Too much of everything

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The short-lived P.R.C. movie production company had a history of making junk in a really short period of time, and other than the classic film noir "Detour", most of their films are quickly forgettable. Like the slightly more well known Monogram, they produced a ton of Z grade westerns, some action films that took clichéd looks at the enemies of World War II, and a smaller amount of horror, dramas and comedies. This is a sort of exploitation drama about a young lady (Jean Parker) who faces the electric chair where her own boyfriend is the one who will pull the switch. Kindly psychiatrist Lionel Atwill rushes to prove her innocence of murder with the help of Parker's younger sister Marcia Mae Jones who truly believed her to be guilty. This is a very tense streamlined drama where nail biting must have replaced popcorn munching. The performances are all very good with Atwill being particularly outstanding. Nice to see him playing a good guy. Also nice to see Jones playing a not so annoying teen for a change! This is one of those times where I give two thumbs up to what was once considered the one movie studio where serious actors did not want to work.

By the extremely humble standard of PRC, this is not a bad movie at all. In fact, if we can accept the somewhat unbelievable manipulations of the plot (e.g. the doomed heroine's boyfriend just happens to the state's official executioner) and the implied but strong criticism of the U.S.A. justice system, it's quite a revelation. Here are just a few of many examples of the script's unstated but strongly implied resumé of slip-shod "justice": Short- sighted Byron Foulger's testimony is, to say the least, highly questionable, but the heroine's totally inept attorney doesn't call him to account at all, and the half asleep judge is so totally incompetent that he too notices nothing unusual in either the testimony itself or the way it is interpreted. Nor presumably does the judge intervene when the jury delivers an obviously half-baked verdict. Worst of all, we are then presented with a careless and totally irresponsible governor – presumably a Republican – who doesn't bother to stay at his desk on the night of the execution, let alone ring the prison or have his secretary stand by at the phone. Instead, he's gadding about at a roadside diner! Fortunately, Lionel Atwill manages to hold the plot together and, despite all, the film does emerge as a second feature winner. Jean Parker makes an attractively convincing heroine, while Douglas Fowley holds down an unusual role as the sympathetic executioner. Available on an excellent Grapevine DVD coupled with the far superior 20th Century Fox "B", Behind Green Lights.

Opening scene: Jean Parker walks into the death chamber to be electrocuted…and the action cuts to Lionel Atwill and a roomful of reporters apparently congratulating him on cracking the case. He tells them the tale of how he met Parker, how she came to be convicted of killing a blackmailer by whacking him over the head, and how Atwill himself grew convinced of her innocence and set about investigating.Atwill is quite smooth as Charles Finch, a well knows criminologist who says, "I keep insisting I'm a psychologist." Lionel Atwill didn't get to play the good guy every day, and he does well as the insightful and wise but also quick-thinking detective capable of decisive action. Jean Parker is sympathetic as the earnest young woman who has a family secret from which it's hard to hide. The role doesn't offer a lot of opportunities for showing her character's fun side, but Parker does a capable job of playing it smart and attractive….She is also the responsible one in a family that includes a wild younger sister (Marcia Mae Jones) who is obviously concealing information vital to solving the mystery.Douglas Fowley is the other lead, a young doctor ("I prefer to think of myself as a scientist") who has some bold ideas (he is developing a method to revive dead things) but is obliged to raise research money doing a job he hates down at the prison—he throws the switch when a convict is put in the electric chair. He's a rather gloomy fellow; I'm not sure what Parker is supposed to see in him, but of course they fall in love…which causes Fowley an unusual conflict between personal and professional obligations when Parker is sentenced to the chair. It all builds somewhat predictably but manages to entertain despite the lack of surprises. Fun to see Atwill in a central good guy role….In the early scene where Fowley tells him his mad-scientist-type idea, I was half expecting Atwill to say something like, "Yes, I've tried that in one or two of my other films"…. Alas, he played it straight.

An interesting whodunit that suffers mainly from flaws in motivational logic for the characters, as well as unbelievable legal procedures, but that is part of the sense of disbelief that has to be suspended for many B-movie crime dramas of the era.Lionel Atwill is the state executioner, who needs his job to finance his research which is ironically, brining the dead back to life. He gives a brief explanation of his process theory, though it isn't important to the story. He feels he has to keep his job though because of the importance of it to his work, particularly financing it, despite the fact that his fiancée finds the job abhorrent and refuses to marry him when she finds out what he does.In the opening scene you have seen her walking to the death chamber, with the story told in flashbacks by the detective played by Cy Kendall. Lionel Atwill's character you figure out early is in the unenviable position of being required to pull the switch on his girlfriend. As time is running out, Kendall tries to gather evidence to clear her.Since it is told in flashbacks, some things that are to happen you learn early on, but the film telegraphs too much that it doesn't intend you to know, at least not for sure. There is never even the slightest doubt about who is innocent or hiding something, and the movie would have benefited from a little more ambiguity in the beginning, which could have been easily accomplished. With a little work on the script, this could have been a much better movie.All in all not bad, and with a runtime of 56 minutes doesn't have time for you to grow weary waiting for the solution.One aspect that seems amusingly dated today though is the crime Mary's father was convicted of when she was a child: Pinball racketeering. Largely forgotten now, but there was a time when pinball machines were a dreaded, evil scourge that many cities tried to stamp out with bans. Her father was railroaded by an aggressive district attorney, and for the purposes of the movie, it provided a "criminal" father who actually wasn't too bad, and was perhaps unfairly persecuted.