MURDER IS MY BEAT (1955) (B-minus) - Part of an Edgar Ulmer double feature (see "Ruthless" in Part 2), this peppy whodunit wrings manic energy from journeyman Paul Langton (TV's "Peyton Place") as a cop who has second thoughts about his role in the conviction of a woman for murder and who spends a crazed week trying to clear her name and make amends.
Langton stars as Det. Patrick, who seems to have an open-and-shut case when a businessman is found face-down in the fireplace, clubbed with a statuette, almost certainly by his young girlfriend, the blond bombshell Eden (Barbara Payton). After her conviction, he accompanies her on the train to prison when she suddenly exclaims that she saw the purportedly murdered ex standing on a train platform, alive and well. Has she been railroaded? Patrick will get slugged as he noses around, and of course, he'll fall for the dame.
Ulmer shakes up the narrative with flashbacks, and he employs a few misdirections, one of which involves Eden's nightclub co-worker Patsy (a simmering Tracy Roberts). The dialogue is set at full ham, and the cast chews the gristle with delight. It was, quaintly, a time when cops described female suspects by their girlish figures. The ending comes along too quickly and is awfully pat, but you should walk away entertained.
SPOTTED: Hank Patterson gets barely a glimpse as a medical examiner at the scene of the murder. He would go on to star as grumpy Fred Ziffel ("father" of Arnold the pig) in "Green Acres."
NAKED ALIBI (1954) (B+) - A boffo cast powers a cynical manhunt drama based on a hunch about a suspected cop killer. Sterling Hayden and the combustible Gloria Grahame light a flame under this slow burn that crescendos along the Mexican border (in a town creatively called Border City).
Hayden plays Joe Conroy, a chief of detectives who gets fired for blowing his top after three of his men are killed, and he suspects local baker Al Willis (Gene Barry) of carrying out the hits, but can't prove it. Conroy yields his badge and follows Willis to the border, where the married suspect shacks up with a local pub singer, Marianna (Grahame), the kind of tough-luck gal who gets turned on by a slap but who also has a generous heart, which comes in handy after Conroy lands in her lap after getting stabbed by thugs.
It's quite a tight knot tied by three screenwriters and journeyman director Jerry Hopper. Hayden (above right) is understated as the possibly delusional lug, and Grahame torches the screen with a mere arch of an eyebrow and a knowing pout. Barry -- who would go on to hit the TV hat trick with "Bat Masterson," "Burke's Law" and "The Name of the Game" -- works from the James Cagney "Come and get me, coppers" school of (over)acting. (An alternative title for the film is "Cry Copper," sans comma.) He is manic from the start, complaining of false accusations.
But the narrative evolves, and the characters' motivations morph once the film picks up after a slow half hour of set-up and heads to the border, where intrigue lurks in the shadows. Grahame -- endlessly appealing in "In a Lonely Place," "Crossfire" and "Odds Against Tomorrow" (and the subject of "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool") -- brings layers to Marianna, who turns both men on and sets both of them right. She will put herself in peril as the menace around her swells and this builds to a satisfying climax.
SPOTTED: The glowering detective captain in the first act of the film is played by Chuck Connors, from TV's "Rifleman." ... The police lieutenant offed in the first five minutes is played by familiar character actor Max Showalter, who was Ward Cleaver in the pilot for "Leave It to Beaver" and whose career culminated as Grandpa Fred in John Hughes' "Sixteen Candles."
STRANGER ON THE PROWL (1952) (C) - Even if you could understand the dialogue in this Italian production from an exiled Joseph Losey, the plot of this manhunt thriller might perplex and confound even the most patient viewer. An overwrought performance by Paul Muni as a drifter stranded in an Italian port town doesn't help.
This one is occasionally unintentionally funny. But mostly it is a melodramatic tale of The Man (Muni) as a stowaway who shows up broke and needs to raise money to pay off his smuggler -- and to eat. However, he is immediately targeted by residents as a vagrant, and when he accidentally kills someone out of desperation, he becomes a wanted man. In tow he has a willing local 8-year-old boy who empathizes with him and helps the Man pass as a father taking his son to the circus.
The film -- Losey's first after being drummed out of the U.S. during the red panic of the '50s -- makes a pretty cogent case for treating poor people with dignity. But the sketchy sound quality and incongruent performances -- including Joan Lorring as a sexually harassed young woman -- drag this into B-movie territory. Muni, 20 years from his career defining role in "Scarface," comes off as more grumpy than desperate.
SPOTTED: This is tough, considering it's an all-Italian cast. The police inspector is played by Arnoldo Foa, whose credits include such racy titles as "The King's Whore," "All the Moron's Men" and "Do You Mind if I Kiss Mommy?"
BRICK (2006) (B+) - The modern ringer in the group is the debut of writer-director Rian Johnson, who went on to bring you "Looper," the "Knives Out" trilogy and the penultimate "Star Wars" movie. This one hits differently than it did upon its refreshing splash 20 years ago.
The idea here -- setting a classic gumshoe noir at a modern high school -- felt fresh and clever at the time of the movie's release (I gave it an honorable mention in 2006), but now it comes off as more of a flimsy, cloying gimmick. Star Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the perfect brooding Sam Spade stand-in, spitting out glib one-liners in a gangland patois that would never exist in the head of even the brightest high school kid at the turn of the millennium. The dialogue comes at you rapid-fire and is so squirrelly and off-kilter that I had a lot of trouble understanding some of the key lines. (I surrendered to subtitles at some point.) That's not a way to keep a viewer immersed in your narrative.
The plot is also fairly dense, but unpacking it along with Gordon-Levitt's persistent Brandon is part of the fun here. Brandon traipses through a sunny California suburb as he investigates the death of an ex-girlfriend, Emily (Emilie de Ravin), whose frantic phone call drops clues about a missing brick of heroin not long before he discovers her body in a drainage ditch. He and his pal The Brain (Matt O'Leary) game this out, frequently deploying phone-booth communications, and Brandon slowly sinks into the muck of the local drug trade and its creeps. He's got a femme fatale, the prissy Laura (Nora Zehetner) ostensibly on his side (at least she's handy for car rides so he doesn't have to borrow his mom's vehicle).
Brandon gets knocked around a lot -- but of course he has superhero strength somehow and manages to plod on despite a hacking cough that suggests some internal bleeding. In a nod more to "Charlie Brown" cartoons than to "Chinatown," police are only hinted at -- we occasionally hear sirens but they are never seen. This is a sealed world of teens role-playing as adults. It's amusing for a while, and it wraps up well, but your mileage may vary depending on your age group.
SPOTTED: Richard Roundtree, the original "Shaft," plays the vice principal who nags Brandon like a police captain would a rogue detective.
BONUS TRACK
An edited version of Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" serves as the outro for "Brick":
The trailer for "Naked Alibi," with a snippet of Gloria Grahame singing Cole Porter's "Ace in the Hole":
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