They All Come Out

How can you not like a movie that features a bad guy getting a blowtorch to the face when threatening the handsome young naive hero? And action scenes where they just speed up the film? Good fun.

"They All Come Out" is a most unusual film from MGM. In some ways, it's a traditional crime drama but about midway through the picture it changes to a pseudo-documentary about the prison system and how it sorts prisoners according to their willingness to be rehabilitated.

When the story begins, Joe (Tom Neal) is out of work and hungry. When he meets Kitty (Rita Johnson) he thinks his luck is improving, as she buys him some food and takes him with her on a cross-country drive. However, she works for Reno Madigan, a career criminal who runs a gang who robs banks. Soon, Joe is their driver and soon after that, the gang is captured.

The next portion of the story shows a very detailed account about how federal prisons operated back in the day. Much time in the film is spent showing how the prisoners are sorted according to their likelihood of being rehabilitated. Joe is a first-time offender, and they offer his job training and more. Reno, naturally, is NOT an ideal candidate and his behaviors soon result in his being sent to Alcatraz. But there's much more to it than this...as well as an exciting and satisfying finale.

Despite the film seeming a bit overly idealistic at times, it never is dull and first time director Jacques Tourneur did a great job with this B-movie. It also helped that despite being a B, the budget was bigger than usual and allowed for filming at various penitentiaries across the nation. Worth your time.

B pictures don't come more B than this offering from Jacques Tourneur, but despite the usual flaws that come from a limited budget, most notably less than stellar acting (Rita Johnson and Bernard Nedell partially excepted) and extremely primitive sets and outdoor locations, this fine director in his first feature already shows the pacing and tonal skills that would render "Out Of The Past" one of the five best noirs and "Cat People" the best of the Lewton creep fests. In just under seventy five minutes Tourneur manages not only to bring to life five gangsters but also to follow them through the prison system with forays into the various gradations of incarceration, ranging from corrupt local jail with its inmates kangaroo court, to grim, federal maximum security (with a brilliant brief glance at bleak Alcatraz), to the relatively lenient honor farms ,with side excursions into a prison psychiatric facility, as well as a womans prison (which I noted with amusement in 1939 resembled an Ethan Allen Furniture showroom). So even though the film at times resembles an infomercial for Penal Rehabilitation (I sure as hell didn't believe that the anti woman psycho inmate would be magically cured by a work stint in the fresh air!) it's an impressive debut for its director. Give it...natch...a B.

PS...Dumb title. Sounds like a slogan for spot remover.

Director Jacques Tourneur's first feature is the polar opposite of edgy Prison Noirs since THEY ALL COME OUT is unapologetic propaganda of the U. S. Correctional System, even more than FBI-backed Noirs like THE STREET WITH NO NAME or G-MEN wherein hard-boiled crime fare plays out from beginning to end following a sparse introduction...

Here it's half-and-half starting with the usual Depression-era gangsters robbing banks where Rita Johnson's Kitty makes a terrific femme fatale... but with a soft side... working for no-nonsense gang boss Bernard Nedell as Reno, who leads muggy thugs and a young handsome driver that the dame actually discovered: Enter future DETOUR actor Tom Neal displaying genuine toughness... yet there's some good in him too...

And just as the rudimentary rugged crime flick picks up violent steam, the girl and men are captured and thrown into various prisons. But Tourneur keeps the stories interesting, even when the propaganda kicks into high gear...

As affable officials decide upon what's best for their inmates sans cinema-cliché sadistic wardens, bullying guards and shiv-shoving inmates, THEY ALL COME OUT maintains a pulpy page-turning cadence, keeping the viewer intrigued about how things'll turn out despite being fairly obvious.

"They all came out" is the first feature film made by Jacques Tourneur in US, after a series of short features directed for MGM in the 1930s.

In fact this one too first was conceived to be a short documentary about federal prisons. In his interview given in 1964 to Simon Mizrahi, Tourneur describes complicated story of the making of the movie. First director went to Washington where he visited different prisons in order to film documentary. When the short film was ready, Louis B. Mayer saw it and asked Tourneur to add more 20 minutes of footage and turn it into something of a half-feature, as an experiment. At this time Tourneur in cooperation with John Higgins wrote a story, which became the story of the film, about a young man that goes out of jail and tries to re-enter normal life while his former friends prepare to commit another crime and drag him along. Tourneur filmed it and showed it to L. B. Mayer again, who end up liking it and asking director to add 1/2 hour more and turn it into feature film. Tourneur and Higgins had to put all their imagination to work in order to invent some new scenes and make movie longer. After seeing the film it was virtually impossible to understand that it went through these three stages in it´s making unless you knew all about it before. Quite an interesting early work from Jacques Tourneur, worth seeing for addicted movie buff only. 7/10