Testemunha Oculta

Assistant District Attorney Onslow Stevens is dating Dorothy Tree, when he catches a murder case and convicts Paul Fix, even though there's something mysterious going on. Miss Tree hints she knows something, but refuses to tell. Then she vanishes and winds up in prison, where she hopes to track down the real murderer.

It's a decent little story, with but as often happens with Poverty Row mysteries, there's too much idiot plotting going on: bad police work, people keeping mum with possible exculpatory evidence. Still, the competent direction of Phil Rosen and an able cast that includes Jack La Rue, Mary Doran, Walter Byron, Oscar Apfel, and Selmer Jackson keep things bubbling along through the end.

This film is missing something. It's a sense of order. When it's all over, the whole thing is very confusing. There are so many plot holes and convenient events that it just doesn't work. What was that crime exactly and why did the guy get nailed so badly? And how could that girl be thinking so fast as to keep the gun? And why did she end up in a prison with rooms that looked like the YMCA with weapons all around? And why wouldn't she tell? It's so full of things that just wouldn't happen if a man's life was at stake. Then there are the criminals who set things up and the double cross. It's a veritable mess of events that just don't wash, even in the world of the low budget crime movie. The actors also look like they are a bit bored and have nothing to work with.

Phil Rosen directed many films of this type - - "B" crime themed melodramas - - and always with efficiency, as in the case here, a low budget Invincible Pictures Corporation production that, although replete with expected shortcomings, possesses those elements that result from the presence of stage experienced players acquainted with developing largely hackneyed scenes and dialogue into sequences that will provide entertainment for themselves as well as to an audience. Onslow Stevens, frequently cast as a heavy, here performs as Jeffrey Powell, New York City Deputy District Attorney who just happens to be at the scene of a nightclub homicide, following which he is tasked with prosecution of the accused, Harry West (Paul Fix), who distressingly is somewhat mysteriously connected with Jeffrey's romantic target Marion Courtney (Dorothy Tree), the latter not being convinced of West's guilt and ostensibly having such a profound interest in the case that she decides to personally involve herself in an attempt to find whomever might be the actual killer. In some unknown fashion, Marion creates for herself a lengthy criminal history, becomes arrested for an unknown crime, subsequently convicted and assigned to the state prison wherein, naturally, resides "Duchess" (Mary Doran), moll of the man, Arny Norman (Walter Byron), suspected by Marion as being the true murderer, escapes with the other woman, following which the pair flees to the residence of Norman who is in hiding from yet other evildoers due to gambling debts, and so forth, with logic not expected to befog a nonsensical plot that careers toward a climax that mixes puerile violence with farce. The film's title refers to a covered and enclosed walkway bridging from a courthouse directly into a prison, only vaguely evocative of the Venetian original. Tree works hard at making something of her role and the film includes several episodes that feature rather witty dialogue, but this is an unmistakable product of skimpy resources benefiting largely from the editing of Ernest Nims (his first English language assignment) that keeps the action moving briskly, leaving little opportunity for a viewer to focus upon the plot holes and glaring lack of sense.