Obviously no major Hollywood studio was going to release such a gritty movie in 1949. The subject matter is babies born out of wedlock, then sold off by a nefarious baby broker.
Raymond Burr as one of the henchmen carries his weight, so to speak. So does Marjorie Rambeau as the baby broker. Will Kuluva nearly steals the movie as the mobster in charge of ''protecting" Rambeau's racket.
That brings us to the good guys, in reverse order of billing:
Jeff Chandler as the straight-arrow but barely competent inspector in the DA's office. Maybe the writers intended Chandler to most or less function as O'Keefe's setup man, but the character is a cardboard cutout.
Gale Storm - apparently known as a 1950s TV comedienne - does very well as the damsel in distress. Was she pregnant during sh00ting or did she have the world's ugliest body? I'm pretty sure her overcoat stays buttoned up the entire movie.
And lastly we have headliner Dennis O'Keefe as the nosy newspaper reporter who - as we've seen in hundreds of movies - does more investigative work than the coppers. That's fine, as move tropes go. But the screenwriters also infused his dialogue with snappy one-liners. One or two in a movie can be fine. But it becomes a little much after a while in this movie. He's got more zingers than Rodney Dangerfield, and it sands the edges off a gritty story. It starts to feel like an SCTV spoof starring Dave Thomas as the reporter and Joe Flaherty as the cop. Andrea Martin would have played the dame.
The end result is a movie with extremly adult subject matter, a torture scene and an anti-climactice fight. And a very unsatisfying ending.
As if often the case, I enjoyed Eddie Muller's intro and outro to the movie on TCM's Noir Alley more than I did the actual movie.
Raymond Burr as one of the henchmen carries his weight, so to speak. So does Marjorie Rambeau as the baby broker. Will Kuluva nearly steals the movie as the mobster in charge of ''protecting" Rambeau's racket.
That brings us to the good guys, in reverse order of billing:
Jeff Chandler as the straight-arrow but barely competent inspector in the DA's office. Maybe the writers intended Chandler to most or less function as O'Keefe's setup man, but the character is a cardboard cutout.
Gale Storm - apparently known as a 1950s TV comedienne - does very well as the damsel in distress. Was she pregnant during sh00ting or did she have the world's ugliest body? I'm pretty sure her overcoat stays buttoned up the entire movie.
And lastly we have headliner Dennis O'Keefe as the nosy newspaper reporter who - as we've seen in hundreds of movies - does more investigative work than the coppers. That's fine, as move tropes go. But the screenwriters also infused his dialogue with snappy one-liners. One or two in a movie can be fine. But it becomes a little much after a while in this movie. He's got more zingers than Rodney Dangerfield, and it sands the edges off a gritty story. It starts to feel like an SCTV spoof starring Dave Thomas as the reporter and Joe Flaherty as the cop. Andrea Martin would have played the dame.
The end result is a movie with extremly adult subject matter, a torture scene and an anti-climactice fight. And a very unsatisfying ending.
As if often the case, I enjoyed Eddie Muller's intro and outro to the movie on TCM's Noir Alley more than I did the actual movie.