User Reviews

The bunco squad deals with confidence tricksters and fraudsters. In this movie they are trying to bring down a big time phoney fortune telling racket. Robert Sterling was just finding his feet in better films ("Two Faced Woman" (1941) and "Johnny Eager" (1942)) when the war intervened and by the time he returned he was never able to regain his footing. Perhaps he was too much like William Lundigan. After a couple of roles in films like "Bunco Squad" he turned to television where he was in great demand. "Bunco Squad" was also one of Ricardo Cortez's last appearances. He had a fantastic career going back to the silents, where he was the only actor whose name appeared above Garbo's in a film. He never gave a bad performance.

Anthony Wells (Ricardo Cortez, doing what he does best!!!) is trying to get friendly with a rich widow, Mrs. Royce (Elisabeth Risdon), who is still grieving for her son Phillip, who was killed in the war. He tries through her secretary Barbara Madison (Marguerite Churchill) who is unaware of his connections. When she tries to warn the police - her car is in a mysterious accident and she is killed.

He brings in all his phoney fortune telling friends and they get to work on Mrs. Royce's friends and servants who fill them in on Phillip's young life. When Mrs Royce visits Princess Liane (Bernadene Hayes) she is able to tell Mrs Royce little stories about her son that the widow thought were known only to her. When persons unknown, tamper with Det. Steve Johnson's brakes, he sends his long suffering girlfriend, Grace Bradshaw, undercover. She is an actress and her assignment is to pose as a phoney medium to lure the other "fakes" into a trap. Grace was played by the lovely Joan Dixon, in her first film appearance - unfortunately, she didn't make many more!!!

I quite liked this movie - it is all about phoney fortune tellers - not the usual cops and robbers story. Dante the Great was a genuine magician who made an appearance as himself, in order to instruct Grace in the art of being a medium!!!

Recommended.

I was attracted to this by the presence of Elisabeth Risdon, a versatile character actress who fortunately not typecast as a harridan based on her role as Leon Errol's nagging wife in the "Mexican Spitfire" series. She's played her share of sweet women as well, and here, she's a mother grieving her dead son, falling for the con game of phony mystics who have gathered enough information on her son so they can bilk money out of her by pretending to be able to be in contact with his spirit.

The future ghost of the "Topper" TV series, Robert Sterling, is the detective determined to break up this racket lead by Ricardo Cortez which also includes some cool characters played by Robert Bice, Bernadine Hayes and veteran comedy short actress Vivien Oakland. The film goes into good detail on how the racket chooses victims and where they get their info.

Marguerite Churchill plays Risdon's secretary who can't convince her that she's being swindled, and Joan Dixon is a film actress whom boyfriend Sterling convinces to help them expose these cons, with the help of the real life Dante the Magician. Quick and to the point, this is like an extended "Crime Does Not Pay", but very worthy of being expanded.

To the extent that this movie is apt at all, it fits Los Angeles better than any other American city of the period. There was a certain craziness about the place. There still is. It has hot dog stands in the shape of hot dogs. It has motels with names like The Taj Mahal in the shape of the Taj Mahal only painted day-glo purple. And I don't want to think too hard about the Madonna Inn, which seems to be made entirely of plastic spaghetti, lest my synapses fuse.

In the 1930s and 40s it was a land of spiritualism and cults, of which Amy Semple McPherson's Four Square Gospel was perhaps the best known. This movie is like a stretched-out episode of "Dragnet," with all-good police officers in pursuit of all-bad phony spiritualists who rig séances in order to bilk a rich, gullible old lady out of her fortune. Sadly it lacks the reassuring ritual quality of Dragnet's style of dialog and movement.

In this Zoroastrian world of black and white, Packards and Nashes career around curves in accelerated motion, the phones ring every ten minutes with important news, actresses are dragooned into plots to undo the evil-doers, and people speak in stereotypical lines that sound like they came directly from a screenplay.

Nobody is a good actor. You know what would have pepped this up? Just ONE performer with a modicum of talent -- say, Marie Windsor, as the fake medium. And -- oh, hell -- throw in Mantan Moreland for laughs.

I find the post-1949 RKO films interesting, because they were produced after Howard Hughes took over RKO and began to run the studio into the ground. In this case we have one of his starlets, Joan Dixon, as the leading lady. Miss Dixon was usually assigned to "B" westerns with Tim Holt, but she is more than capable in this picture. She plays an actress who is dating a cop (Robert Sterling). Sterling is in charge of investigations concerning the bunco squad of a local police department.

Bunco squad investigations typically involve surveillance on con artists running scams, and some of these crooks commit various forms of fraud. The villain in the movie is the always-suave Ricardo Cortez, who has set up a group of occultists that are trying to bilk a kind elderly woman (Elisabeth Risdon) out of millions. Part of the scheme has them helping the old gal contact the spirit of her dead son who was killed in the war. Of course his "spirit" will direct her to change her will and leave her fortune to the cult.

There are some unique twists and turns in the story. Some of it is a bit far-fetched, but nonetheless I would say this is an entertaining way to spend an hour give or take a few minutes. Robert Sterling is above average as the detective, though one can't help but think Jack Webb would have been ideal here.

As for Cortez, he only appeared in one more movie after this. And he only did two roles on television, so his career was certainly winding down. But this is a meaty part for him, and he makes the most of it.

While Dixon is beautiful, she doesn't have a lot of screen time until two-thirds of the way into the drama when she agrees to use her acting skills to go undercover and help expose Cortez and his gang. The supporting player who comes across best is Risdon as the misguided but still respectable matriarch. She is playing the type of role that would have been cast with Ethel Barrymore if the picture had a bigger budget.