It May Happen to You

The "Crime Does Not Pay" series from MGM was a well-made and interesting series of short films illustrating real life crimes. And, as the title says, the criminals ultimately get theirs. Here in "It May Happen to You", once again the production is top-notch. The film is about truck hijackings. At first, the crimes are not that serious but later the crimes involve murder and manslaughter. This is because this time they steal a truckload of meat. Being criminals, they don't exactly care how they handle the meat and it soon spoils. To handle the stink, they soak the meat in chemicals. But these chemicals do nothing to eliminate spoilage and soon people get very sick and even die due to this contaminated meat.

J. Carrol Naish stars in this one as the boss of the baddies. As usual, he's excellent. But what I really liked were how realistic and non-glamorous the police work was as well as how gritty the dialog was late in the film. A few examples would include: a cop exclaiming 'he asked for it' after blasting one of the gang as well as another cop saying 'go on--make a break--save the state a lot of money on a trial' as he takes aim at Naish's head! The only negative, and it's a tiny one, is the number of bullets fired at very close range in an early scene--yet no one is even hurt! Still, a tough and well made short.