Homicide

This routine little murder mystery is not so much on plot, however, I always find the movies made on location in the Los Angeles area in the '40s and early '50s interesting-it's nice to see that there were actually areas that were not covered with glass and concrete, before the Eastern Carpetbaggers moved in and turned the area into what they had fled, i.e. the worst of Detroit, Chicago and NYC. Another reason to recommend this one is that it features the lovely Ms. Westcott, second only in B movie beauty to Marie Windsor. Otherwise this is a routine tale of a detective hunting thieves that have turned to murder.

An itinerant laborer is found hanging by the rafters in his Los Angeles boardinghouse room and the cops are ready to wrte it off as a suicide. All but Detective Robert Douglas who says an ex-Navy man wouldn't have done sch a sloppy job with knots.

A book of matches takes him to a resort hotel where there was another murder that the locals have listed as an accident. of course that's not right either.

The big problem with homicide is that there is no suspense so we know that it is murder and by two men. We don't know who's in charge, but that cat's out of the bag soon too.

Despite a lack of suspense there are some good performances from Robert Douglas, Helen Westcott, and Robert Alda in the leads.

A cop is drawn rather inexplicably into an apparent suicide, leading him into a meandering investigation.

Despite a promising start, the movie descends into a lackluster crime drama with little to salvage it from the celluloid wastebasket. The plot's neither tight nor coherent, plodding along in uninspired fashion, with the usual bruising fist fights where no one gets marked up and a wounded hero who quickly recovers in true Hollywood fashion. In a better movie, these clichés could be overlooked, but here they simply add to the general contrivance. What surprises me is that this is a studio production (Warner Bros.). I could understand the slipshod results coming from a cheap indie outfit, but not from the gangster experts at Warners. Still, no film with that great tough-talking slattern Esther Howard (the landlady) can be a total loss. My suggestion-- catch the movie if the only alternative is a political speech.

This is a totally unrealistic film. It is full of foolishness, illogical and stupid actions. Absolutely impossible behaviors and dialogues of real people. A squalor in all categories.

A talky disappointment, HOMICIDE is decently reasonably well-acted, but there's not much more to say about it. The detective lead, Robert Douglas is quite good. However he lacks on-screen appeal. It may have been better to cast Warren Douglas (no relation) who plays the unfortunate victim, in that role. We do see Helen Westcott--an underrated Warners player, Robert Alda, and the always colorful Esther Howard as a flop-house owner. The interaction between Howard and Douglas are among the best things in the picture. Also pretty good are the flirtation scenes with Douglas and Westcott, while a desert fight between Douglas and Alda is a highlight. So it's not a total letdown. But it certainly isn't a Film Noir by any stretch of anyone's imagination, just because it's a crime drama in b&w from 1949.