Decoy (1946)
This kind of death row movie makes you appreciate how hard it is to pull off a great movie. Here, all the flaws show, almost textbook perfect. The acting struggles between pretty good (the lead female, the femme fatale one, Jean Gillie) to pretty awful (including, unfortunately, the lead male, a doctor, Herbert Rudley). The detective who shows up now and then (Sheldon Leonard), is actually pretty strong, a coldhearted, no-nonsense type, charmless, perhaps, but with some acting subtlety. (Leonard was a smart guy, actor and director for a lot of classic entertainment television years later.)
But in "Decoy," notice how the archetypal elements are all there. The plot is as interesting as many melodramas, if a bit far-fetched in the one detail that is its hook. But there is no Joan Crawford to raise the whole thing up. Cinematographer Bill O'Connell did do the astonishing original 1932 "Scarface" and he makes this movie excellent in the night scenes, but much of the rest of it is merely functional. The director, Jack Bernhard in his first film (in a five year career), could have made more of all of this. When an actor flinches in reaction, it's obviously an overreaction a better director would have reshot. The music swells and soars. The prison priest is sombre. The nurse calls the doctor "darling" even though he's in love with someone else.
But still, there are moments, and it has a great period feel to it whatever its flaws. And a line now and then pops up, crude and noirish. "Come here baby, I want to look at ya." Or the Frankenstein-like, "I'm alive, I'm alive!" Headlights signal across a lonely highway, men struggle with their unexplained passions, good women give bad women the eye, and innocent people die needlessly. The key brief moment that rises above is a man's grappling with being alive at all. And there is that box of money out there which everyone wants, and he's the only one who knows where it is, while he's actually alive and kicking.
It's all in a day's work. Don't expect a cult marvel--it's no "Detour," not at all "Gun Crazy," to name two B-movie classics. It's a creaker with some involving moments, getting better in the second half, and with a campy last three minutes (the woman's laugh is worth the whole thing). But by the end, you might have to remind yourself about the beginning, before the big flashback.
This kind of death row movie makes you appreciate how hard it is to pull off a great movie. Here, all the flaws show, almost textbook perfect. The acting struggles between pretty good (the lead female, the femme fatale one, Jean Gillie) to pretty awful (including, unfortunately, the lead male, a doctor, Herbert Rudley). The detective who shows up now and then (Sheldon Leonard), is actually pretty strong, a coldhearted, no-nonsense type, charmless, perhaps, but with some acting subtlety. (Leonard was a smart guy, actor and director for a lot of classic entertainment television years later.)
But in "Decoy," notice how the archetypal elements are all there. The plot is as interesting as many melodramas, if a bit far-fetched in the one detail that is its hook. But there is no Joan Crawford to raise the whole thing up. Cinematographer Bill O'Connell did do the astonishing original 1932 "Scarface" and he makes this movie excellent in the night scenes, but much of the rest of it is merely functional. The director, Jack Bernhard in his first film (in a five year career), could have made more of all of this. When an actor flinches in reaction, it's obviously an overreaction a better director would have reshot. The music swells and soars. The prison priest is sombre. The nurse calls the doctor "darling" even though he's in love with someone else.
But still, there are moments, and it has a great period feel to it whatever its flaws. And a line now and then pops up, crude and noirish. "Come here baby, I want to look at ya." Or the Frankenstein-like, "I'm alive, I'm alive!" Headlights signal across a lonely highway, men struggle with their unexplained passions, good women give bad women the eye, and innocent people die needlessly. The key brief moment that rises above is a man's grappling with being alive at all. And there is that box of money out there which everyone wants, and he's the only one who knows where it is, while he's actually alive and kicking.
It's all in a day's work. Don't expect a cult marvel--it's no "Detour," not at all "Gun Crazy," to name two B-movie classics. It's a creaker with some involving moments, getting better in the second half, and with a campy last three minutes (the woman's laugh is worth the whole thing). But by the end, you might have to remind yourself about the beginning, before the big flashback.