You Can't Escape Forever

This is an okay, rather lighthearted crime/newspaper picture, not at all the grim movie one would expect from the title. Its main detriment is Brenda Marshall, who has zero chemistry with George Brent (looking a bit seedy, but a bit like a second-string Clark Gable), an unattractive profile, and a very tight, cold, humourless manner. What William Holden saw in her, God alone knows. But Brent is as smooth as ever, and there are old friends like Roscoe Karns, Percy Halton, and the chillingly believable Eduardo Ciannelli, with his face rapidly collapsing from Joker-style phony bonhomie to ice-cold murder.

The plot doesn't take itself very seriously, and is sometimes indecipherable, but there are plenty of amusing scenes. But, though Brenda is unsympathetic, the treatment of her, expressing the 1940s idea of the "right" way to live, still has a nasty taste. Three times during the movie she faints dead away because of what she hears, sees, or fears she is about to see (ie, women are not tough enough to be reporters). Then, at the end of the movie, she says she won't give up her career after marriage to George Brent, that they won't have children for a long time. His gesture to the camera shows that he will make sure that's not the case. While a similar "adult" joke at the end of Bachelor Mother was very cute, this is quite unpleasant. It says that Brent will make his wife pregnant against her will or without her knowledge (a very unpleasant picture comes to mind). At the time this was considered cute too, but it sure isn't now.

Reporter Laurie Abbott (Brenda Marshall) goofs up a huge assignment, an execution! so they stick her in a back office, writing the Bewildered Hearts column. her boyfriend, "Mitchell" ( George Brent) had followed his hunch, guessed at the correct headline for the execution, and printed the paper. but he followed one hunch too many, and now HE is the author of the column. It's 1942, so now we're investigating the mob, and even a fortune teller. script kind of goes all over the place. Gene Lockhart is here as Robelink. Unfortunately, Marshall was only in the film biz for about ten years; she didn't hit it big in films, but was probably better known as MRS. William Holden. Directed by Jo Graham... not much out there on him. he only directed four films. seems to have spent most of his time in hollywood as dialogue director. this one is just okay. probably explains why Turner Classics hardly ever shows it.

"You Can't Escape Forever" is a great title for a film, although I'm not convinced it fits this story. This movie is really crisply done. All the scenes clip along and never linger too long. The reading of the lines by the actors are so rapid fire that Frank Fox the dialogue director must have worked overtime. The opening execution scene made me chuckle. There always seems to be a thunderstorm happening when someone is about to be strapped to the electric chair. In this case they did use the atmosphere as part of the story and not simply a clichéd mood device. I didn't find "Forever" a waste of time, but there was nothing about it that will linger in my movie memory banks for an extended period of time.

You Can't Escape Forever is an odd duck: it's a bottom of the bill second feature that successfully blends comedy, romance, gangsters, and old dark house thrills. George Brent plays the crusading editor of a local paper out to put the kibosh on the activities of a local black marketeer, played to absolute perfection by Edward Cianelli, surely one of the least appreciated heavies of Hollywood history. Brent is aided by lady love/gal reporter Brenda Marshall and comic foil Roscoe Karns, and the film manages to take in a trip to the Death House, a deserted columbarium, and a lonely hearts club apparently modeled after Conan Doyle's Red Headed League. There are some very well choreographed action sequences and beautiful cinematography by James Van Trees and Tony Gaudio, the masters of low budget photography. If you like 'B' features, you will be more than satisfied with You Can't Escape Forever--even if the title seems somewhat inappropriate considering that villain Varney (Joe Downing), in an apparent oversight by Joseph Breen's office, actually DOES escape the chair!

Warner Brothers more than most studios liked to remake their feature films, it sure saved costs. You Can' Escape Forever is the 3rd cycle of 4 that originally began with Hi Nellie.

Brenda Marshall girl reporter faints at an execution and fails to report on a last minute pardon by the governor. So this budding Lois Lane is assigned the sob sister column by her editor George Brent. Then Brent makes an even bigger faux pas and he's dumped by the publisher in he same column.

But Brent and Marshall team up in life and on the job and make lemnade out of their shared lemon to bring down a gang of black marketeers. Homage to World War 2 which was figuring into all remakes.

Roscoe Karns is their photographer and good comic foil. Villains are the impeccably cast Eduardo Ciannelli and Gene Lockhart. It's a serviceable remake of the Paul Muni classic.