Sweetheart of the Navy (1937, directed by Duncan Mansfield)

Posted on June 17, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

I watched this movie by accident.

I was looking for Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, an obscure Buster Crabbe film that is nearly impossible to find. I was happy to see that someone had uploaded it to YouTube but then I watched and discovered that, even though the video was entitled Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, they had actually uploaded a movie called Sweetheart of the Navy. I was disappointed but I went ahead and watched because the movie was only 61 minutes long and I needed something to post for today’s review.

In other words, I’ve got no one to blame but myself.

Cecilia Parker plays Joan Whitney, who co-owns a cafe on the harbor. When her business partner runs off, he takes all the money and leaves her with all the bills. Joan has to raise the money to keep her bar open. Her friends, Andy (Cully Richards) and Pete (Don Barclay), decide to stage a fight against the boxing champion of the Navy, Bumper (Jason Robards, Sr., father of the more famous Jason Robards). They recruit the overmatched Eddie Harris (Eric Linden) to fight Bumper and then get all of their friends in the Navy to bet on the fight. Commander Lodge (Roger Imhof) views Eddie has being his protege and tries to change his mind about fighting. Joan tries to convince Eddie to get in the ring.

I may be biased because I was already annoyed that Buster Crabbe wasn’t in this movie but Sweetheart of the Navy was instantly forgettable, creaky, and corny. Forgettable songs, stagey directing, and boxing action that won’t exactly put Rocky to shame, Sweetheart of the Navy took 61 minutes of my life under false pretenses.

And again, I have no one to blame but myself.

30 More Days Of Noir #1: Bunco Squad (dir by Herbert I. Leeds)

Posted on November 1, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Noirvember!

Yeah, yeah, I know. That sounds kinda silly, doesn’t it? However, November is traditionally the month that classic film bloggers tend to concentrate on writing about film noir. It provides a bit of grit and cynicism in between the horror fun of October and the holiday schmaltz of December.

I have to admit that I’m a little bit torn when it comes to taking part in Noirvember. On the one hand, I love a good film noir and there’s quite a few obscure and underrated ones available on YouTube right now. On the other hand, as a natural-born contrarian, I don’t like the idea of hopping on any bandwagons.

In the end, my love of film noir won out. So, welcome to my first entry in 30 More Days of Noir.

The 1950 film, Bunco Squad, tells the story of Tony Weldon (Ricardo Cortez), a con man who specializes in using a phony psychic routine to swindle rich people out of their money. He runs a fake enlightenment center and he claims that he can speak to the dead. His latest target is the wealthy Jessica Royce (Elisabeth Risdon). After he finds out that her son was killed during the invasion of Normandy, he and his associates go out of their way to trick her into believing that Tony can contact her son and that her son wants her to leave all of her money to Tony’s organization. It’s actually kind of interesting watching as Tony and his gang manage to track down information about Jessica and her son, asking the most mundane of questions to find out things that Jessica believes only her son would know. Watching Tony operate, I was reminded of those documentaries and news reports that you see about phony faith healers and other people who claim they can speak to the dead but who actually just go on very vague fishing expeditions. (“I’m sensing something about the letter L. Does that mean anything to you?”)

Tony is not just a con artist. He’s also a murderer, one who specializes in cutting brake lines on cars. If you try to expose Tony, you’re probably going to end up driving off of a cliff. I guess you can get away with that when you’re a con artist in California. Myself, I live in North Texas where the land is totally flat. Someone could cut my brake lines and I would probably just keep going forward until I eventually ran out of gas. Once that happened, someone would probably pull over and offer to give me a lift to the nearest gas station. That’s one reason why someone like Tony Weldon could never pull off any of his crimes in my home state.

Fortunately, the detective of the LAPD’s Bunco Squad know what Tony’s doing. The only problem is that they have to get some proof that Tony is swindling Ms. Royce and they have to manage to do it before Tony gets a chance to tamper with all of their brakes. Leading the Bunco Squad is Steve Johnson (Robert Sterling) and you better believe that there’s no way someone named Steve Johnson is going to be anything other than honest and upright. Working with a real-life magician named Dante, Johnson attempts to expose all of Tony’s tricks.

It’s probably open for debate whether or not Bunco Squad is a true noir. On the one hand, Tony and his schemes are very noirish. On the other hand, Steve and the members of the Bunco Squad are so upright that there’s none of the ambiguous morality that you find in the best film noirs. I guess I would call this a half-noir.

The best thing about Bunco Squad is that it’s only 67 minutes long, which is all the time that it needs to tell a compact and occasionally interesting story. There’s no excessive padding to try to force the story out to an unwieldy 90 minutes. Instead, Bunco Squad jumps right into its story and it doesn’t let up until things come to an end. The other good thing about Bunco Squad is that you’ve got Ricardo Cortez, giving a charmingly evil performance as Tony Weldon. The film’s heroes are a pretty dull bunch but Cortez brings a nice charge of danger to the proceedings.

Bunco Squad is an obscure film but it moves quickly and the story is interesting enough to hold your attention for an hour. It can be found on YouTube.

The Fabulous Forties #10: Dick Tracy’s Dilemma (dir by John Rawlins)

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 10th film in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties box set was 1947’s Dick Tracy’s Dilemma. According to Wikipedia, this was the third Dick Tracy film to be produced by RKO Pictures. In case you couldn’t guess from the title, Dick Tracy has a dilemma in this film. I assume that, in the first two films, he had a problem and a quandary.

Clocking in at just an hour, Dick Tracy’s Dilemma takes place over the course of one long and very dark night. Three men rob the Flawless Furs Warehouse and kill the night watchman. The leader of the gang (played by Jack Lambert) is known as the Claw because, instead of a right hand, he has a prosthetic hook, which he can use to either beat or claw people to death. (It all depends on his mood.) The Claw also loves cats so he can’t be all bad.

Investigating the murder is Detective Dick Tracy (Ralph Byrd). This was the first Dick Tracy film that I’ve ever actually watched so I can’t claim to be an expert on the character. But judging from this film, Dick Tracy’s dilemma is that everyone around him is either extremely stupid or extremely evil. For example, Dick’s partner, Patton (Lyle Latell), is useless. When Dick’s number one informant, a fake blind beggar named Sightless (Jimmy Conlin), attempts to get some important information to Dick, he has the misfortune of running into Dick’s idiot friend, a Shakespearean actor named Vitamin (Ian Keith). Vitamin mishears the information and he delivers his lines with so much over-the-top flourish that, by the time he tells Dick that Sightless wants to speak to him, the poor beggar has already been murdered by The Claw.

Seriously, people have been talking about how dark Batman v. Superman is but just check out Dick Tracy’s Dilemma. The Claw is a sadistic killing machine and, in the end, it seems like it’s more dumb luck than good police work that leads to Dick Tracy tracking him down. The film ends with smiles all around, despite the fact that it’s only been a few hours since poor Sightless was clawed to death. If Vitamin wasn’t a drunk old actor, Sightless wouldn’t be dead. For that matter, Dick Tracy is the one who pressured Sightless to act as an informant in the first place.

Seen today, Dick Tracy’s Dilemma seems more like an episode of an old cop show than an actual movie. It’s easy to be dismissive of it but I don’t know. If I had been alive in 1947 and saw this movie when it was originally released, I probably would have enjoyed it. Ralph Byrd makes a convincing hero and there is a sense of genuine menace to Jack Lambert’s performance as The Claw. That said, don’t even get me started on Vitamin.

What type of name is Vitamin anyway?

You can watch Dick Tracy’s Dilemma below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYYraxwqkO4