Homicide Bureau

One thing that surprised me in this film was the amount of scientific documentation it exhibits. A female scientist is assigned to the police department in a forensics position. I was also surprised at how little controversy was shown about that fact. But during the course of the movie, comparison of materials (from a single source or not), ballistics evidence, weapon edge evidence and more are all showcased. Not quite a commercial for police as scientific marvels, seeing as how another part of the main story involves whether or not police ought to be able to rough up criminals or not, but considering how far before the Miranda ruling this movie was made, it now comes across as an interesting look at the state of forensics in the late 1930s. For true devotees of The New Detectives (and maybe CSI, though it has little to do with crime scenes per se), this is certainly an interesting title.

Homicide Bureau (1939)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Fun and fast paced Columbia 'B' film has Bruce Cabot playing a homicide detective who wants to use force to get confessions from some gangsters trying to take the city over. If you're a fan of 'B' films then you should get a kick out of this one since there's never a dull moment within its 57-minute running time. There's plenty of fast action as well as a nice shoot out at the end that makes this one a tad bit better than most in its field. Cabot is always worth watching and he does a nice job here. Rita Hayworth has a small supporting role as a forensic expert.

Political ironies abound as hopelessly right wing L.A.P.D. investigator Bruce Cabot bridles under foolish legal restraints conflicting with his tried and true police state methods such as breaking and entering, unlawful searches and seizures, and beating up suspects.

Particularly frustrating are naïve wealthy liberal matrons who misguidedly protest violations of evildoers' constitutional guarantees.

The pre-Patriot Act bad guys are colluding with warring foreign powers (read 1930s Japan and Germany) wanting American scrap metal for munitions.

Youthful lab chemist Rita Hayworth (modernly called a forensic investigator) does precise scientific sleuthing with her amazing Spectrograph, a wondrous device that tells all, even resulting in a marriage proposal from callous cop Cabot whose police brutality contributes to the gang's downfall.

A laughably bad film, concluding with the police commissioner apologizing for hampering his "coppers" with "too many kid gloves." Clearly illegal police procedures win the day keeping America's junkyards safe from hostile foreign dictatorships.

Demonstrating versatility, actor Marc Lawrence, later blacklisted in the anti-Communist 1950s, plays a fascist thug.

Bruce Cabot is a detective who is angry that so often gangsters get away with their crimes because of stupid things like the Bill of Rights! When time and again the cops are thwarted, he suggests pretending these civil rights no longer exist (or at least temporarily put on hold). At one point, he says basically "just let me beat the truth out of him" to the Captain! However, despite this start, the film is actually NOT a "let's beat the gangsters to a bloody pulp" film, but excels at showing the forensic work the police and police labs (headed by Rita Hayworth in a bit of unusual casting) do in order to catch criminals. Plus, in order to keep the film from being too cerebral and low-key, there is some dandy action as well--particularly during the exciting ending.

While so often the term "B-movie" has come to mean a cheap or badly made film, HOMICIDE BUREAU is evidence that just because the production values are lower than a big-budget film doesn't mean the film is second-rate. Sure, Bruce Cabot and the then unknown Rita Hayworth were not particularly famous at the time, but they were good actors and the writing is far better than a typical crime film. In fact, compared to the gangster and cop films being made by rival (and bigger budget) studio, Warner Brothers, this Columbia picture seems far more realistic and less formulaic. One reason the film worked so well is that I THOUGHT by introducing Miss Hayworth that the film would become a clichéd "women have no place in a man's world" diatribe, but the fact that she was a woman (and a beautiful one at that) was not an important part of the film--the police came to accept her very quickly and the film centered instead on good old fashioned police work. The bottom line is that the film still holds up well today and held my interest throughout.

Homicide Bureau casts Rita Hayworth in a rather colorless role of a police forensic scientist. She's an efficient worker and when all's said and done proves rather valuable in stopping a smuggling gang headed by Norman Willis.

Willis is a clever guy and makes a monkey out of Detetive Bruce Cabot when he arrests henchman Marc Lawrence for murder. Cabot is a detective of the old school and would have been a role model for Dirty Harry.

The story has a lot of holes in it and I suspect the cutting room floor got a lot of shot and destroyed footage. Rita is given so little to do here and she really has no chemistry with Cabot.

This one is for fans of the leads.