Danger Signal

An interesting commentary of the times is made when Mary Servoss remarks to her daughter Faye Emerson that with the housing shortage as it post World War 2 it was a patriotic duty to house folks if someone had a spare room. Faye poopoos the idea until the charming Zachary Scott comes along with limp and suitcase and tells Emerson that the limp was a 'souvenir of the South Pacific'. After that Scott is invited in. If Danger Signal were remade today a different reason would have to be found for Scott to gain access to home and hearth.

But that's Scott's business. He's one charming seducer of the female sex and would have a career playing such. When he gets their money he murders them.

He concentrates first on Emerson, but she's seen a bit too much of the world and then he focuses on younger sister Mona Freeman. But the police authorities are closing in so he has to work fast.

If this seems to borrow a bit from Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt, Danger Signal is a reasonaably good facsimile. It's a well cast bit of drama which could have used a more dramatic ending.

Still you'll find little to complain about.

Zachary Scott plays a womanizing writer who, as the film is opening, is removing a wedding ring from the finger of a woman who is lying in a bed in a hotel room. That she doesn't wake up tells you something. The story is fairly involved with minimal intrusion by law enforcement. It plays itself out between Scott and the woman he thinks will be his next push-over, an LA stenographer played by Faye Emmerson. While the audience is expecting the worst from Scott, it's Emmerson whose character eventually goes beyond what one would expect of it. Scott's traipsing around LA and looking for a room to rent is fairly riveting and when he sees Emmerson trying to take down the "Room For Rent" sign from her nice middle class two story wood house, the story is set. Suave ruthless womanizer meets lonely stenographer who lives with her mother and easily (maybe too easily) wins them both over. And later comes the arrival of the younger and prettier sister (Mona Freeman), which pretty much sets the stage and opens a lot of possibilities. Scott himself is at his ruthless best.

... actually she (Rosemary Decamp as Dr. Jane Silla) is a psychiatrist.

The film opens on a man (Zachary Scott as Ronnie Mason) looking at the inscription on a woman's wedding ring. The woman is lying in bed, dead although she appears to be sleeping. Ronnie grabs most but not all of a large wad of cash from her purse and disappears down the fire escape as the landlady is banging loudly on the door. She has just found out the two are not married. The woman left her husband for this man two months ago, but she has died by poison and left a suicide note. The woman's husband vehemently disagrees that his wife would kill herself and demands justice. So all of this just establishes that Ronnie is a bad guy to the audience. We know who the villain is from the outset.

Ronnie really is a puzzle. He apparently is a writer of short stories and a semi successful one. The woman he killed did not have so much money that she would be worth jail or the chair. And Hilda, a workaholic stenographer and daughter of his next landlady, is not wealthy either. What is the point of him winning her over? But that he does. And then Hilda's younger sister returns from a convalescent home. And Ronnie turns on a dime and goes after her, mainly because he realizes she will come into some money when she marries. Because he and Hilda were so quiet about their romance at his insistence, he is able to lie and say that she pursued him and that there was never anything between them.

So what is up with this guy?That is where De Camp's Dr. Silla comes in. She explains - or tries to explain - Ronnie's psyche to Hilda who is now genuinely concerned for her sister's welfare if she marries Ronnie. Hilda talks about killing him. Dr. Silla talks "production code speak" as to how that would damage Hilda as much as Ronnie. I'm not so sure of that doc.

Throw in a charmingly awkward chemist with a crush on Hilda played by Bruce Bennett, a guy waiting for his draft notice, his voice to change, and for Hilda's younger sister to notice he is alive played by Richard Erdman,, plus that pesky husband of the first victim in this film, and you have to wonder - how exactly is Ronnie going to get his? Will he get his? Watch and find out.

I like this noir because it tries to introduce a psychological angle into Ronnie's behavior. Plus for a film made in 1945 it does not try and pretend that the war is just gone. It is part of the plot. And I like how Rosemary DeCamp turns what is basically a plot device into a full fledged character with a charming continental accent. And poor Zachary Scott. He looked like a villain and he played them so suavely that he was forever typecast.

There were really no big names in this one, but it is a worthwhile entry in the noir genre demonstrating how one normal looking sociopath can upturn the lives of so many average people, not by appealing to their greed as is true in so many noirs, but by appealing to their desire to be loved and understood.

Not the best of the genre, but a well-acted B-flick by a cast of great character actors.

The storyline is typical. -- It's the performances that make this fun to watch. Zachary Scott is type-cast as the slimy, shady, kill-for-profit "lady's man" type, played almost exactly as in the A-Films: "Mask of Demetrios" and "Mildred Pierce".

Faye Emerson, who often played bad girls in her lead-roles in B-Films, plays the good-girl here. - One who's first fooled by, then catches on-to, Scott's bad-boy character. She's lovely in a hard way, and handles her part like the pro that she was.

I enjoyed the supporting role played by Rosemary DeCamp, as a doctor with a slight European accent. After seeing this film, I've since read that doing foreign accents was a specialty of hers. Bruce Bennett (also playing a doctor) does nicely, as well.

The film's ending is expected, and slightly disappointing, but the talented cast, the film's tight script, and it's noirish atmosphere more than make up for that.

It's short, moves quick, and it's an enjoyable watch. I rated it 6.

This is a must for film noir fans, and it deserves to be better known. If it had more of an A-list cast, it would probably be considered a classic.

At the very beginning it resembles Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt." Zachary Scott plays a secretive writer on the run from the law, though for a while it's not clear whether he's really a criminal. Under an assumed name, he charms his way into a household of women.

From then on, the plot is original -- consistently clever but never confusing. Male treachery and female jealousy play their parts, and just when one character's motives become clear, you have to start wondering what another character is up to. If you guess how it all turns out, you're a psychic.

There is one little detail that's handled sloppily, but it comes early and is excusable. All in all, this is what a mystery should be.