The Blonde Bandit

A nice little item from 1950, the movie tells the tale of a good girl who does some bad things who gets involved with a bad guy quite capable of doing good things. The plot is nicely developed for a Republic B, and the lead actors, Gerald Mohr and Dorothy Patrick, are surprisingly effective. Mohr is particularly good in the sort of Bogart role he could obviously handle quite well but was scarcely ever permitted to do. For once he is well cast.

The film has at times deeper emotional qualities than its makers perhaps realized at the time. For all the plot machinations one comes to care a good deal for the two major characters. As their story unfolds their romance is so credible that the movie seems to have gone from being a crime picture to a romance. Most crime films have some romantic interludes in them, but The Blonde Bandit is so carried away by them that it becomes, for a while, another kind of movie altogether. When it reverts, in the end, to its generic form, one is almost as heartbroken as the fictional characters over what has become of them.