Convicts at Large

Ralph Forbes is an architect, toiling away as a draftsman while working on his plans for a residential development. He's listening to club singer Paula Stone on the radio. He's sweet on her, though they've never met. When her song is interrupted to inform the public that gangster Charles Brokaw has escaped prison, he leaves his home in annoyance and goes to the club where Miss Stone sings. There, through a mishap, he winds up changing clothes with Brokaw and is mistaken for him by some gangsters who want Brokaw to lead them to where he's hidden the jewels from his last job; of course they drag Miss Stone along.

Forbes offers a decent performance for once, Brokaw is good, and Miss Stone sings and does a lively tap dance as part of her act, but the movie is a barebones Poverty Row B that barely tops 57 minutes. it looks like it's had the heart cut out of it, and Marcel Le Picard's gracefully moving camerawork wouldn't save it.

It's the last screen credit of William Selig, who's listed as the presenter. He went broke about this time; his zoo, intended as a major theme park, was a drain on the little money he had left. He and several other pioneer film company heads would be given an honorary Oscar in 1947, and Selig would die the following year, at the age of 84.

I thought this was a particularly good example of the low budget , feel good , depression type second feature. Need to take a lot of things for granted but before television and radio already had the imaginations working much better than we do now. If the movie had been restored and not as noisy or blocky (with all my digital helpers engaged) it would have been better. What could be better than the Happy Home concept? In a time where half the work force had been out of work and dispossession was a matter of course in many areas. There was drama, comedy, mystery, money falling out of the sky and into the laps of the needy, now, how much else can be packed into a short trip to the movie house? Unsuspecting guy having a load of goodies fall into his grasp. Meet a good looking woman looking for a change too. Never know what to expect in this one . Just as i had given it up as predictable old saws , they threw a curve and made it a bit more complex and interesting.

"Convicts at Large" is a low-budget B-movie with little-known actors and a short running-time of only 57--typical of a B. It begins with a prison escape and two hardened mobsters break out of the jug. Between this incident and serious action in the film is about 20 minutes of...well...not a lot of anything. You get some singing and dialog--but not a lot of action or plot development. Then, around 22 minutes into the film a guy is grabbed by criminals, as they think he's one of the escaped men. Why do they want this guy? Because this prisoner knows about a large stash of money--and they want it. However, he cannot convince him he's not the wanted man, so he eventually lies in order to keep them from killing him. What's next? See the film and find out for yourself.

Overall, this isn't so much a bad film as a rather dull film. The acting is fine and the story idea isn't bad, but he lack of energy to the film as well as no musical score work together to make a very, very somber film--one that really could have used more excitement. Still, for what it is, it isn't bad--more a minor time-passer than anything else.