryea and 1950 Richard Widmark insulting each other

Musical Watch: Les Girls (1957)

Watched:  10/04/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  George Cukor

Les Girls (1957) is what happens when someone sees Rashomon, likes the notion of the same story told from different angles, but lacks the ability or skill to write a story that pulls off the Rashomon-effect.  And, so, Les Girls is three different stories with the same characters that seem like they take place completely divorced from each other.  Because of this, and because none of the three stories is very interesting (and because my mind drifts when movies are dull), it is, I think, somewhat of a confusing watch.  

But if you read about Gene Kelly, Les Girls gets mentioned all the time, so I wanted to check it out.  

Disney Watch: The Shaggy Dog (1959)

Watched:  08/09/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Charles Barton

First, this movie's opening sequence slaps.  

The rest of The Shaggy Dog (1959) was never going to live up to whatever that was, but I basically enjoyed it.

I tell you what - for what this movie is, which is a near 70-year-old movie for kids probably up to age 12 or so, and adults looking for utter nonsense, this fit the bill for some silly viewing.

The basic plot is not basic - it is, in fact, a "shaggy dog story".  I don't know why we call intentionally long stories with side-plots and a sad trombone of an ending a "shaggy dog story", but we do, and Wikipedia has a theory as to why.  But, yeah, it's an entire movie leading up to a punchline about Annette Funicello finding a better guy than the two guys initially interested in her.

1950's Watch: Designing Woman (1957)

Watched:  06/10/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vincente Minnelli

I was a bit wary of this film as I watched the trailer, but you never know.  

For example, I'd quite liked Woman of the Year, and I thought that was not going to land with me.  But I've been taking a mini-journey through the very limited media lifespan of Dolores Gray, who was mostly a Broadway and West End performer (she's American - she played Annie Oakley in London's Annie Get Your Gun).  She only has, like, five or six movies, total, and Designing Woman (1957) is one of them.  

The story is about a sports reporter (Gregory Peck) who meets a high-end fashion designer (Lauren Bacall) while in California, but it turns out they both live in New York.  After a whirlwind week and marriage, they return to the city and what was going on in their prior lives.  

Turns out a hard-drinking sports writer and a wealthy woman used to more of a salon sort of atmosphere with her pals are somewhat at odds.  It's a deeply heightened "men be like this", "women be like this" clashing of worlds.  

Fuller Watch: Forty Guns (1957)

Watched:  06/01/2025

Format:  TCM forever ago, but on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sam Fuller

I'm gonna say - I've never disliked a Sam Fuller movie.  And, in fact, I like Sam Fuller movies when I watch them, and I probably need to watch more of them.

Forty Guns (1957) is a pastiche on the Wyatt Earp/ Tombstone mythos and OK Corral films, with Barry Sullivan playing the Wyatt Earp stand-in, Griff Bonnell.  The three Bonnell brothers ride into Tombstone to collect a lawman who has been robbing mail delivery.  But on their way in, they're passed by Stanwyck in all black on a white horse, and riding head of forty men - her Dragoons.  

Stanwyck's Jessica Drummond is the hard-as-nails boss of the territory, who has helped turn Arizona into something like civilization, but rules her territory with forty hired guns who ride far and wide doing her bidding while she puppet masters politicians, judges and the law.  

She has a maniacal brother, Brockie (John Ericson), who she covers for even as he causes her no small amount of trouble, this time by shooting an older lawman - who is going blind.

In some ways, this is a familiar version of the Earps and the Cowboys story from Tombstone - three brothers taking on an organized mob on the edge of civilization.  In others, it's a bit different as Griff and Jessica start to fall for each other, seeing in each other that they're the kind of people it took to build the West, but now the use for people like them is coming to a close.

Noir Watch: The Steel Trap (1952)

Watched:  04/19/2025

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Andrew L. Stone

This one is a wild ride.

Look, I just like Joseph Cotten.  The man is a movie star, but also can be an everyman like no one's business.  And he was absolutely the right choice to be our lead.

He plays a sort of middle-management salary man at a bank, knows all the in's and out's, and is married to Teresa Wright (who played his niece in Shadow of a Doubt).  They have an adorable moppet of a daughter.  All is post-war happiness.  Or is it?

Cotten begins realizing how easy it would be for him to rob his own bank.  There's no femme fatale pushing him to do it - he just realizes he's clever enough to pull it off, and people trust him enough that he won't be found out til he's already out of the country.  It's basically asking the question of "why am I playing by the rules if the rules aren't doing me much good to really get ahead?"

And, so he waits til no one is looking at the end of a Friday and clears out the vault.

What follows shows up in movies like Quick Change where the heist just will not play by your carefully sorted rules.  So for about an hour we're watching every conceivable foul-up get in his way as he has to gaslight his wife (who he is taking with him, telling her he's on a business trip) to get them both on a plane.  In a way, it's almost painful as the issues mount up.

By nature, I'm a planner.  Jamie is well aware, my least favorite thing is a surprise, maybe even a good one, if it's going to throw off my schedule.  I am *much* better about this now than I was ten years ago, where I'd just lose my shit if things got off schedule.  So in a way, this movie seems designed to make me crazy.

We were warned by Eddie Muller in the intro that the writer/ directors of this movie are famous for having some bizarre and far-fetched set-ups, and this is certainly one of them.  There's no ticking clock at the outset of the movie - our hero just decides he needs to rob this bank NOW instead of just planning it out and re-working the plan until he's got a clean getaway planned.  

Ie: for a movie all about planning the perfect heist, what actually occurs is nothing of the sort.  And we get to watch Cotten spiral into being a real jerk as the walls he created close in.

Anyway, it wasn't my favorite movie.  But it did have a unique ending - that ends just before I'm pretty sure the whole thing would have blown up in his face, anyway, so - as they say - you get a happy ending depending on when you leave the story.

Noir Watch: The Narrow Margin (1952)

Watched:  04/06/2025

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Richard Fleischer/ William Cameron Menzies

I've only mentioned this movie twice on the blog from what I can tell.  Once in 2010, and once in 2018.  That seems nuts, because I'm sure this was more like the 5th or 6th time I'd seen The Narrow Margin (1952).  

Personally, I love this movie.  I'm shocked I didn't get to it during the podcast.  I think SimonUK and I talked about double-billing it with the Gene Hackman-starring remake, which I still haven't seen.

The movie is pretty straightforward.  It's an RKO flick, so it's a bit more rough and tumble, a bit sexier and sassier, and the sense of danger a bit higher.  There's a whole backstory to the movie that stars Howard Hughes being out of his mind and thinking Jane Russell should really be in everything and also not getting how his own movies work.  You can look it up.  Today is not the day I make this a film history blog.

Musical Watch: It's Always Fair Weather (1955)

Watched:  03/27/2025

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Stanley Donen/ Gene Kelly

It's Always Fair Weather (1955) is a weird and wildly uneven movie.  It's either having an astounding number like the whole sequence in the boxing gym where Cyd Charisse seems like magic, or its three dudes boring me to tears with their individual issues.  And, yes, I'd seen it before.

I get that the movie is trying to replicate the trio of guys from On the Town, and, according to IMDB trivia, that was the original plan, but Sinatra was having his studio issues, and Munshin was on the outs with Hollywood.  

But I think if this movie had just been about Gene Kelly's character, it would have worked a heck of a lot better.  Or if it had been able to bring back all six of the characters - sure.  Instead, we get this weird "men in crisis" story that just kind of lacks charm and even feels depressing.  

Musical Watch: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Watched:  03/14/2025

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Howard Hawks

It had been a minute since I'd watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), one of those movies they used to play more often on TCM and where I'd just stop and usually watch it from wherever I came in.  It's still a favorite.  

No doubt the movie's gender politics play badly for The Youth, but in context, this is a movie about two women on either side of the coin - asking whether one pursues money or not when it comes to matrimony and romance.  And, in 1953, we are very much still in an era where a marriage is going to make or break the vast majority of women.  We're only a handful of decades from women being able to vote, and they still can't have their own credit cards.  

The gag, of course, is do you play the men?  And, if so, how?  

Stuff I Liked as a Kid Watch: Treasure Island (1950)

Watched:  12/27/2024

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Byron Haskin

For Christmas, I gave the nephew - a voracious reader - a copy of Treasure Island.  He's now the same age I was when I checked the book out of the library, already pretty familiar with the story, thanks to the movie or movies I'd seen up to that point.  But the book stuck with me, just as the Disney film had.

I know I saw a version of Treasure Island when I was about seven years old.  It came on, and my parents decided we could stay up and watch it.  I suspect, now, it was the 1934 version, but it's possible it was the Disney version from 1950 - maybe it's more likely it was, but I also don't quite know what Houston television would have been showing on a Saturday night.  What I do know is that I eventually did watch this version when I was a bit older, maybe in school, and I was a fan.  And this has been my version ever since.

As a kid, what wasn't to like?  A young boy, not yet a teen, gets wrapped up in a grown-up adventure with pirates, ship captains, maps, all the stuff we've since incorporated into our general ideas of what pirates are supposed to be.  I know now that Stevenson himself borrowed from other books, from Robinson Crusoe and other works.  But don't we all borrow?

It also understands, in a way I think we've forgotten in kid-oriented media - that what a kid wants is to be included as an equal alongside the adults in the action.  As a mix of the expectations of kids in the era in which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his book - released in 1881-2 as a serial and 1883 as a novel - and as the primary POV of the novel, Jim is *valued* and doesn't realize he's being handled differently, even if and when he is.

Totter/ Noir Watch: FBI Girl (1951)

Watched:  12/08/2024

Format:  DVD

Viewing:  Second

Director:  William Berke

I'd watched this movie years ago, and saw it available at a low price on DVD.  In my quest to have a decent collection of Audrey Totter movies, I picked it up.  

FBI Girl a 1951 release, and some post-WWII, pro-FBI propaganda.  The entire set-up is about the fingerprint files and a Governor who is not who he seems with a prior life as a criminal, whose prints are in the FBI files.  No one can hide from their past and elected leaders are clearly held to the highest standards of the law!  This is what the people want!  (cough cough)

The mob's attempts to retrieve those files leads to murder!  

The whole movie is a story about the importance of good file management, provenance of documents, and the power of a good look-up system.  And that speaks to me.  I have no idea how having fingerprints on file if there's 50,000 people named "John Williams" or how millions f inky stains help anyone if they can't digitally sift through the files, but they could do it somehow!  And now I want to know how this works in an analog world.

The movie is a weird huddle of second-tier stars of the era.  Caesar Romero and George Brent play FBI men.  Raymond Burr as (shocker, if you watch noir) a mob boss.   Tom Drake from Meet Me In St. Louis appears as Totter's beau and a K-Street guy.  For reasons I cannot begin to guess, the movie stops for Tom Noonan of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and his comedy partner to do their bit on TV, that our characters watch.

Speaking of blondes, not only does this movie star Audrey Totter, but Joi Lansing makes an appearance as one of her roommates.  And who can be mad at a Joi Lansing appearance?

The movie is *marginally* better than I remembered.  Totter is pretty great as the girl who is caught between love and country, and working against the shady Perry Mason.  Files are managed, duplicates are made, dopey paper pushers save the day.  Totter looks smashing, and it's a tight 74 minutes.  In one scene we see what kind of tough noir this could have been with Burr and Totter, but... nope.

Is the movie good?  No.  Is it fine?  Yes.  

Western Watch: Barricade (1950)

she's so cheery about whatever the hell is happening back there

Watched:  11/26/2024

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Peter Godfrey

TCM was running a day of Ruth Roman movies.  I am but a simple man, so I recorded a couple of the Ruth Roman films I hadn't yet seen - leading to this viewing of Barricade (1950).  

Based on the Jack London story The Sea Wolf, but transported to a gold mine in the west, there sure seems like this has the makings of something that could have been good - even thought provoking.  But, it is not.  I don't even know why it's called Barricade.  There's kinda some barricades in, like, one scene.  But it's not a plot point, and I don't think there's a metaphor here...  It's just called "Barricade".  And Ruth Roman is not big enough by far to barricade anything.

What's odd is that this movie seems like it has high aspirations, but just feels weird and flat throughout.  Maybe I'm just not a Dane Clark fan, or I don't think Raymond Massey was as compelling as the script was begging him to be.  And I was tricked!  Because the movie starts with a scene in which Roman shows up dressed as a lady, getting off of a wagon, and when you find out she's a wanted prison escapee, she kicks a dude over and steals the 6-horse wagon.  It is the best part of the movie.  I briefly had high hopes.

Anyway, there's an accident and she and the other passenger on the wagon end up stranded in a remote gold mine where the crooked boss runs the place with an odd, intellectual cruelty, crushing everyone around him - as he mostly hires people looking to hide from the law.

While Roman and Dane Clark fall for each other, the travelling companion, Robert Douglas, spars verbally with Raymond Massey, the boss.  

I dunno.  It's... fine.  I think the 6.0/ 10 rating on IMDB sounds right.  It's not horrible, but I won't think about this movie again until I'm looking at old posts or IMDB in the future.  Roman is the only real highlight of the film.  I just don't think Dane Clark is all that exciting as a leading man here or in the other things where I've seen him, and Robert Douglas is... fine.  But feels perfunctory in the part.  

It happens.  Even the wikpedia entry on this movie is basically "yes, this movie exists".