Lady in the Death House

Okay B noirish film starring Lionel Atwill and Jean Parker.

Told primarily in flashbacks as she heads for the chair, Jean Parker is given a death sentence after being found guilty of murdering her blackmailer - supposedly in front of witnesses. She claims she is innocent, and indeed, the people who claim to have seen her only saw a silhouette behind a shade.

A criminologist (Lionel Atwill) attempts to find out the truth before it's too late. One other aspect - her boyfriend is the one who is supposed to pull the switch.

Nothing special but absorbing all the same.

One tip-off that this is basic poverty row is that when Lionel Atwill messes up his lines, there are no retakes.

This tautly constructed little movie should serve as a model for those modern film authors who cannot unfold the simplest story line in less than two hours.

The movie opens with Mary Kirk being led from her cell to walk to the death chamber. She leaves a letter for Charles Finch, a psychologist and criminologist. In it she has outlined the events which led to her situation. We then see Finch reading the letter to a small group of reporters, supplementing it with an account of his own involvement in the affair. His first person narrative alternates with flashback depiction of the events. Half way into the movie he has reached the point at which Mary was convicted and sentenced to death. The next 20 minutes cover his subsequent efforts to find the evidence which will clear her. He still has not succeeded by the time we have caught up to the opening of the movie and see Mary finish her walk to the electric chair. The remaining few minutes are a desperate race against the clock played more or less in real time.

The movie does not waste an inch of film. Every scene conveys information and advances the action, with smooth and skillful links. Particularly effective is the way in which the character of Mary's younger sister, Suzy, is handled. Her appearances are almost always incidental to the main action, but as the movie progresses it becomes clear that she is somehow central to the solution.

The nature of the plot means that the title character plays a passive rather than an active role. Jean Parker is persuasive in the part, wisely forgoing the opportunities for melodramatics. Marcia Mae Jones' porcelain-doll prettiness frequently led to her being cast as a vain and foolish little madam, and her role here as Suzy suits her talents. Lionel Atwill makes a convincing sleuth, neatly conveying a blend of scientific detachment, humanitarian concern, and an occasional twinkle of humour.

Anybody who thinks that "first class B movie" is an oxymoron should study this film and learn better.

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.

Jean Parker is blackmailed because of a secret from her past. But when the blackmailer ends up dead on the floor, and some people saw this unfold through the window, Parker is arrested and ends up on death row. Shortly before all this happened, she met scientist researcher Douglas Fowley and criminologist Lionel Atwill, and Fowley fell in love with her. He also moonlights as the state executioner however. Atwill doesn't believe Parker is guilty, and thinks Parker's sister Marcia Mae Jones, whom he caught lying on the night of the murder, holds the key to finding the real killer.

The movie is told in flashback by Atwill as he recounts the story to some of his colleagues, using a letter Parker wrote shortly before walking to the chair. The actors do a decent job, altho Fowley is surprisingly stiff here.

Director Steve Sekely ('Hollow Triumph') and DoP Gus Peterson (ine one of his last movies, his credits go back to 1914!) knew how to quickly and effectively make movies, and it shows. It is told & shot in the typical fashion employed by the low-budget studios, PRC in this case, where pace and economics mattered more than logic (that is: if you have time to think about a plot hole while watching a movie, the movie needs more trimming). It doesn't have a lot of noir visuals, and the movie works better as a mystery, but it's a decent effort that does tick a few boxes.

It's not a movie that really demands multiple viewings, but as a quick time-waster, it holds up decently well. 6/10

Poverty row cheapie starring Lionel Atwill as a criminologist who tries to stop an innocent girl from being executed in the electric chair. Told through flashback, the story begins with Atwill befriending Doug Fowley's character, a scientist who's going to do big things someday but until then he has to make ends meet as the executioner at the state pen! He wants to marry Jean Parker but she refuses, having pretty strong opinions on capital punishment on account of her dearly departed dad being a criminal. Things get even more melodramatic when a guy who was blackmailing Jean winds up murdered and she's tried and convicted for the crime. If you guess that Fowley's job as executioner figures back into things, congratulations. On top of all this, Jean's sister is acting shady and doesn't seem all that broken up about Jean being fried extra crispy. Leave it to Lionel Atwill to solve everything, albeit taking his sweet time to do so. It's not a bad little B movie. Very cheap as you would expect from something made by PRC. But it's perfectly watchable and even curiously entertaining at points. Bonus points for excessive "wipes." A sure sign of a top-notch production.