The Runaround

This is a very amusing B picture, involving competing detectives (Rod Cameron and Broderick Crawford) on the same case and a boy-meets-girl and they-spat-because-they-love-each-other story. Ella Raines is the gal, who was the Hollywood actress with the most striking 'bedroom eyes' in the business. (Either that or she was part cat, take your pick.) Raines is witty and amusing, and manages a fine droll delivery of such lines as: 'Don't they have paved roads in Indiana?' (That question has never been answered, even today, apart from the ring road round Indianapolis, which is the world's most confusing.) Rod Cameron, twice her size, with shoulders wider than King Kong, plays the lead male. For a hero, he gets pushed around rather a lot in the many fist-fights, but that is because he has to appear vulnerable so that Ella can love the big gorilla and look after him. She is meant to be the spoilt rich daughter of a magnate who has run off to elope with some no-good on a freighter to Mexico. Rod is meant to bring her home and collect fifteen grand. But Broderick Crawford has other ideas. It is all really good fun. There are some amusing lines. Rod says to Ella: 'I only put my arms around you and held you to see if you were still breathing.' Rod puts his head through the canvas roof of an old Ford jalopy in the middle of a rainstorm. It's all pure entertainment, nothing serious. Of course, it's corny. But then some viewers are corny, so that's OK then. I can't explain the title of the film without giving too much away.