The Hunted

Police detective Johnny Saxon (Preston Foster) is on high alert when his former girlfriend Laura Mead (Belita) is released on parole for a bank heist which she was found guilty of four years earlier. Despite always having proclaimed her innocence, at the trial she had threatened to kill those she thought were responsible for her conviction, including boyfriend Saxon who helped put her away for the crime. Despite his misgivings Saxon again becomes involved with Mead when she appears in his apartment after arriving back in town. Though she is seemingly repentant, Saxon remains suspicious of her motivations. When a body turns up, Saxon pegs Mead as the likely suspect and figures he might be next. Did she do it or not?

A crime, mystery and melodrama mixture, this film could be described as a niche noir. The casting with the well into his forties Foster and Belita as his 21 year old girlfriend is on the surface a bit odd since the premise of the film teeters on the chemistry of the two characters. The older Foster, a definite candidate for a smoking cessation program, is spot on as the hard boiled cop and former boyfriend. The big surprise is Belita. 'The Hunted' is the third in a trio of crime programmers the former skating champion did for Monogram / Allied Artists. After watching this film it's hard to understand why her career never gained much traction. She certainly had the screen persona even though not what might be described as a classic Hollywood look.

Even though there is some padded fluff (superfluous ice skating sequence) and an over-extended early scene where the characters rehash their previous relationship, the movie is also a stylized and entertaining trek though the post war era of tough-guy detectives and dangerous dames. Again, not a straight up noir film but for viewers who enjoy filmdom's golden age of grit and duplicity it will likely check off enough boxes to make them happy.

In this detective story, a private eye must send his fiancee to prison as he truly believes that she was involved in a bank robbery. Unfortunately, she is innocent. Still she serves her time. Upon her release someone frames her for murder. The detective is in quite a quandary until the real criminal is found. The woman finally returns to her beloved private eye. More romantic melodrama than 'noir' 'The Hunted' still shines as 'Belita ' the "Ice Queen" who was in the 1936 Olympic games as a figure skater for England ; serves up a great cat and mouse performance as Laura Mead . B-film crime story ably directed by Jack Bernhard. The Hunted is lit on 'noir' but is still a great Crime, Drama and Film-Noir in the end . Highly entertaining .

Towards the end, you get the idea this was on a deadline and / or budget cap expecting, but good little movie carried by good performances by all cast members. A real effort put in by each actor to not ham it up nor plod through the lines. It's film, we won't know for days what was in the can! Pretty solid in that respect, and no great stunts, just a story line to push it along. This movie could be done in a modern setting and fill in the holes, but I'm not sure Hollywood has the discipline to keep all characters humble and sublime. It would really need to be done with obscure but top flight actors to pull it off. Belita's character would be more realistic if she's not an ice skating star on probation. That was a bit silly, but you read about Belita, that's probably the driver that got this film made in the first place. But probably a sales clerk in a jewelry store profession would match the script a bit more realistically. The heist she was accused of isn't so well explained at the beginning nor at the end, where the audience is tasked to read a newspaper headline to tie everything together (not going to spoil it, but you can't be looking away from screen for a split second!). It's definitely worth the watch, and an interesting piece of period magic. Did anyone look up Belita's actual bio? I got the impression she was probably an actual resistance operative of some type(?); Born in England, trained for ballet in Russia, performed in skating & ballet in France, actress & skater in USA...all of this during WWII era?! That's really her skating in this movie, so obviously that was the money driver and how it got added hamfisted into the script that would do better without any tinges of glamour. It doesn't fit for ideal movie result, but in historical sense, Belita such a very interesting woman with immense talent. How does that international background not come out in her lines at all with any accent? How could she have such stellar talents on the ice and be such a committed actress? I find it interesting she competed in 1936 Olympics. Traveling itself was dicey stuff her entire young professional career, and this comes out as European friction is still high in post WWII reparations and fragile political climate. Really great movie in the context of the times.

...because cop Johnny Saxon (Preston Foster) is literally haunted by his old relationship with recently released ex con Laura Mead (Belita). Four years ago she was his girl, but then the jewels from a robbery showed up in her apartment, and her brother was involved, but before he could say anything about Laura's involvement he was murdered. Laura went up the river for four years, vowing to kill her attorney and Johnny when she got out. This either means she was very guilty or very innocent.

So one minute Johnny is acting cold towards Laura because he thinks she played him for a fool by acting the good girl when she was actually a thief, and the next minute he is getting her a job at an ice rink(???). Yes I said ice rink, and there is even about a 5-10 minute number with Laura (Belita) figure skating in all of this in the middle that has nothing to do with the plot. But I'll get to this later.

So after Johnny spends a significant amount of time wandering around tormented about Laura, trying to get back to where he was emotionally in a way that reminds me of James Stewart in Vertigo, wandering the streets of San Francisco looking for a lost love he knows is gone, suddenly Johnny is OK with Laura. He believes her. Surprisingly Laura accepts Johnny's acceptance and seems to return this double minded man's love.

But then over one hour into this 84 minute film Laura's lawyer is found shot to death in his apartment with one of Laura's personal belongings lying close to the body. So has Johnny been made a fool of by this woman AGAIN, or is she really that unlucky? Watch and find out.

This is not one of those non stop action noirs. It is mainly just Johnny and Laura and their verbal dance of regret and attraction combined with some great cinematography and some classic noir scenes - the 40's diner, the bus stops, the long haul truckers, the line ups and inquisitions under hot lights. And there are a couple of LOL moments that are probably because this came from poverty row. Why is it every time there is a break in one of Johnny's cases the entire police force comes to a stop while he recovers from a punch or a wound or whatever? Can they not go after the suspect themselves? Then there is the case of X-Ray eyes Johnny has where he enters a room and goes straight to the place where a gun is hidden! Make this guy officer of the year!

Earlier I said I would explain the ice skating. Belita was a championship figure skater before her short acting career. I think her uncertain and untrained acting style worked for her in the films in which I've seen her, because you really don't know where she is coming from, and that adds to the suspense. I recommend it, especially if you've seen or heard Eddie Muller's comments on the film.

Imported from her native England as a second-string Sonja Henie, ice-skating novelty star Belita soon found that there was little call in Hollywood for her to lace up her blades. After a couple of ice musicals, she landed in three Poverty-Row noirs. In the first of them, Suspense, her skating skills were worked, however awkwardly, into the plot. But in the second, The Hunted, her prowess on the ice was a mere afterthought – she briefly shows off her twirls and figure-8s because what audience she could still command expected them of her.

Too bad, because on the solid ground of The Hunted, Belita's not bad (with a tough, long forties face) and no longer needed the gimmickry. She's just finished a four-year stretch in Tehachapi for her part in a jewel robbery (she may have been framed). When her bus pulls into town one night, waiting for her, unseen, is Preston Foster, the cop who once loved her but sent her up anyway. He's convinced that Belita will come gunning for either him or the prosecuting attorney (Pierre Watkin). But when she has no place to go, he lets her bunk at his apartment, and lands her a gig skating during intermissions at hockey games. He slowly relents, thinking she's on the straight-and-narrow. Then Watkin is found murdered, and all the evidence points her way. When Foster turns against her once more, she lams it to Arizona to sling hash in a diner....

Jack Bernhard, who two years earlier had the good fortune to have Jean Gillie and the script for Decoy fall into his lap, directs this much less flamboyant script. He's good on atmospherics (dark highways in hard rains, cheap apartment houses) and keeps the story moving along (near the end of the movie, an uncredited Charles McGraw turns up as a hard-nosed cop). Bernhard made one or two more low-budget entries of passable interest (Blonde Ice among them), but Decoy's lightning was never, alas, to strike him again.