Phonies Beware!

Phonies Beware! (1956)

** (out of 4)

Here is yet another bland documentary short from the RKO-Pathe Streamliner series. This time out we're told what the Food and Drug Administration does before we get to the main story, which is an ad in a newspaper that promises to cure a wide range of diseases including diabetes. It turns out that a diabetic ordered the product and died shortly after using it so the FDA agent must follow the evidence to get a conviction. Like most films in the series, this one here is just way too dry and boring to really work even though the actual story is interesting and could have been made into a better film. While watching the short I couldn't help but think MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series could have done so much more with the material and the viewer would have been left with a much better film. One of the biggest problems in telling the story the way it's told here is that you have to put some of the blame on the man because he quit taking his insulin shots. As a diabetic I can tell you this would be an incredibly stupid thing to do and once you hear what in the "bottle" sold to the man who can see that it wasn't that which killed him but the fact that he quit taking his shots.

That's what the narrator tells us at the beginning of this short documentaries about the Food and Drug Administration, that begins with guys eating olives and candling bottles of rum. To the accompaniment of stirring music, an inspector drives in a car with a Federal seal on it to investigation the dire mountebank who sells Elixir-X, good for what ails you.

The FDA has long served a good and useful purpose, but has become onerous and obfuscatory in recent years. That makes my opinion of this movie a thumbs down .