Assigned to Danger

A gang steal a load of money and the insurance company send an insurance investigator to the boarding house which is run by the chief suspect's girlfriend to find out what is going on. Gene Raymond (Dan) carries out the visit to Noreen Nash (Bonnie). As it happens, this gang is extremely dumb and head for the most obvious place to hide. That's right, they go to the boarding house that is run by the chief suspect's girlfriend. This is obviously because the police would never think to go there! Surprisingly, they don't! It's up to the insurance investigator who is posing as a doctor to sort things out. Uh-oh, the gang leader Robert Bice (Frankie) is wounded and needs medical attention. Step forward Mr Raymond to operate. Will his cover be blown?

There is a story here but it drags and the film becomes boring. By the end, you are expecting a formulaic shoot-out with the involvement of Gene Evans (Joey) as the good-guy brother of Nash. Unfortunately, there are no surprises and the film is not fast-paced enough to keep the audience's attention.

Budd Boetticher directed 1948's Assigned to Danger.

Gene Raymond plays an insurance investigator hoping to get a line on an $80,000 payroll robbery. He traces the sister of one of the robbers to a resort she owns. While there, the crooks arrive, and one of them is seriously injured. Thinking Raymond is a doctor, they force him to help.

Gene Evans plays a mute man with a unibrow. He works on the property.

I've always found Gene Raymond a bland, serviceable leading man. As he matures, he moved out of those roles and became more interesting.

Though this is low-budget, Boetticher does a good job ramping up the tension in this dark film. The dialogue and atmosphere aren't much.

Assigned To Danger / Budd Boetticher (1948). Eagle-Lion Films. Eagle-Lion Films was a British company owned by financier J. Arthur Rank. In 1945, Poverty Row company PRC had a sleeper hit in "The Enchanted Forest" a fantasy film in color that, at 84 minutes, was a standard feature film, rather than the usual programmer of 55 to 75 minutes that PRC put out (run times short to allow a double feature). That was when the managers at PRC thought they could do better so decided to let themselves be absorbed into the U.K. Eagle-Lion, a little more upscale, and ditched the PRC brand. By 1948, however, Eagle-Lion was still producing the same kind of studio bound double feature films ("Assigned To Danger" is 66 minutes long) that PRC was known for. It's not a bad little film. All the actors a competent and take the proceedings seriously. After a botched robbery which got the leader seriously wounded, the hold-up men take refuge in a remote resort hotel in the mountains. Meanwhile, insurance investigator Dan Sullivan (Gene Raymond, "The Locket") gets wind of a gang connection at the resort and drives up there. He takes an immediate liking to the hotel's owner Bonnie (Noreen Nash) but she encourages him not to stay, saying she has sold the property and is closing up, but she rents him a room for one night. That is when the band on the run shows up. Due to a misunderstanding, the desperate robbers believe Dan to be a doctor. They demand that Dan fix up the wounded man but will kill him if the man dies. Also with Gene Evans (The Steel Helmet, The Bravados) in his second credited role. There is a whiff of The Petrified Forest about this picture as well as the same year's Key Largo.

This is a wonderful gem among gangster thrillers of the lesser kind: The story is two-dimensional, and all except the beginning takes place inside a secluded hotel without a telephone out in the wilderness somewhere. The moment Gene Raymond arrives there he is filled with misgivings, as nothing seems right: the hotel refuses to accept him, since it is being sold off, but later the hostess Noreen Nash changes her mind and lets him stay. Another couple is moving out of the hotel having had enough of its "Fawlty Towers" nature. A deaf-mute, Joey, is haunting the place as some sort of factotum, but he is helpful in scaring anyone off by his scary nature. In fact, he becomes the hero of the play. The plot thickens as the gangsters arrive, one of them seriously wounded, and the gangsters force Genie Raymond to fix him up, believing him to be a doctor, while he is just an insurance company investigator. The plot goes on thickening, while remaining quite logical and consistent all the way, the script is a masterpiece delivering delightful repartees all the time, and the acting is fair play all the way. This is a bleak thriller with great dramatic potential for anyone to enjoy thoroughly.

There's a payroll robbery, and the insuring firm sends investigator Gene Raymond looking for Noreen Nash in a remote resort; she was married to the supposed mastermind. She owns the resort, but is closing it down, preparing to sell it, but Raymond sweet-talks her into letting him stay for a couple of days, pretending to be a doctor looking for some rest. It turns out that her husband, Robert Bice, is there, badly wounded, and Raymond is dragooned into tending him; if Bice dies, he's told, so does Raymond.

It's a dark crime drama produced by Eagle-Lion as they dug their way out of their PRC roots. Happily, the director is Budd Boetticher, still credited as Oscar, and he puts some depth and variety into the characters. Miss Nash regrets her marriage, but figures she is now damaged goods, and western heavy Gene Evans is there as a mute, brutish handyman. It's a fast B movie with little pretensions, but plenty of foreboding and heat.