The Chaser

True story: whilst watching this film the other night, my ten-year old son said 'I've seen this movie'. In point of fact he hadn't, but the two of us HAD watched The Nuisance, the film this is based on, some months back. The Chaser is indeed an extremely close remake of the earlier film, and it's almost as good. Starring Dennis O'Keefe as ambulance chasing lawyer Tom Brandon, The Chaser also features Nat Pendleton in one of his typical 'lug with a heart of cold' roles, as well as Lewis Stone in a fine and bittersweet performance as an alcoholic MD who issues the appropriate diagnoses for Brandon's clients. The unlikely twosome dominate the film along with O'Keefe, with The Chaser's highlight being a marvelous scene where Pendleton and Stone examine poor John Qualen, here playing a suggestible Swedish beanpole named Lars. This film is clearly inferior to its progenitor only in the leading lady department, where an icy Ann Morriss replaced the more personable Madge Evans. All in all, a perfectly good way to spend 75 minutes on a cold, dark night.

Dennis O'Keefe is an ambulance chaser, a lawyer who pursues victims of accidents to sue people, and sometimes even gins up victims when none are available. He's a thorn in the side of the bar association and of the local streetcar company. So they hire Ann Morriss to pose as one of O'Keefe's "victims", find out the details of how he operates, and use that to put him out of business.

It's like a feature-length Crime Does Not Pay with a sense of humor. The two leads are a bit too theatrical in their performances, but the usual memorable MGM supporting cast includes Lewis Stone, Nat Pendleton, Henry O'Neill, Ruth Gillette, and John Qualen to provide some pathos, drama and comedy. Miss Morriss would soon become a supporting player. She would marry Edward Marin, this movie's director in 1940, and live to the age of 74, dying in 1994.