Slightly preposterous PRC prison movie has Jean Parker playing prim bank clerk Mary Kirk Logan whose terrible past consists of her father's running of a legal pinball business. When Logan's blackmailer, a character named Willis Millen (say that ten times), is killed she is sent to prison for his murder. Lionel Atwill plays a criminologist who attempts to free her. Jean Parker is lovely but once she's in the slammer this movie takes a dive; Atwill just can't keep the movie going. The narrative structure doesn't help: Atwill statically reads Mary's last letter to the world before her execution and the entire film is told in dreary flashback. We have no more dreadful villain than circumstance as once again in a classic poverty row film, a virtuous young person is erroneously sent to jail for a crime he or she didn't commit. The audience knows this, and even the characters say so! In fact, there's almost a fist fight over whether or not to throw the switch on the electric chair! Note the use of the word "almost" - once again, an opportunity for a lively moment of action is lost.
Manny Farber had it right when he pinpointed the problem with B-movies. In his 1943 essay Our Town, he wrote: "since we find that the B picture is not experimental, we might then expect, because censorship and box-office decree that no one's feelings be either examined or hurt, that is at least be a fairly innocuous picture of an average American family." Often Bs attempting to be noirs fail because they are ultimately crime pictures without criminals and all the gooey good stuff that comes along with crime - betrayals, secrets, motives and antagonists - is missing! In any B without a Lugosi or a Karloff, the perpetrators only pop up in the last minute to tie a bow on the whole thing.
Manny Farber had it right when he pinpointed the problem with B-movies. In his 1943 essay Our Town, he wrote: "since we find that the B picture is not experimental, we might then expect, because censorship and box-office decree that no one's feelings be either examined or hurt, that is at least be a fairly innocuous picture of an average American family." Often Bs attempting to be noirs fail because they are ultimately crime pictures without criminals and all the gooey good stuff that comes along with crime - betrayals, secrets, motives and antagonists - is missing! In any B without a Lugosi or a Karloff, the perpetrators only pop up in the last minute to tie a bow on the whole thing.
The film's weakest link is Marcia Mae Jones who appears as Suzie Kirk, Mary's dissolute sister who brags that Atwill will probably need a lot more paper if he wants to write down the names of all of her boyfriends! Though her character is pivotal to the plot, we never really understand Suzie's motivations aside from the fact that she's dippy and a bit of a nymphomaniac. This lack of understanding just creates more slack in what should have been a taut thriller!
Problems with the chafing dish at The Grotto
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