It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Blistering performances.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This film noir thriller was made by the notoriously cheap PRC studio although they do manage a handful of decently-shot car chases to break up the otherwise low budget narrative. It's a private eye film with Richard Arlen doing his best impression of Humphrey Bogart as a sleuth whose encounter with an old flame sets him off on a journey involving murder, deception, and all kinds of crooked activities.The plots of these films almost write themselves and ACCOMPLICE is a rather undistinguished film for what it is. Veda Ann Borg's femme fatale is a bit wishy washy and the actress lacks the kind of magnetism and charisma to make her character truly work. Arlen is a bit of a damp squib too, although some of the supporting cast make for delightfully weaselly characters.Once two thirds of the running time is up the action shifts to the desert and becomes more action-oriented, in fact it resembles a western for the most part which is a far cry from the metropolitan setting of the early part of the movie. ACCOMPLICE is a cheap and rather forgettable slice of film noir action although aficionados of the genre might well get a kick out of it.

Richard Arlen proved he hadn't lost his looks or his ability to put over his style of easy going acting but he was given no help in this movie which started off in an urban setting, moved on to a mink farm!! then ended up in the West where Arlen, by this stage of his career, was more at home. It was typical P.R.C. fare which meant it was not that great!!Arlen played Simon Lash (a pulp detective created by Frank Gruber who also had a hand in the script), a suave private eye who is approached by an old girl friend who left him at the altar to marry a rich banker, Bonniwell. He is now missing with suspected amnesia and Lash is convinced that the only reason for Bonniwell's disappearance is the old story - embezzlement of funds but Joyce (Veda Ann Borg) is convincingly upset enough to make him think there is more to it!! In the meantime another banker goes missing and Lash then finds a secret love nest that Bonniwell has set up with Evelyn Price (Marjorie Manners), the only person in the movie who seems genuinely concerned at events. Unfortunately she isn't around for long and once again Lash is on the trail of a mystery assailant who leads him to New Mexico and a castle run as a hideout by a crooked marshall for criminal fugitives.By the time the surprise mastermind shows up viewers are too bored to care - let's say that Lash had a lucky escape when he was left at the church. Veda Ann Borg made dozens of these movies and she was a welcome addition as the hard boiled Joyce. Every detective needs a side kick and Tom Dugan was adequate in the role. Silent movie hero Herbert Rawlinson has the small role of Springer. Director Walter Colmes tried to inject some excitement into the endless chase scenes by shooting close-ups of the speeding cars - close enough so you can read the make of the car!!

There are a couple of B-noir movies--Shack Out on 101 comes to mind--that sometimes entertain with their low-budgetness. Sometimes, like in Detour, they absoltely shine.Accomplice has a good, writerly story in there somewhere. I gather from the credits it's from some serial novel about a private detective. But the writerly touches are so buried in the low budget and crummy acting that it's hard to find it. Still--it flashes through sometimes. An eccentric desert castle for the denouement. A detective who loves old books and Jesse James mythology. Some cool location shots in Lancaster. Chase scenes along Route 66. Some potentially interesting flirtation between old lovers and new lovers.But it never comes together as the movie races along (only 60 minutes!) and the actors try to find the camera. There's also a great blooper where the lead PI ends a scene forgetting his line: "Better take your sleeping pills, it's a long way to....(pause) uh...." CUT.Guess they missed that one in the editing room. Nonetheless, some lowbudget guilty fun, highlighting the thing line between bad/good and just bad/bad.

'Accomplice' is a low-budget noir caper film, starring Richard Arlen after his career was long past its peak. I always liked Arlen; during the peak years of his career (late silent era to mid-30s) he was almost the exact equivalent of the modern Harrison Ford: an action hero, in the classic adventurer mould, who still had credibility as a serious actor in thoughtful dramas. 'Accomplice', regrettably, was made (on a VERY low budget) after Arlen's energies had run out, and it's a poor example of his craft.Private detective Simon Lash (Arlen) is contacted by Joyce, an ex-girlfriend who jilted him at the altar. Joyce is played by Veda Ann Borg, who always looked trashy, and who gives a mechanical performance in this movie that makes me wonder if she's related to the Borg Collective (in Star Trek). Joyce's husband Jim has been suffering from bouts of amnesia, and now he's gone missing altogether. Jim was a bank executive, and Private Eyelash (I mean, private-eye Lash) is a cynical sleuth, so he naturally assumes that Jim's 'amnesia' was a pretext for embezzling bank funds. But then Lash investigates, and no funds are missing. Then, of course, he investigates a little more, and...'Accomplice' sets up an interesting premise, but the script gets murkier — and the characters' motivations more contrived — as it proceeds. Noir films usually take place in a world where everyone is corruptible, everyone is motivated solely by self-interest, and the very few people who don't conform to those rules are subsidiary characters who get exploited or bumped off very early in the proceedings. 'Accomplice', however, belongs to that dismal subgenre which I call 'goodie noir', in which everybody in the world is a crook or a scoundrel EXCEPT the hero, who is always motivated by purely virtuous instincts and decency. I find this sort of story utterly implausible. Down these mean streets a man must walk, yadda yadda.'Accomplice' is made even more painful because it's made on a wretchedly small budget. The film's director Walter Colmes (who?) shows an Ed Wood-like penchant for setting up his camera at the most ludicrous angle, over and over. We get too many car chases in this movie, and in each car chase we get lots and lots and lots of close-ups of spinning tyres. Ed Wood was an angora fetishist; is it possible that Walter Colmes was a rubber fetishist? The ending of 'Accomplice' is extremely contrived. Former silent-film star Francis Ford (John Ford's older brother) gives a welcome performance in a supporting role. I'll rate 'Accomplice' 3 points out of 10.