Missing Girls

With a title like "Missing Girls" and the way the film was promoted, I thought for sure that this was going to be an exploitation film about prostitution. And, the film sure looked like this in the first few minutes, as an young lady runs from her abusive father to the big city. But then, abruptly, the entire movie changes--as if partway into the film they decided on making a different picture. This is pretty odd.

The rest of the film concerns a Senator's campaign to clean up the city- -a campaign that results in his murder by the mob. A reporter (Roger Pryor) and two women end up being the keys to tracking down these thugs and their Ma Barker-inspired mother.

This is a decent film, though as I stated above, it seemed to lack some direction. It's a cheap B-movie from tiny Chesterfield Pictures but is more watchable than most pictures I've seen from this poverty row studio. Especially good was the final, and very violent, scene where the gang is mowed down by federal agents. Worth seeing if you like cheap B-pictures, otherwise this is hardly a must-see film.

Missing Girls starts out as a tale about runaway females when Ann Doran takes off from her home and away from a domineering father and gets stranded in another town. Fortunately she meets Muriel Evans son of a Senator played by Wallis Clark and gets a job as a maid in his house.

Clark has a bill going to legalize gambling in his state which would put the local gambling czar Sidney Blackmer out of business. But Noel Madison and sidekick Dewey Robinson have another score to settle with Blackmer. They shoot Clark and make it look like Blackmer did the deed. And when Doran and Evans follow, they're taken prisoner and hid out at Vera Lewis's hideout for the fugitive.

Getting the lowdown on all of this is breezy reporter Roger Pryor and of course all is put right in the end.

Some really poor writing characterizes this. It was like I was seeing bits of several pictures with the same cast as the plot sputtered in several directions. A few familiar players are in this cast and essentially go through the motions.

I will say Vera Lewis was the best bandit mother this side of Margaret Wycherly in White Heat. But it ain't enough.

Reporter Roger Pryor goes to jail for refusing to reveal his sources and gets along pretty well with the cons. Meanwhile, Senator Wallis Clark his ally and father of of his girlfriend, Muriel Evans, is shot. Miss Evans and the maid, Ann Doran, go after the shooters and disappear.

Mr. Pryor goes a very strong performance in this Poverty Row drama. A script that is pretty good helps, as does a wealth of good actors. Miss Doran's role is built up at the beginning with a subplot about her running away from home; that goes nowhere. I personally found it amusing to watch, because both ladies served as Charley Chase's leading ladies for two stretches of the great short-form comic's series: Miss Evan in 1933, and Miss Doran in his Columbia shorts from 1938-1940.

Ann Doran was one of those actresses you've seen in hundreds of appearances, giving good performances, in over 200 features, hundreds of television episodes and dozens of short subjects. Her feature career ran from 1922, when she played a page in the Fairbanks ROBIN HOOD, through 1986, when she appeared in the Goldie Hawn vehicle, WILDCATS. She gave performances for King Vidor, Nicholas Ray, Alfred Hitchcock.... She died in 2000, aged 89.

The first several minutes where Ann leaves her abusive father's family for the city looks promising. But once she gets a job there, the vulnerable girl more or less drops out of central focus, and the movie goes with it. What we get instead is a mish-mash of characters having to do with gambling, newspapers, and murder. It's like the three writers each had his own subplots without much blending. On a positive note, catch how legalizing gambling with its tax revenues foreshadows an issue of our own time. Good to see a young Ann Doran, who later became quite a formidable actress as her credits demonstrate, along with old crone Vera Lewis who's enough to scare Superman. All in all, however, it's a flick that can't seem to make up its mind. Too bad.