User reviews

Great B-movie film noir, played as if his life depended on it (and it does) by Edmond O'Brien as a small-town notary who pays a big price for signing the wrong document at the wrong time, turning what should have been a pleasure trip to the west coast into a murderous affair altogether.

It starts with a bang, O'Brien staggering into the local homicide unit to tell the cops that there's been a murder - his, before launching into the massive flash-back which takes up pretty much the rest of the movie. The action from there on is hectic and as convoluted as all the best noirs are as O'Brien, infected by a deadly poison, races against the clock to track down his own killer and the reason behind it.

The film makes fine use of actual San Francisco and Los Angeles locations as well as authentically depicting the hot and steamy atmosphere at a Frisco jazz club. O'Brien is great as the doomed Bigelow, racing, often literally, against the clock, stopping only to palm off his adoring secretary girl-friend, Pamela Britten, who of course doesn't find out what's wrong with him until too late.

The pacing is almost non-stop once it gathers momentum, unfortunately when it does, some of the scene-writing gets over-ripe and correspondingly over-acted as O'Brien and his girl pour out their hearts somewhat unnecessarily. The film ends bravely though with a downbeat conclusion, delivering what the title says it must and at least tying up all the loose ends by that time.

**SPOILERS** Staggering into a L.A police station barely alive Frank Bigelow, Edmound O'Brien, has a story to tell about a murder that he witnessed, his own! It all happened two days ago when Bigelow was straying in San Francisco on vacation from his job as a tax accountant during Market Week. At the Fisherman Club Bigelow got a bit juiced up and during drinks he was slipped a dose of luminous toxin in his glass. It's that toxin that's now on the verge of killing him. The reason that he was poisoned had to do with him notarizing a bill of sale for a shipment of iridium that was stolen and could put the person who shipped it behind bars for at least five years!

It took a while for Bigelow to realize that he had a fatal dose of luminous toxin in his system and by the time he did it was too late to save his life. But it wasn't too late for Bigelow to track down and find the person or persons who had him poisoned. And it's during the rest of the movie, in flashback, that's exactly what he did! And did it with an unrelenting fury as if his life depended on it!

In what is undoubtedly Edmound O'Brien's best role as Frank "Biggie" Bigeow the film "D.O.A" has him move heaven and earth to find the person who eventually murdered him. From San Francisco to Los Angeles as well as parts in between Bigelow finally track him down to the Philips Inport-Export office at the Bradbury Building in downtown L.A. It in fact was Philips who was murdered, by being thrown to his death, because of the illegal iridium shipment that he later realized he was tricked into handling. With Philips dead the only person who could connect both his murderer and the person whom he shipped the iridium for is Frank Bigelow who handled, by notarizing the bill of sale, the shipment!

Non stop action thriller as a dying, or murdered, man turns L.A upside down in trying to find his killer and exact punishment on him before he himself expires! Bigelow also gets involved with L.A mobster Majak, Luther Adler, whom the illegal iridium was delivered for. In knowing about Majak's involvement in it had Bigelow targeted by him and his sadistic and unstable hit man Chester, Naville Brand, for immediate termination. That's if the luminous toxin doesn't kill him first!

Even though the movie is a scant 83 minutes long it packs enough action to fill some half dozen films of it's type: Film Noir Thrillers. Frank Bigelow is a man who knows that he hasn't long to live and therefore throws caution to the wind in trying to find his killer before the curtain comes down on him. It was in fact that almost suicidal determination on Bigelow's part that in the end brought him results!

This is probably Rudolph Maté's peak.When a B-movie reaches such heights,it should be called nothing but classic.The movie starts slowly,after a brilliant opening,then picks up speed and ends up leaving the spectator panting for breath.Like every film noir -why do they use a French expression for a typically American genre?-,it's very hard to catch up with the very complicated plot,although the cause for the fighting is laughable(a bill of sale).There are a lot of characters,male and female,but the scenarists manage to preserve cohesion.This film noir recalls the Greek tragedy,because we learn in the very first scene that the hero has been irremediably poisoned . Some scenes are particularly brilliant:the killer sadistically smiling,as he tells the hero he's going to kill him slowly,very slowly(the irony lies in the fact that he does not know his prisoner is really slowly dying);the short-lived reunion with his girlfriend;the funeral urn.The last line is the very title of the film.

There have been very harsh words about the remake("color me dead"(1988)),featuring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan.Probably unfair.It's no longer a film noir,but rather a whodunit,the plot -only the initial situation is the same- multiplies the wrong tracks .Quaid is a college professor and Ryan a student.So do not try to compare it with its highly superior predecessor,and you'll be able to enjoy it .

I first this on TV as a kid and have probably seen it a dozen times since then. Ask anyone to name a film noir movie or two and D.O.A is likely to mentioned simply because it has had a long TV life and so many generations of people have seen this. there is a reason why this is one of the most shown film noir flicks too, not because it is the best of the genre but because it is a good film with an instant hook to grab your interest and a great ride all the way through. Edmund o'Brien is great as the poisoned Frank Bigelow in search of his those responsible for his doomed plight and why they did it. look for fine performances by Neville Brand and Beverly Garland. Film music giant Dimitri Tiomkin provides the score. Two great cinematographers collaborate on D.O.A in Rudolf Maté and Ernest Laszlo. Maté who had done the cinematography for such films as Come and Get it, Foreign Correspondent, That Hamilton Woman, Gilda, and Sahara among many others takes the helm as director for this film and enlists Laszlo as cinematographer. Laszlo had a 50 year career in cinematography beginning in the 20's through the 70's including such films as Inherit the Wind, Kiss Me Deadly, Judgment at Nurenberg, Stalag 17, Baby the Rain Must Fall, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Airport. Logan's run and many many more. Good film editing here as well. I would give this an 8.5 out of 10 and recommend it.

The Plot: Small-town accountant Frank Bigelow goes to San Francisco for a week's fun prior to settling down with fiancée Paula.

After a night on the town, he wakes up with more than just a hangover; doctors tell him he's been given a "luminous toxin" with no antidote and has, at most, a week to live! Not knowing who did it or why, Bigelow embarks on a frantic odyssey to find his own murderer.

They don't make film noir like this no more. And we are lesser for it.

From the very first frame this movie will capture your attention. My only complaint is that the print I saw on DVD was atrocious. The sound was fluttering and low.

Still, the specialness of this movie was apparent through the haze.

It's really a gem. Someone should restore it.

The excellent Edmond O'Brien stars in this nifty story as Frank Bigelow, a small town tax accountant who goes on vacation in San Francisco. During a night of partying, he is stealthily administered a slow acting luminous toxin, which will kill him at any time during the next two weeks - possibly within the next 24 hours. Once he finds out, the panicked Frank becomes coldly determined to find out who could possibly want him dead. After all, who is he? A small time accountant. Soon he will be encountering an assortment of suspect individuals, and running for his life.

"D.O.A." benefits from a snappy (and not too hard to follow) screenplay by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene, not to mention a real grabber of an opening. Frank goes to the police station, where the following exchange occurs: "I want to report a murder." "Who was murdered?" "I was." From then on, you know you're going to have a fun time with this briskly directed (by Rudolph Mate) and paced film. Its action scenes and atmosphere are top notch, and there's an undeniable tension building throughout the scenario. Once Frank learns that he has been poisoned, that's when the story really kicks into gear.

O'Brien is completely believable as an average guy turned tragic hero. Pamela Britton is appealing as the co-worker who loves him, and the rest of the cast is equally fine. Particularly noteworthy are the charismatic Luther Adler as a smooth criminal named Majak, and the young Neville Brand - in one of his first films - as a trigger happy, psychotic, ultra creepy muscle man. Brands' character Chester is so eager to end Franks' life even earlier that it's scary. The ladies are lovely: Ms. Britton, Beverly Garland, Lynn Baggett, Laurette Luez.

This is a real corker, one worth watching for any lover of classic cinema. It's just too bad that it ended up in the public domain, where the many bargain basement DVD releases don't do it any favours.

Remade in the 1960s (as "Color Me Dead") and the 1980s.

Eight out of 10.

Frank Bigelow is in San Francisco for a break away from his fiancée, after a night on the town he wakes up and feels a bit under the weather, after consulting a doctor he is told he has been poisoned by a luminous toxin and only has a few days to live. This sets Frank off on a furious journey to find out who is responsible, and why?

Thus is the story of this cracking mystery thriller, Edmond O'Brien is Bigelow and layers it perfectly, from Frank's calm soaking in of the events to the frantic slam bangery as he draws closer to his goals, it's a great show. The pace is perfect from director Rudolph Maté as he eases us gently thru the first third, and then ups the pace to keep us alive to the fraught nature of Bigelow's plight. Genuine menace drops into the picture in the form of Neville Brand's hit-man Chester, whilst Pamela Briton as Paula Gibson is a solid female presence in amongst the grimy feel of the story.

Hugely enjoyable. 8/10

A man (beautifully played by Edmond O'Brien) finds out he's been given a slow acting poison and has only a few days to live. He has to find out who did it...and why.

VERY quick (83 minutes) but great noir thriller. It's beautifully directed (nice use of outdoor locations) and has many twists and turns. O'Brien was a great character actor and he's given a rare lead role here. He's just great as a man who knows he's dying but doesn't know why. The rest of the acting is all pretty good. It's not a perfect movie. There's some terrible love scenes between him and his girlfriend and it gets TOO complicated. There are so many characters and incidents going at such a quick pace it sometimes gets confusing. I don't think the ultimate resolution makes much sense either. Still I loved it while watching it and I recommend it.

It was not uncommon for films noir to begin with narration by a dead or dying man; think of William Holden's voice over narration as we see him floating dead in a swimming pool at the start of "Sunset Boulevard," or Fred MacMurray's confession while nursing a bullet wound in "Double Indemnity." But "D.O.A" is the only noir I've seen about a dying man solving the mystery of his own murder.

That dying man is played by Edmond O'Brien in a marvelously sweaty performance. His character takes a break from the small legal services business he runs to spend a couple of days in San Francisco, enjoying some extra-curricular female activity out of sight of the girlfriend back home who's pressuring him to marry her. While in that most noirish of noir cities, he's poisoned one night in a jazz club, collateral damage in a tangled criminal plot that finds the plot's mastermind doing away with anyone who could serve as a witness. I spent some time trying to unravel the plot itself, but quickly gave up. As with most movies like this, the specifics don't much matter. All you need to know is that some really bad guys are up to no good, and O'Brien's character is caught up in their misdeeds through a dumb twist of fate -- he notarized some bills of sale that could link the criminal to his activities. You might think that the film would be about O'Brien racing the clock to find his killer, discovering in the last minutes that there's an antidote that can save him and give us a happy ending. But you'd be wrong. This is a dark, cynical noir -- O'Brien is dead from the moment he ingests the poison, and his actions for the rest of the movie are those of a drowning man frantically trying to save himself because he doesn't know what else to do with his final moments on Earth.

"D.O.A." looks like it was made for about five bucks, but it nevertheless managed to line up some formidable talent behind the screen. The director was five time Oscar nominated cinematographer Rudolph Mate, while the actual cinematography was provided by Ernest Laszlo, who would go on years later to win an Oscar himself. Dimitri Tiomkin provided the musical score, and while the music has been criticized for being at odds with the film's tone, I thought its at times jaunty incongruity added to the off-kilter mood of the film.

Grade: A-

Edmond O'Brien, who later would win awards for his performances in "The Barefoot Contessa" and "Seven days in May" gave an outstanding performance as a man who was poisoned and spent his remaining time trying to find out who did it and why. Turns out it was just one of those unfortunate deals of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he is dead anyway.

Pamela Britton, who would find later acclaim as Blondie and a regular on "My Favorite Martin" gave a passionate performance as his ditsy girlfriend.

This was classic film noir and the score was terrific. It really added to the suspense of the film. It should also be noted that the depiction of jazz musicians was a bit racist. The camera angle made them all look as if they were on drugs. Maybe that was common then. It bears more investigation.

It is always good to go back to the beginning to see how a film was first handles. Now, I will take another look at the 1988 version with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. I have seen it, but need to refresh my memory. Last years "Crank" with Jason Statham is a modern version of this film.

This is the quintessential "film noir". Found it in the UK recently on a 4 film DVD set also including Man With The GOlden Arm, Suddenly and The Stranger. The idea for this film is BRILLIANT. Just put yourself in the protagonists shoes for a few minutes. It's just been confirmed to you that you have ingested poison and that you will die before the week's out. How do you react ? When he learns of the fate that awaits him, our hero runs out into the streets of San Francisco and the whole of this passage is brilliantly filmed. There is a sense of deep frustration, but also that "now, nothing matters any more ..." After this our hero is galvanized into action and is determined to find out who poisoned him and why, even if it is too late for him and that life will shortly leave his body whether he likes it or not. He embarks upon his quest with such enthusiasm, that the spectator forgets that he is going to die. As to the plot itself, it remains somewhat confusing for my small brain, there are some red herrings and the main thing I understood that our hero was in the know about an illegal sale of metal. Why he should die for it heaven knows, but there it is. The scene in the night club with the jazz band just about blows your brains out and I especially liked the drum solo. Since seeing Time after Time and Pacific Heights, I have always found that San Franciso appears sinister in films and DOA is no exception. Picture and sound quality are below par but this does not detract from the general interest of the film. I am very happy to possess this on DVD.

The flashback in film noir was much more than a gimmick. It was part and parcel of the cycle's pessimistic – fatalistic – spirit. By opening with their endings, only then going back to fill in the story, many of these movies (Double Indemnity, The Killers, Sunset Blvd.) defiantly locked in their downbeat denouements and so froze out any hope of happier resolutions to their narratives. When protagonist Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) staggers into Los Angeles' City Hall to report a murder – his own – Rudolph Maté's D.O.A. joins this dour and Calvinist group. In many ways an emblematic noir (and an enjoyable one), it's clunky and contrived, with little mystique lingering once the credits roll.

Bigelow runs a small-town insurance business; his girl (Pamela Britton) works for him but pointedly aspires to be more than his secretary. But he's not ready to commit, and tells her that he's leaving for a week in San Francisco, by himself. Once he gets there, it's obvious that a spree of tom-catting would suit him just swell. At his hotel, he joins a party of salesmen and their dates and ends up in a jazz dive on Fisherman's Wharf. A sinister stranger switches his drink, giving Bigelow a fatal dose of `luminous toxin.' Under the weather next morning, he visits a doctor only to receive a death sentence: He has at best a few days to live (his blood glows in the dark, a bright reminder of the fears of the newly-dawned atomic age).

Tearing through the streets of San Francisco, he halts, out of breath, at a news-stand (ironically, under a display of `Life' magazines) only to notice, all around him, a heart-warming panorama of the future he's been robbed of. Resolute once more, he strides off (and nobody strode quite like O'Brien) to find his killer. His quest takes him to Los Angeles, where an importer had tried to contact him but has since committed suicide (maybe), and thence to a crawl through the city's underbelly, only to find that he was but a tiny obstacle in a criminal scheme involving stolen Iridium....

Iridium exists, but too much of D.O.A. (`Dead On Arrival') is harder to swallow than luminous toxin (which, the film assures us, also exists, under another name). The implausibility of its complicated plot comes from too many people knowing enough to be in just the right place at just the right moment. And Maté juggles some deft moments (a reprise of last night's jazz signaling Bigelow's hangover) with some dreadful ones (those slide-flute wolf whistles!).

But its chief liability remains O'Brien. Effective in secondary roles (The Killers, White Heat), as a leading man he's faintly buffoonish, what with his pompadour, his speed-walking, his now unavoidable resemblance to Meat Loaf. He shows little knack for redeeming limp lines (`You're crazy. That's it – you're crazy!') or for putting a distinctive stamp on the part that might bring it to life. He fails to convince that he's anything more than a competent if lackluster actor granted a meaty role. The same holds true for the rest of the cast: A dark femme fatale (Laurette Luez) and a blonde one (Lynn Baggett), a psychotic sadist (Neville Brand), a suave middle-eastern operator (Luther Adler). They're fun to watch but never let us forget we're watching a movie, one that leaves us thinking less about random and implacable fate than about over-zealous plotting.

For one of the most literally deadly-serious film noirs ever made, when accountant Edmond O'Brien goes from his L. A. office to a San Francisco hotel for a vacation, there are cheesy wolf-whistles added whenever a beautiful woman walks by, starting at the lobby and then into his open room where a salesman convention rages -- but for O'Brien's Frank Bigelow the good times don't roll very long...

Although this rudimentary suarez is like a short film all its own, which is what distinguishes D. O. A. Since it's really three pictures in one: the first peaking at a noisy jazz club where O'Brien's distracted by gorgeous and rich, blonde jazz-freak Virginia Lee while a hooded mystery man puts something in his drink, causing O'Brien to wake up feeling even worse than the hangover he'd have anyway...

Then after quickly finding out by blunt doctors he has only hours to live, the second act is perhaps the most flawed: which actually seems deliberate since both the audience and our frantic hero are equally in the convoluted dark, which includes the usual noir shadows and frantic nightlife....

Plus its visual appeal with more dames added since, when not on the phone with secretary Pamela Britton, the good girl who really loves him, he deals with rotten fatales ranging from Beverly Garland to Laurette Luez, both connected to the gangsters that poisoned him in the first place...

So when the final act morphs into a mainstream action flick, with Frank being chased around town, from shady warehouse interiors to a public drugstore by gun-toting psycho Neville Brand (working for bigwig Luther Adler), it's somewhat of a relief since now, finally, we finally know where he's going, what he's doing and what needs to be done...

Particularly thanks to the long corridor intro (ala frame story) of O'Brien telling the cops he's looking for the man who murdered him... in a morbid yet jazzy classic that roars into one pricked ear and out the other.

Solid paced movie about a guy looking for who poisoned him. It's basically just one scene of him talking to someone, then one of him running, then one of him talking, repeat. But it all works because it's quick moving and never drags. Dark, but interesting.

One of the best concepts for a film noir or even any film in general. It reminded me of Ida Lupino's The Hitch-Hiker, taking an interesting concept and creating a great B-film that wouldn't necessarily have been any greater if given a higher budget. The film's rawness and grittiness works to its advantage, as it can with most noirs. The cinematography was very good. The rushed pacing of the film both helped and hindered. Once Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) learns he has been poisoned the pace immediately speeds up, but it seems as though the tension rarely relaxes so it can be allowed to build back up. For example, this could have been achieved by having other characters who were unaware he had been poisoned bring him into situations where he had no control over how quickly they helped him. Even the scenes when Bigelow is talking on the phone with Paula (Pamela Britton) as she prods him with questions, the pacing still seems to be just a little too hurried. By dragging the scenes out, the sense of urgency might have been amplified. Of course, one could equally argue that the relentlessness is entirely appropriate. Being that I've only seen the film once, it is hard to say until I watch it again. Overall, it's an intriguing film that hooks the viewer's attention from the opening scene and won't let go until the end. Well worth watching.

D.O.A. is a classic example of the sort of film where the main character's settled and ordered life is completely disrupted. It's exactly the sort of thing Alfred Hitchcock used to do so well so often, in films such as The 39 Steps and North By Northwest. Although D.O.A. was not a Hitchcock film, it certainly is a classic example of the genre just the same.

In D.O.A. the main character is an small-town Accountant/Notary Public who decides to have one last bachelor fling in the big city prior to getting married. His holiday suddenly goes haywire when he wakes up felling ill, sees a doctor and learns that he has been poisoned and has only days to live! But by whom, and why? With only a short time left, he engages in a quest to find out.

Although this film was remade in the 1980s, this is the version most people remember, and that will probably continue to be the case. Don't miss this.

Cinematographers rarely turned to film directing after establishing themselves in Hollywood. One who made the successful permanent transition to a director was Rudolph Mate, who directed one of film noirs' most unusual openings where the main character has only minutes to live after revealing his amazing story in a flashback in April 1950's "D. O. A." In only his third picture as a primary director, the Hungary-Austria born Mate was one of cinema's most talented cinematographers, photographing such classics as 1928's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," 1942's "Pride of the Yankees," and 1946's "Gilda." For five straight years he was nominated by the Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, beginning with 1940 Alfred Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent." He had assumed his first spot directing duties in the Ginger Rogers' 1947 'It Had To Be You," before turning to full-time directing. Mate never returned to operating a camera, continuing in his new profession until 1963, retiring shortly before suffering a heart attack at 66.

Film reviewer Steve Morrison praised Mate's direction in "D. O. A," writing it's an "exemplary, a textbook example of forward-leaning and economical visual storytelling." Filmed in San Francisco, "D. O. A" is, as film historian Danny Peary describes it as "one of the first movie heroes to have no fear of being killed." Not that the movie's protagonist, Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien, in one of his most famous roles), is any super hero. He's simply an accountant and a notary public who finds himself unknowingly in hot water. Taking a solo vacation to San Francisco, he sips a poison-laced drink at a nightclub bar, which has a delayed fatal effect. Trying to figure out who played the dirty trick on him, Bigelow gets a lead from his secretary, and begins to investigate a complex labyrinth of intrigue involving rare earth minerals sold to criminals. Notarizing documents for a transaction placed him in the cross-hairs of the syndicate.

"D. O. A.," meaning 'dead on arrival,' opens with Bigelow at the police station already figuring out why he was poisoned. Told in a typical film noir flashback, his narrative takes him throughout both San Francisco and Los Angeles streets. Mate's use of real cities sites is credited to earlier docu-dramas such as 1948's "The Naked City." Film critic A. K. Rode observed the movie "reflects the photographic roots of director Rudolph Maté. The lighting, locations, and atmosphere of brooding darkness were captured expertly by Mate and director of photography Ernest Lazlo." Frank Bigelow's girlfriend was played by actress Pamela Britton, 27. She was a Broadway star in the mid-1940s in the musical 'Brigadoon' before her first film role as Frank Sinatra's girlfriend in 1945's "Anchors Aweigh." "D. O. A" was only her third film, and she's known to TV viewers as the ditzy landlady Mrs. Brown in 'My Favorite Martian.' Beverly Garland (in the credits as Beverly Campbell), in her first credited film, is Miss Foster, the secretary who keeps secrets close to the vest. The California native Garland, 23, was in summer stock theater before appearing uncredited in several Hollywood movies. She took her last name from her first husband Richard Garland in 1951, a marriage lasting only two years, and kept the name throughout her life. She's known for her television work, appearing in several series including 1980s 'Scarecrow and Mrs. King' as the mother to Kate Jackson's character. But "D. O. A.'s" main assets are the work of the former director of photography Rudolph Mate and actor O'Brien, 34, a heartthrob to women back then who was voted the year before by the Young Women's League of America as the top male in the country.