User Reviews

This film begins with perhaps the worst instance where a boom microphone is obviously in the shot. As Edmond O'Brien is walking from left to right across the screen, you can very, very clearly see the microphone's shadow. It's so clear and obvious you wonder how the film ever got released this way. It's funny but also rather sloppy. The same can be said for showing a revolver with a silencer--it quiets the shot SOME but isn't as silent as they usually show in films. These mistakes are probably there because this is a low-budget film and didn't have the care needed for a more prestigious project. It could also be that co-director and star Edmond O'Brien simply was out of his element as a director. Despite these limitations, the film IS worth seeing and I enjoyed it very much. That's because the script was taut and well-written. Additionally, the acting was fine---quite realistic and gritty.

The film begins with a police detective (O'Brien) killing a bag man for the mob. In other words, this man was carrying a huge amount of illegal gambling money. However, this killing was NOT a mistake---O'Brien had decided to cash in on some seemingly easy money--killing the guy and claiming it was accidental. While this seems a bit suspicious, the story seemed plausible enough and it appeared as if he'll get away with murder and $25,000. However, there turned out to be a witness and soon O'Brien has killed again to hide his crime. And, like eating potato chips, O'Brien can't just stop there, as his plan is unraveling and the only way to keep it together is to kill again and possibly again.

In addition to O'Brien, John Agar plays a younger cop who is O'Brien's friend. He is torn, as he strongly believes in O'Brien--but over time, it becomes more and more clear that O'Brien has gone bad. This is an interesting character and gave some depth to the film--and proves that despite conventional wisdom, Agar was a pretty good actor--he just chose to appear in a lot of rotten films in the 1950s and 60s (after his divorce from Shirley Temple).

Overall, the film gets very high marks for its realism. In particular, it's very, very brutal for a Film Noir picture--one scene in particular made me cringe. It also gets high marks for the plot as well as O'Brien's excellent acting. It's actually surprising today that Edmond O'Brien is pretty much forgotten, as this Oscar-winning actor and supporting actor was great in tough-guy roles as he was far from the usual Hollywood "pretty boy"--an ugly and brick-like guy who could really act.

So, despite a few technical problems, this is a better than average cop film that holds up very well today. For fans of Noir, like myself, it's a must-see--as is any O'Brien Noir film!

Detective Barney Nolan (Edmond O'Brien) drags a two-bit bookie into an alley, shoots him in the back, robs him, and later claims it was done in the line of duty. His young partner, Mark Brewster (John Agar), believes him unquestioningly but their superior is a little more realistic, seeing as Nolan shot and killed a couple of Mexicans two years earlier. Believing that "a cop is given a gun and the authority to use it and one's no good without the other", the Captain closes the case but things heat up when gangster "Packy" Reed lets it be known that the bookie was carrying $25,000 of the mob's money and they want it back. A deaf-mute witness to the crime comes forward but when he, too, winds up dead, Brewster begins to have doubts about his partner/mentor and starts to fall for Nolan's girl, Patty Winters (Marla English)...

In the late 1940's, Los Angeles was one of the most corrupt cities in America. In 1949, Governor Earl Warren appointed a California Crime Commission to investigate and one of the witnesses was Sgt. Charles Stoker, an honest cop. Some of the problems were depicted in Fritz Lang's roman-a-clef of the "Black Dahlia" case, THE BIG HEAT(1953) and was given a happy ending that didn't occur in real life. Hounded off the force, Stoker would go on to write "Thicker 'N Thieves" and "L.A. Rogue Cop" in the early 1950's. The public's interest in police corruption reached its peak around this time and three movies were made from the books of William P. McGivern (who also seems to have used Stoker as inspiration): Fritz Lang's THE BIG HEAT, SHIELD FOR MURDER and Robert Taylor's ROGUE COP.

SHIELD FOR MURDER is an unpretentious programmer that leaves messages to Western Union, putting the focus on action and violence instead. What social commentary there is comes from an old newspaperman who's seen it all and offers the opinion that it isn't bad cops that frustrate society but the "tin wall of silence" that goes up whenever there's an investigation. Detective Nolan is a vicious bad egg but, strangely enough, also has a softer side; he lets a young shoplifter go free the way he did his protégé, Brewster, years before. Nolan says of working so long in the kind of environment he does, "some of it is bound to rub off" and things eventually spiral out of control and a dragnet ("Operation Tin God") is formed to bring the rogue cop down. The everyday brutality and strong-arm tactics that went into police work back in the day are also shown in a relatively matter-of-fact manner. Many faces from the Golden Age of Television pop up including Claude Akins as an underworld enforcer and Carolyn Jones as a bar fly who witnesses Nolan's sadism. Jones was also a B-girl in THE BIG HEAT. This was the "official" film debut of 50s cult movie star Marla English, "the poor man's Elizabeth Taylor", and she acquits herself well as Nolan's frightened girlfriend. Co-directed by star Edmond O'Brien (with producer Howard W. Koch), SHIELD FOR MURDER is a fast-paced crime drama that builds to an exciting climax and would play great with THE BIG HEAT in a "good cop/bad cop" double feature that doubles as a Carolyn Jones two-fer. Well worth checking out.

Trivia: The shadow of a boom mike is clearly visible in the alley during the opening sequence. 7/10

Every character in "Shield for Murder," even minor ones, seems worn down by life. The whole film has a bleak, hopeless tone, personified by the principal character, played by Edmond O'Brien, a crooked cop who murders someone for money and then spends the rest of the film dodging both the crime boss who the money was meant for and the police who want to see justice done. The hugely ironic finale finds O'Brien being gunned down on the front lawn of his suburban dream home, which he was going to use the money to buy. The 1950s suburban American dream is not to be had for this prototypical noir protagonist (or should we say antagonist).

O'Brien appeared frequently in films like this, but rarely did he play such an unapologetic bad guy. Usually his characters, if not necessarily nice guys, at least had one foot on the side of what's right and decent. This character is bad through and through, which is a bit of a misstep for the movie, since we're not at all conflicted about seeing him brought down. In so many noirs, the suspense comes from seeing essentially good men wrongfully accused, or watching them land in bad situations because of tricks of fate or wrong place wrong time dumb luck. But in this one, we just want to see O'Brien get caught, and since we're pretty sure he will be given the conventions of the time and genre, there's not much suspense in seeing it all play out.

The film's biggest asset is probably the brief appearance of Carolyn Jones decked out as a bleach blonde. For the time she's on camera, her exotic face was the only thing I could look at.

Grade: B+

Willing to give up everything for a sexy babe who isn't bad but yet drives him crazy, a tired and disillusioned cop (Edmund O'Brien) turns to murder in order to get out of a business he has grown to hate. When first seen, O'Brien has his arm tightly around a man he is guiding into an alley. A bullet goes off, an obvious blind man witnesses the killing, and a crowd forms, where O'Brien insists that he was trying to frighten the victim to stop with a bullet that went wild and hit its victim. O'Brien has conveniently removed a bag of money from the dead man's vest pocket which he does not turn over, and returns to his duty as normal. But there's another side to this crooked cop, and we see that when he visits scantily clad Marla English who is about to go from full dressed clerk to teddy wearing cigarette girl. O'Brien goes ballistic on seeing his girl dressed like this, manhandles her and orders her to leave immediately. Fellow cop John Agar suspects that something's amiss, and when the deaf man from the apartment above the murder alley suddenly turns up dead, there's an alleyway waiting for O'Brien one that will lead him to his doom.

This crafty film noir is seen through the eyes of a bad guy, one who's supposed to be on the right side of the law, but disillusionment with law enforcement has pretty much destroyed. O'Brien is excellent as this multi faceted character who finds himself dealing not only with organized crime figures but old colleagues who obviously trusted him at one point. He has a horrifying sequence that is nearly as chilling as the pushing of the little old lady in the wheelchair down the stairs in "Kiss of Death". The whole film is set up like a time bomb ticking, just waiting for him to either explode himself or even accidentally step on one. The final reel is a chase sequence between O'Brien and both seedy criminals and his former co-workers, going from a busy community swimming pool to a housing community under construction. Everything about this film noir is top notch, tensely paced and quite the nail biter. Look for a bleached blonde Carolyn Jones as a party girl whom O'Brien meets in a dive bar.

Edmond O'Brien makes Popeye Doyle look like a crossing guard as a corrupt cop in Shield to Murder. High on The American Dream he turns other lives into nightmares or worse in this compact cynical story of police corruption.

Trigger happy detective Barney Nolan waylays a gambler with a wad and wastes him using a silencer. Not the first time he's shot someone but the thin blue line is not about to be crossed. Nolan has big plans for the cash with his hat check girlfriend that he is violently jealous over along with a house he just bought in the burbs. The pressure begins to build when the mob comes calling for their money and a witness to the initial robbery mysteriously dies but Nolan remains resolute in his dream and expires from it on his front lawn under a hail of bullets.

O'Brien plays Nolan with paranoid intensity, a victim as well as victimizer in the corrupt world he has made his living. The pressure on his face never subsides (unless facing off with his girlfriend) as he mightily attempts to make a go at a tenuous caper. Special mention should also go to Carolyn Jones doing a loopy bar fly kibitzing with Nolan on his demented level. In a couple of years she would get an Academy Award nomination for a variation of it in The Bachelor Party.

Visually there are actual gaffes with a boom mike shadow but two particularly well edited scenes resonate; a shootout in a locker room and pool area along with a brutal beat down in a restaurant reaffirming Nolan's vicious nature. With nothing redemptive outside of his warped love for his girl O'Brien's Nolan remains unsympathetic from end to end making Shield to Murder an ugly but decent watch.

This is a neat little noir from 1954, Shield for Murder starring Edmund O'Brien as a frustrated detective (Barney Nolan) out to make what he thinks will be an easy score. He's picked the time and place...an alley at night; and victim...a two bit bookie for his deed. He even uses a silencer to cover his first shot. Trouble is, unknown to him, a deaf mute is a witness. He commits the murder but doesn't run or conceal it.

Instead, he admits to it and though his story is shaky feels he can count on the blue wall of his police department to not push or investigate too hard.

Trouble is, he's lifted 25 grand from his victim and it's mob money. The mob boss (Hugh Sanders as Packy) even offers him a deal...at first. But Nolan refuses. He has a dream and a dream girl (Marla English as Patty Winters).

It all of course unravels...but along the way we see how wired Nolan is. When a couple of (Packy's) henchmen try to put the squezze on Patty, Nolan pistol whips them in a restaurant. We don't see most of the blows but the horrified reactions of the patrons is effective. In that scene Nolan refuse to pick up a bar floozy, a blonde Carolyn Jones. Oddly, she's the kind of dame Nolan would go for, not the good girl Patty. Perhaps Nolan sees Patty as his salvation but of course he screws that up too.

Fine support is offered by Emile Meyer as the station Captain. Claude Akins is one of the henchmen and John Agar plays Nolan's still wet behind the ears partner. It may have been a little more interesting if he'd shown an interest in Patty.

***Spoilers Ahead, Most Definitely*** I'm not into Film Noir flicks so I wasn't really expecting all that much out of Shield For Murder but it turned out alright.The things that stick out most for me in the movie are Edmond O' Brien (Of course) as the corrupt cop Detective Lt. Barney Nolan (What a GREAT name) I've probably seen a few other movies that Edmond O' Brien has been in but never really paid attention that he was in it.That's going to change.The spaghetti dinner scene (I don't know what else to call it) was brutal.I can see a scene done like that today but with blood & brains splattered all over the table.Sorry if I've grossed anybody out but that's the way movies are done nowadays.They go for the shock factor instead of trying to make you think.I like the way the scene was done because like I said if a scene was shot like that today, it would've been gory & you would've actually seen the beating take place.In the movie you saw just enough to know what's happening & the screams & looks of horror on the diners faces was the perfect touch.The shootout at the pool was something way different that I haven't seen until I watched Shield For Murder.It's the 1st time I've seen something done like that & haven't seen it done in any other movie.The final scene where Nolan used his police tactics to try & escape from the police who were looking for him.Going into the police station & stealing a uniform, calling into the police station to find out what information they had on him, etc, etc, etc.Lastly, the end scene where Nolan was killed right in front of the model home he planned on buying.I would have to say Shield For Murder is worth taking a look at if you are a fan of Film Noir or enjoy crime movies like I do

This film has great atmosphere and starts out with promise, but it bogs down pretty quickly. For one, Edmund O'Brien is playing a man who has been a police detective for 16 years yet he kills a guy in cold blood in an alley with apparently two apartment complexes full of windows looking down on what he is doing. Also, the 25K that the detective steals from the man he kills was slated to go to a very violent gangster who has an accurate account of the comings and goings of the dead man. O'Brien owns up to the shooting itself but tells internal affairs that his gun misfired on a fleeing perp, so now the gangster knows exactly who to point the finger at. Plus the detective is known as a marksman and crack shot. All in all, Leslie Nielson's Frank Drebbin couldn't have done a worse job.

The detective is willing to kill to get this 25K so he can buy a rather modest tract house and live the middle class dream with his barroom cigarette-girl girlfriend as his wife. He just wants to live like a normal guy and get out of the "muck" of the criminal element even though his act has turned him into that criminal element.

The rest of the film is spent trying to show how the detective went bad, and the conflicted feelings of the man doing the internal police investigation on the shooting. The investigator happens to be someone who, as a kid, O'Brien's character rescued from a life of crime.

It's a pretty good character study and crime drama with some interesting twists and turns, but it's definitely not a ground-breaking noir.

***SPOILERS*** In a role that very possibly inspired the "Psycho Cop" series of movies of the 1990's Edmond O'Brian as the sweaty disheveled and bug eyed LA police detective Barney Noland is about as rotten and barbaric as any film or TV policemen ever seen up to that time. Murdering without conscience Barney not only guns down an innocent bookie, Kirk Martin,to grab his $25,000.00 bankroll he's given by his boss Packy Reed, Hugh Sanders, but murders by wringing his neck and throwing him down a flight of stairs deaf mute Ernest Sternmuller,David Hughes. That's in that Sternmuller is the one person who can identify Barney in Martin's murder.

Working his way up in the LAPD as a Let. Detective the pay, about $100,00 a week, wasn't enough for Barney's future plans to marry 20 year old, some 20 years Barney junior, cigarette girl Patty Winters, Maria English and get a house out in the suburbs. So when Barney got a tip that Martin was loaded with cash he jumped at it not caring what the consequences were going to be. It was Barney's good friend at the LAPD Detective Sgt. Mark Brewster, John Agar, who by getting to the bottom, of the stairs, of deaf mute Sternmuller's death who figured out that his good friend and mentor Barney Noland murdered him! As well as him being the person who murdered bookie Kirk Martin!

Barney also takes time to brutally pistol whip private detectives Fats Michaels & Laddie O'Neil, Claud Akins & Lawrence Ryle, who were hired by Mob Boss Packy Reed to checkup on him at a local spaghetti joint where he picked up boozy Carolyn Jones, wearing a blond wig, for a date. In the end it was Fats, with his head bandaged like Lon Cheney Jr in the "Mummy's Curse", who tried to murder Barney at a local YMCA where he was suppose to get the tickets and ready cash from mobster Mannings, Michael H. Cutting, for him & Patty to check out of the country to South America.

***SPOILERS*** Now on the run from both the law and the mob Barney is finally gunned down in a hail of bullets by the LA police lead by his good friend Det. Sgt. Breswter in front of the house that he hoped to buy with his ill gotten gains, the $25,000.00 in bookie money, for him and Patty to spend the rest of their lives living in. It's a shame that Edmond O'Brian wasn't given more psycho type roles like the one in "Shield for Murder" in him being so good in playing one. By then I would guess he was far too old and chubby to be convincing in playing psychos leaving them up to younger actors like Anthony Perkins to get to be cast in them.

David Thomson was very dismissive of this film drawn from a novel by William P. McGivern, but probably never saw it. It's an impressive piece of work, and pretty much what one would expect from a film directed by and starring Edmond O'Brien: extremely well acted, especially by its star, but visually maybe trying just a little too hard (all those low angles and close ups). Not that I'm complaining; it looks marvellous throughout, particularly a sensational scene near the end filmed in a swimming baths. (People unfairly go on about the mike shadow, but that's only because it happens so early in the film.)

What gives this film soul, though, is the people. A blonde Carolyn Jones is even more amazingly amazing than usual, and anticipates Gloria Grahame's tingling scene with Robert Ryan in 'Odds Against Tomorrow' (also based on a McGivern novel) when the first question she asks Nolan when she learns he's a cop is "D'yever kill anybody?" And you feel sorry for a disconcerting number of minor characters: starting with Perc Martin, the bookie's runner Nolan murders in the opening sequence, poor Ernest Sternmuller, the original witness (a deaf mute eking out a sad little living playing the accordion for pennies), Nolan's kittenish girlfriend, and of course Barney Nolan himself, dreaming of his model home with the love of his life; even though we know that from scene one he's doomed, and he kicks an awful lot of dogs during the course of the film as he rushes headlong towards nemesis.