Tag Archives: review

30 More Days of Noir #10: Death in Small Doses (dir by Joseph M. Newman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ah, speed.

I have to admit that I always find films about amphetamines to be fascinating because I take them for my ADD.  I’ve been taking Dexedrine since I was in middle school and it has always amused me how people who don’t have ADD seem to think that the meds will give you super powers.  For instance, every season of Big Brother, there’s people online who get outraged over certain houseguests taking Adderall.  “She had an unfair advantage!” someone will say, “Because she’s taking Adderall!”  What can I say?  People who don’t have ADD just don’t get it.  Yes, if you have ADD, the meds can help you focus but it’s not like they’re going to give you any sort of special power that’s not available to any other person.

(I will admit that there is a slight difference between me on my meds and me off my meds.  Actually, my family says that there’s a huge difference but I think they’re exaggerating.  It is true that I’m a lot more focused when I take my Dexedrine.  My mind wanders a bit less than usual and I’m also usually in better control of my frustrations.  When I take my meds, I can finish any project.  When I don’t take them, I can talk about finishing any project.)

Dexedrine focuses me but apparently, it does the opposite for those who don’t have ADD.  The 1957 film, Death in Small Doses, features a truck driver named Mink Reynolds who, despite not having ADD, pops too many capsules and ends up playing really loud music and trying to force a waitress to dance with him.  He also hallucinates seeing a car and then grabs a knife and tries to kill another truck driver.  To be honest, that seems a bit extreme to me.  In fact, I’d almost argue that Mink’s behavior would indicate that the filmmakers really didn’t know much about amphetamines.  Making things even stranger is that Mink is played by Chuck Connors, who was a remarkably inexpressive actor.  Watching Connors, with his stone face, trying to dance and jump around is an interesting experience.  Mink is supposed to be a jazz-crazed, speed-abusing hepcat but instead, he comes across like an animatronic mannequin.  You can almost hear the gears shifting whenever he has to move across the screen.

Mink’s fellow truck driver is Tom Kaylor (Peter Graves), a seemingly upright man who is usually seen wearing a tie and who looks like he would be more comfortable working behind a desk than driving a truck.  Of course, that’s because Tom is actually an FBI agent!  He’s working undercover, pretending to be a truck driver so that he can smash a ring of drug dealers!  Of course, the problem here is that everything about Peter Graves’s screen presence shouts out, “Narc!”  With his square jaw and his perfect haircut and his stiff but authoritative delivery of his dialogue, he seems like he was created in a lab that specifically set out to develop the most stereotypical FBI agent imaginable.  There’s not a single rough edge to him and it’s hard to buy that the other truck drivers wouldn’t see straight through him.

While Tom tries to bust the ring, he also finds time to possibly fall in love with two different women, both of whom seem as if they might know more than they’re letting on.  Amy (Merry Anders) is the waitress who has developed a drug habit of her own.  Val (Mala Powers) owns the boarding house when Tom and Mink live.  Can Tom trust either one of them?  And will Tom not only undercover the identity of the head of the drug ring but also survive long enough to bring the dealers to justice?

So, here’s the thing.  During its worst moments — i.e., whenever Chuck Connors is jumping all over the place and talking about how much he loves his friend “benny” — this is a campy and rather silly film that makes Reefer Madness look subtle by comparison.  However, during its best moments, this is a tough and entertaining noir that features good performances from Merry Anders and Mala Powers.  Both Anders and Powers manage to transcend the film’s sillier moments and they actually bring a charge of reality to the story.  And while director Joseph M. Newman may not have known much about drugs, he did know how to shoot a fight scene.  Making good use of its desolate locations (the truck drivers spend a lot of time driving through the desert) and setting many of the film’s best moments at night, Newman overcomes some of the script’s weaker moments.  In the end, it makes for a rather uneven but entertaining viewing experience.  Despite the film’s cluelessness about drugs and the miscasting of both Graves and Connors, this lesser-known noir is worth tracking down.

Music Video of the Day: Slow Dance by Saint Motel (2020, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Another music video from my favorite band in the world, Saint Motel.  Today, we find the boys performing on a baseball field!

I saw Saint Motel live in January.  It’s an experience that I recommend to everyone.

Enjoy!

30 More Days of Noir #9: The Walking Target (dir by Edward L. Cahn)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1960 noir, Nick Harbin (Ronald Foster) is a walking target!

That’s because he’s just been released from prison.  As the only survivor of a gang that pulled off a daring payroll robbery, Nick has done his time and he’s ready to get on with his life.  He even got himself an education while he was behind bars.  He’s decided to reform and no longer be the angry criminal that he once was.

But first, there’s a little matter of some money.

Only Nick knows where he buried the loot from the robbery.  Everyone wants it.  The press wants to know because it’ll make a great story.  A nosy detective wants to know because he’s convinced that Nick hasn’t changed his ways.  Susan (Merry Anders), who used to be involved with one of Nick’s criminal associates, wants to know because she’s only in it for the cash.  Susan’s current boyfriend, Dave (Robert Christopher) wants to know because …. well, again, it all comes down to greed.  Greed is also what’s motivating a local gangster to provide backing for Susan and Dave in their quest to find the money.  Dave is even willing to send Susan to seduce Nick.

However, all Nick wants to do is find the money and then split it with Gail (Joan Evans).  Gail is the widow of one of the robbers and Nick wants to do the right thing for her.  Of course, Nick is himself kind of in love with Gail.  Can Nick get the money, find love with Gail, and avoid slipping back into his criminal ways?  It won’t be easy.  Life is never easy when you’re….

THE WALKING TARGET!

Okay, that was a little bit melodramatic on my part but then again, it’s a melodramatic film.  Everyone is constantly plotting and double-crossing.  Appropriately, it all leads to a battle in the desert as modern-day outlaws prove themselves to be no more trustworthy than their vintage ancestors.

The Walking Target is a low-budget noir, one that clocks in at only 70 minutes and which, as a result, doesn’t waste much time when it comes to jumping into its story.  That’s one good thing about these B-movies.  They had neither the budget nor the time for red herrings.  As a result, you pretty much know what you’re going to get before the movies even begins.  The Walking Target features all of the usual tough dialogue and morally ambiguous characters that you would expect to see in a noir.  Merry Anders is an adequate femme fatale, though I do wish that Susan had been a smarter character.  (Nick sees through her way too easily.)  The film opens with the prison’s warden telling Nick that, even though he’s done his time, he’ll always be a no-good crook and that’s the perfect way for a noir to open.  Unfortunately, the film’s cinematography doesn’t really have the right noir look.  There aren’t enough shadows and the film often looks like it could just be an episode of an old TV show.  I guess that’d due to the budget but it really does keep the film from making the transition from being good to being great.

The Walking Target is a diverting-enough film.  I liked Ronald Foster’s uneasy performance as Nick and it was enjoyable to watch everyone plotting and scheming.  The Walking Target is currently available on Prime and I recommend it to anyone looking for a good, if lesser-known, B-noir.

30 More Days of Noir #8: Accomplice (dir by Walter Colmes)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1946 film noir, Accomplice, tells the story of Simon Lash (Richard Arlen).

Now, I guess if you have a name like Simon Lash, you’re pretty much destined to become a private detective.  In this case, Lash is both a detective and an attorney.  I did some research — which is a fancy way of saying that I checked with Wikipedia — and what I discovered is that there was apparently quite a few stories written about Simon Lash.  He was a pulp hero created by Frank Gruber.  Gruber went on to write the screenplay for Accomplice, which was based on the novel Simon Lash, Private Investigator.  I don’t know if this was the only Simon Lash film or not.  If there were more Simon Lash films, let’s hope they found a more interesting actor than Richard Arlen to play him.

Yes, indeed, Richard Arlen makes for a rather dull hero in Accomplice.  Physically, he seems like he’s right for the role.  You look at Richard Arlen and you can imagine him beating someone up.  But, in this film at least, he has a boring screen presence that makes it difficult to really get invested in Simon as a character.  He doesn’t have the wounded cynicism of Humphrey Bogart or the killer eyes of Alan Ladd.  He’s just kind of there.

Simon Lash is hired by his ex-fiancée, Joyce (Veda Ann Borg), to track down here husband.  Joyce claims that her husband is president of a huge bank and that he’s suffering from amnesia.  Simon doesn’t quite trust Joyce and he worries that she’s actually using him to dig up dirt for a divorce.  Simon doesn’t work divorce cases.  Apparently, it’s a matter of honor for him.  Not surprisingly, it does turn out that Joyce hasn’t been totally honest with Simon.  Of course, it also turns out that Joyce’s husband has some secrets and tricks of his own.

Indeed, it’s a very complex story, which is something I appreciated.  I always love all the twists and turns of a typical California noir and this one had several.  It all eventually led to a shoot out at a castle in the desert and again, that’s exactly what you want a film like this to lead to.  Accomplice is only 66 minutes long and, as such, it never drags and the double and triple-crosses all come quickly.  That’s definitely a good thing.

Unfortunately, despite all of that, the film itself falls flat.  The main problem is one that I already pointed out.  Richard Arlen is just not a very compelling hero.  While Veda Ann Borg has the right look to play a femme fatale, she still has a strangely bland screen presence in this film.  It’s easy to imagine her trying to fool someone but it’s next to impossible to believe that she could actually do it.  She’s just a bit too boring for the role.  With different actors in the lead roles, Accomplice could have been a classic low-budget noir.  (Seriously, just imagine the film if it had reunited Detour’s Tom Neal and Anna Savage as Simon and Joyce.)  As it is, Accomplice is a bit of a disappointment.  The possibilities are more fun than the execution.

30 More Days of Noir #7: Hell Bound (dir by William J. Hole, Jr.)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Like so many film noirs, 1957’s Hell Bound opens with a narrator.  As we watch scenes of a group of thieves robbing a Naval ship of World War II narcotics, the narrator explains to us what each criminal is doing and how their plot will hopefully lead to them getting rich.  Again, this is something we’ve seen in a countless number of film noirs.  What makes Hell Bound unique is that the narration keeps going long after one would expect it to stop.  And the expected cops and federal agents are never introduced….

That’s because we’re watching a film within a film!  Jordan (John Russell) has made and produced the film himself, all to convince a gangster named Harry Quantro (Frank Fenton) to support his plan to …. well, to rob a Naval ship of narcotics.  Jordan promises that the real-life theft will go just as smoothly as the theft in the movie!  And, it must be said, Jordan’s movie was really well-made.  He hired actors and everything.  Harry agrees to give Jordan his backing on the condition that Jordan use Harry’s girlfriend, Paula (June Blair), in the operation.  That, of course, means that Jordan won’t be able to use his own girlfriend, Jan (Margo Woode).  That’s going to be awkward.

Anyway, Jordan starts to assemble his crew and they’re the typical film noir collection of misfits.  One of the more fun things about Hell Bound is that it’s full of odd and eccentric characters, the types who would you actually expect to find trying to rob the U.S. Navy of narcotics in the 1950s.  My favorite character was the blind drug dealer named Daddy (Dehl Berti).  He has the perfect attitude for someone who had the luxury of not having to see the damage caused by his professions.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect plan.  Whenever you get a bunch of criminals together to pull off the perfect heist, there’s bound to be some betrayals and some paranoia.  We’ve all seen the ending of Goodfellas and we all know what the piano coda from Layla means.  Complicating matters is that a big part of the scheme requires Paula to fake being an ambulance nurse and that means that she’s going to have to work with an honest ambulance driver named Eddie Mason (Stuart Whitman).  Eddie is a good, working class guy who just wants to help people and make the world a better place.  How can Paula go through with her part of the plan when she’s got Eddie looking at his hands and saying that he wants to use them to be a healer!?

I really liked Hell Bound.  I wasn’t expecting much from it but it turned out to be a really effective and clever 50s film noir.  Clocking in at 70 minutes, it doesn’t have any time for excess padding or anything else.  As soon as the film-within-a-film comes to an end, it jumps right into the action and it doesn’t let up.  Add to that, you’ve got John Russell giving a tough and gritty performance as the wannabe criminal mastermind and then you’ve got Stuart Whitman managing to make his self-righteous character likable and June Blair doing a great job as the femme fatal.  Hell Bound is bit of an unsung classic, a tough and gritty film noir that packs a punch.

 

30 More Days of Noir #6: The Dark Past (dir by Rudolph Mate)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Now, this is an interesting little film noir!

This 1948 film stars William Holden, Lee J. Cobb, Nina Foch and Lois Maxwell.  William Holden is Al Walker, an escaped convict and a ruthless murderer.  Nina Foch is Betty, Walker’s devoted girlfriend and partner in crime.  Lee J. Cobb is Dr. Andrew Collins.  Lois Maxwell, years before she would be cast as Miss Moneypenny in the first Bond films, plays Ruth Collins, Andrew’s wife.  When Walker, Betty, and the gang break into the Collins home, they hold he doctor and his family hostage.

That may sound like a similar set-up to Desperate Hours and hundreds of other low-budget crime movies.  And, indeed, it is.  What sets The Dark Past apart from those other films is that Dr. Collins is a psychiatrist and his response is not to try to defeat or trick Walker but instead to understand him.  Even after Walker kills a friend of the family’s, Collins remains convinced that he can get to the heart of Walker’s anger and help the criminal start the process of reform.

When the nervous and violent Walker threatens the family, Collins calmly offers to teach him how to play chess.  When it looks like Collins might have a chance to escape, he instead stays in the house and continues to talk to Walker.  Eventually, he finds out about a recurring dream that Walker has been having, one that involves Walker standing in the rain under an umbrella that has a hole in it.  Collins links the dream to Walker’s traumatic childhood and he shows Walker why he feels the need to be violent and destructive.  But will it make a difference when the cops show up?

The Dark Past is an interesting relic.  Watching it today, it can seem a bit strange to see just how unquestioning the film is of the benefits of analysis and dream interpretation.  Nowadays, of course, we know that dream symbolism is often just random and that it’s impossible for a psychiatrist to “cure” a patient after only talking to them for an hour or two.  However, The Dark Past was made at a time when psychiatry was viewed as being the new science, the thing that that no one dared to question.  This was the time of The Snake Pit and Spellbound.  The Dark Past suggests that all any criminal needs is just a night spent talking to someone who had studied Jung and Freud.  Today, the film seems a bit naive but it’s still an interesting time capsule.

William Holden is great as Al Walker.  That, in itself, isn’t a surprise because William Holden was almost always great.  Still, Holden does an outstanding job of making Walker and his neurosis feel real and, like the best on-screen criminals, he brings a charge of real danger to his performance.  Lee J. Cobb has the less showy role but he also does great work with it.  It takes a truly great actor to make the act of listening compelling but Cobb manages to do it.

The Dark Past may not be as well-known as some film noirs but it’s an interesting and occasionally even compelling film.  Keep an eye out, eh?

30 More Days of Noir: The Killer Is Loose (dir by Budd Boetticher)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Film noir comes to the suburbs!

The Killer is Loose opens with the robbery of a savings and loan.  At first, it seems like meek bank teller Leon Poole (Wendell Corey) behaved heroically and kept the robbery from being far worse than it could have been.  How meek is Leon Poole?  He’s so meek that his nickname has always been Foggy.  People have always made fun of him because of his glasses and his bad eyesight.  Everyone assumes that Poole is just one of those quiet people who is destined to spend his entire life in obscurity.

However, the police soon discover that Leon Poole is not the hero that everyone thinks that he is.  Instead, he was involved in the robbery!  When Detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotten) leads a group of cops over to Poole’s house to arrest the bank teller, Poole’s wife is accidentally shot and killed.  At the subsequent trial, Poole swears that he’ll get vengeance.  And then he’s promptly sent off to prison.

Jump forward three years.  Leon Poole is still in prison.  He’s still deceptively meek.  He still wears glasses.  Everyone still assumes that he’s harmless.  Of course, that’s what Poole wants them to believe.  He’s still obsessed with getting his vengeance.  Meanwhile, Detective Wagner and his wife, Lila (Rhonda Fleming), are living in the suburbs and have a somewhat strained marriage.  Lila wants Wagner to find a less dangerous and less stressful job.  Wagner wants to keep busting crooks.

When Poole see a chance to escape from prison, he does so.  That’s not really a shock because even the quietest of people are probably going to take advantage of the chance to escape from prison.  What is a shock is that Poole ruthlessly murders a guard while making his escape.  He then kills a truck driver and steal the vehicle.  He then tracks down his old army sergeant and guns him down while the man’s wife watches.  Always watch out for the quiet ones, as they say.

Now, Poole has just one more target.  He wants to finish his revenge by killing Lila Wagner.

The Killer is Loose is a tough and, considering the time that it was made, brutal film noir.  (Seriously, the scene where Poole kills his former sergeant really took me by surprise.)  While both Rhonda Fleming and Joseph Cotten give good performances in their roles, it’s Wendell Corey who really steals the film.  Corey plays Poole not as an outright villain but instead as a man who has been driven mad by years and years of taunts.  After spend his entire life being told that he was a loser, Poole finally decided to do something for himself and, as a result, his wife ended up getting killed by the police.  Now that Poole’s managed to escape from prison, he’s willing to do anything just as long as he can get his final revenge.  Corey plays Poole with a smoldering resentment and the performance feels very real.  (If the film were made today, it’s easy to imagine that Poole would be an anonymous twitter troll, going through life with a smile on his face while unleashing his anger online.)  It brings a very real spark and feeling of danger to a film that would otherwise just be a standard crime film.

The Killer Is Loose also makes good use of its suburban setting, suggesting that both Fleming and Cotten have allowed themselves to get complacent with their life away from the obvious dangers of the big city.  You can buy a new house, the film seems to be saying, but you can’t escape the past.

30 More Days of Noir #3: Guns, Girls, and Gangsters (dir by Edward L. Cahn)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Guns, Girls, and Gangsters!  The title of this 1958 film pretty much sums it all up.

Now, technically, I guess you could debate whether or not the criminals in this film really qualify as gangsters.  When I hear the term “gangster,” I tend to think of the big Mafia chieftains, like Al Capone and the Kennedys.  Maybe it’s because I’ve seen The Godfather too many times but I always associate gangsters with wealth, big mansions, elaborate weddings, and aging crooners who need someone to chop off a horse’s head in order to get a role in From Here To Eternity.  However, the gangsters in this film are all basically small-time criminals.  One of them does own a nightclub but it’s not a very impressive nightclub.  If anything, they’re wannabe gangsters.  However, Guns, Girls, and Wannabes just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Chuck Wheeler (Gerald Mohr) has a plan.  He wants to rob an armored car.  It’s a Vegas armored car, so of course it’s going to be full of money and since Michael Corleone killed Moe Greene three years before, there shouldn’t be too many repercussions from hijacking it.  (Sorry, I’m still thinking about The Godfather.)  To enlist the aid of a nightclub owner, he enlists the aid of a singer named Vi (Mamie Van Doren).  Vi just happens to be the wife of Chuck’s former prison cellmate, Mike (Lee Van Cleef).  Vi has been demanding a divorce for a while but Mike won’t grant it because he’s insanely jealous.  He probably wouldn’t be happy to find out that Chuck and Vi are now a couple but, fortunately, he’s locked up.

Except, of course, Mike escapes from prison around the same time that Chuck and the gang manage to hijack that armored car.  As you can guess, this leads to mayhem and havoc.  That’s where the guns of the title come into play….

Guns, Girls, and Gangsters is an entertaining little B-noir.  It’s only 70 minutes long so the film doesn’t waste any time getting to the action.  (There’s also a narrator who serves to fill in any plot holes and to keep the audience entertained with his rather self-important delivery.)  Gerald Mohr is a bit on the dull side as Chuck but you better believe that Lee Van Cleef is 100% menacing and oddly charismatic as the as the always angry Mike.  Van Cleef brings a charge of very real danger to the film.  (Perhaps he’s the gangster that the title was referring to, though I would still think of him as being more of an outlaw than a gangster.)  And, of course, you’ve got Mamie Van Doren, playing yet another tough dame in dangerous circumstances.  Van Doren gets to perform two musical numbers in Guns, Girls, and Gangsters and they both have a low-rent Vegas charm to them.  Watching this film, it occurred to me that Van Doren may not have been a great actress but she had the perfect attitude for films like this.  She played characters who did what they had to to do survive and who made no apologies for it and it’s impossible not to be on her side when she’s having to deal with creeps like Chuck or sociopaths like Mike.

Guns, Girls, and Gangsters is an entertaining B-noir.  There’s enough tough talk, cynical scheming, and deadly double crosses to keep noir fans happy.

30 More Days of Noir #2: Blonde Ice (dir by Jack Bernhard)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1948’s Blonde Ice tells the story of Claire Cummings (Leslie Brooks), the society columnist for a San Francisco newspaper.  Almost every man that Claire meets falls in love with her.

Les Burns (Robert Paige), the paper’s cynical sports reporter?  Les is so in love with Claire that he keeps getting involved with her despite the fact that she cheats on him with almost every man that she meets.

Al Herrick (James Griffith)?  Yep, he’s still in love with her too.

Carl Hanneman (John Holland), one of the wealthiest men in San Francisco?  Carl is so in love with Claire that he’s willing to marry her even after he catches her kissing Les on the day of the wedding!

Congressional candidate Stanley Mason (Michael Whalen)?  He’s so in love with Claire that he’s willing to sacrifice his political career just to be with her.

How about Blackie Talon (Russ Vincent), the pilot who witnesses Claire doing some things that she probably wouldn’t want the world to know about?  Well, Blackie never gets around to declaring his love for Claire but his obsession with blackmailing her is probably just his way of dealing with the massive crush that he has on her.

The only person who doesn’t appear to be in love with Claire is Dr. Kippinger (David Leonard), a psychiatrist who immediately picks up on the fact that Claire is cold and manipulative.  There’s a reason why Les refers to her as being …. can you guess? …. “Blonde Ice!”

Of course, even with all of these men falling in love with her, no one loves Claire as much as Claire loves herself.  Claire is a narcissist and a sociopath and she has no problem killing one lover and framing another for the crime.  In fact, it’s something that she attempts to do several times over the course of Blonde Ice.  Claire, it has to be said, is pretty clever about it too.  Her natural ability to manipulate, combined with her total lack of empathy for anyone but herself, makes Claire a dangerous character.

Blonde Ice is somewhat obscure as noirs go.  It was clearly a poverty row production, with only a 74-minute running time and a cast largely made up of obscure contract players.  And yet, Blonde Ice is a personal favorite of mine, largely because of the ferocious performance of Leslie Brooks.  Brooks rips into the role of the femme fatale, delivering her cynical lines with aplomb and murdering anyone who gets in her way.  Considering that this film was made in 1948, I was actually a bit shocked at just how high the body count climbed in just an hour and a few minutes.  Claire is basically willing to kill anyone and the film often seems to take a perverse delight in showing how easily she can convince others of her innocence.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film is that Claire attempt to frame the same man for not one but two murders and, even after all that, he still doesn’t seem to be emotionally capable of telling her to get out of his life.  In a world of weak men, Claire comes in, takes control, and offers up no apologies.

Obscure though the film may be, Blonde Ice is an enjoyable noir and can be found on YouTube.

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

Posted on 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.