Double Jeopardy

Robert ("King Kong") Armstrong gets this very dull Republic Pictures movie off to a promising start playing a drunken low-life who gives his wife Gale Robbins a hard time. Unfortunately, it's all downhill after that opening reel.

The script by Don Martin (when I see that name I immediately think of the great Mad Magazine cartoonist, but this writer offers nothing in the way of entertainment) is bland, with an uninteresting central premise of John Litel as a real estate developer with a dark secret. His daughter is played by the great B-movie superstar Allison Hayes, who should be cast as a femme fatale but is wasted here as a "good girl".

She's going to marry lawyer Rod Cameron. Instead of a film noir hero, he is almost a Dudley Do-Right goody two-shoes hero, so boring I simply was waiting for him to earn his paycheck with a tiny bit of acting. Worse yet, Jack Kelly as a one-dimensional bad guy is preposterous casting of that so likable future Maverick who did so many cool & smooth leading roles on TV for series like Kraft Suspense Theatre.

The "who cares?" quotient for this picture is nearly 100%.

This could have been a better film if some money and more time was given to it. It has a solid story as well as better than passable acting. It's a bit of victim of it's time and studio. Republic Pictures had to cut back as TV was taking more revenue leaving less to go around for the motion picture industry. Republic was hard hit. That said the studio delivers a pretty decent late period noir flick. It feels like it was squeezed for time thus some story and character development is rushed. It gets the basics if it moves predictably fast not leaving a lot for the imagination. Definitely a solid enough story to trump most of it's short comings.

Robert Armstrong is a drunk ex-con. He's getting $500 every month from real estate developer John Litel. Armstrong is married to floozy Gale Robbins, who's carrying on with Jack Kelly. Kelly and Miss Robbins want to run to Mexico, so she persuades Armstrong to get ten grand from his mysterious benefactor; the lovers will take the money and run. However, when Litel meets with Armstrong, he says there will be no more money and leaves. Kelly, who's been watching, comes up to Armstrong and tries to take the money he thinks he has, then kills him. Soon enough, the police trace Litel's connection to the dead man and arrest him. Now it's up to Litel's attorney, Rod Cameron, to try to prove him innocent.

It's certainly sleazy enough and complicated enough for a film noir, even though R.G. Springsteen directs it more for speed than atmosphere. The fine cast - which also includes Allison Hayes as Litel's daughter/Cameron's girlfriend and Minerva Urecal as a Marjorie-Main-style landlady, give solid performances. Armstrong is quite convincing as a drunk, Litel as a plutocrat. While CMeron looks a bit too much like a muscular half-back, and the resolution seems a little abrupt, this it a solid little movie.

Yes it's a 'B' movie, probably a 'C', but for those who like a cinematic touch of the tawdry and sad underside of life, this movie isn't half bad.

Actress PAULA KYLE, who was originally from Toronto, Canada, moved to Hollywood and became a star...or at least she thought she was. After leaving Canada in her XKE Jag, she landed many small roles and fizzled away in obscurity like so many other "B" grade actresses. Fabulous legs and blonde hair made her a natural for a career in modelling and some movies. Larry Anderson.