La hora de matar

Time to Kill is a fast-paced, thrilling Michael Shayne mystery adapted from a Raymond Chandler novel and sped up to fit just inside an hour. Mrs. Murdock hires Shayne to find her daughter-in-law, a chorus girl who stole a precious coin from her home. Murdock's son is an odd sort of fellow who appears now and then to create a sense that Shayne is being watched, not the sort of guy that could be trusted. When Shayne meets the daughter-in-law, aptly named Miss Conquest, he discovers a beautiful girl just as eager to get out of the Murdock family as Mrs. Murdock is to get her out. Something doesn't quite fit.

Don't blink your eyes or you'll miss something; you have to be able to keep up with this one to truly enjoy it. Maybe some practice with other Lloyd Nolan movies will do the trick.

Nolan gets some great lines and utilizes them well. His tough guy might not be as memorable as Edward G. Robinson's, Humphrey Bogart's, or Dick Powell's, but he gets the job done. He is flanked by a b-movie cast, including the lovely Heather Angel, but don't see b-movie and think you'll be losing out on quality. You don't want your murder mysteries to be polished anyway; the dirtier, the better.

Back in the early 40s, Twentieth Century-Fox made seven Michael Shayne films starring Lloyd Nolan. Generally, they were very good B-movies....quite a bit better than the average B crime film of the day. Much of it was because Nolan was so good in the films...much because the studio put more money and better scripts into the movies. This is the final Michael Shayne film starring Nolan. And, if you care, this movie was remade in 1947 as "The Brasher Doubloon"...an excellent crime film....one that is actually a bit better than this original!

When the story begins, a crabby rich lady pays Michael Shayne to recover a lost rare coin, the Brasher doubloon. However, this is a ruse and soon the bodies are piling up around Shayne and he starts to realize that there is far more to the story than that....and the key is a very timid lady who lives with the oldster.

There are a few off-putting things in this film, such as a violent couple who fight like dogs (this is somehow supposed to be funny) and Shayne pretending to like an unattractive woman in order to manipulate her. These just felt out of place. Otherwise, it's a competent and enjoyable tale...and it really makes you wish the studio had made more. Sadly, the subsequent films were made elsewhere and didn't even star Nolan...and are less interesting.

Just a note of correction. On the previous post, the actor cited for his role in The Brasher Doubloon should be George Montgomery, rather than Robert Montgomery, who was featured in several films noir of his own, Lady in the Lake and Ride the Pink Horse, to name a few.

Lloyd Nolan himself can be seen in quite a few noir films, usually, but not always, on the side of the law (House on 92d Street, Somewhere in the Night, and Two Smart People.

It is a shame that The Brasher Doubloon (or Time to Kill, for that matter) have not been released on DVD as yet. Brasher is a 20th Century Fox production and perhaps it will be released in the near future as part of their Fox Film Noir series.

Time to Kill (Herbert I. Leeds, 1942) – Lloyd Nolan's final outing as Michael Shayne, Fox Studios' cocky private eye, is one of the earliest Raymond Chandler adaptations, drawing its inspiration from The High Window. Shayne – the irrepressible, quick-witted, appealing Nolan – takes on an apparently simple assignment from the wealthy Mrs Murdoch (Ethel Griffies) and finds the bodies piling up around him. Fox's lack of faith in the series is evidenced by the slim running time, with this one playing barely more than an hour. That means you get 56 minutes of tightly-scripted thriller – with a sardonic sense of humour – before the scripters have to cram in a wordy, five-minute explanation of Chandler's convoluted plot. It's an absolute riot until then, though, and a return to form after a slightly disappointing sixth outing.

The series opener – Michael Shayne, Private Detective – is a classic of its type, with a hilarious script and slick, fast-moving direction, making a virtue of its low budget. The second film put him on a train (Sleepers West), the third took him to a theatre (Dressed to Kill) and the fourth and fifth appeared to have been made with spare Charlie Chan screenplays someone had left lying around. There's something of the Warner Oland Chan about the ship-bound Blue, White and Perfect, while The Man Who Wouldn't Die – set in a haunted house and with a genuinely ingenious mystery – is pure Toler. Just Off Broadway, which had Shayne solving a case whilst sitting on a jury, was less accomplished, but this one ends the Nolan series on a high, effortlessly recapturing the flavour of the first film. Tracing a murky investigation from the second Shayne gets pitched into the mystery – fielding the call in his dingy office and reeling off a list of made-up references – to the moment he wraps it up, it's a real treat. It's also nice to see Shayne get a girlfriend who can handle him. An extra 10 minutes would have been welcome, allowing the whodunit to be unwrapped in a more leisurely fashion and providing time during the climax for something other than solid exposition, though given half a chance I'm sure Nolan would have spent it all wisecracking anyway.

This is a fun little detective movie. It actually follows the storyline of The High Window a lot more closely than the later (and much inferior) The Brasher Doubloon. I gather that Michael Shayne's character is quite the wise-ass (he certainly is in this movie), but that's not too much of a stretch from the original Philip Marlowe, and Lloyd Nolan is quite enjoyable in the role.

Of course, like all Chandler adaptations, this one moves much too quickly to capture the hot, sticky southern California atmosphere that pervades so many of the original novels. The running time is too short to include every aspect of the novel, of course, and a couple of my favorite parts were left out, but overall, this is far superior to the version of the same novel that came out a few years later starring George Montgomery (The Brasher Doubloon). One of the better "second-tier" 40s mysteries I've seen.