El círculo siniestro

...On Michael Keaton in the 80's noir spoof Johnny Dangerously???? The inner circle even had a bit of tongue-in-cheek itself, though in much more of a 1940's innocence.

William Frawley's in top form and

Adele Mara really shines in a part that seems tailor made for her

The cinematography is surprisingly top-notch, though you wouldn't notice if you turned it off after the first 15 minutes. It gets a bit more impressive as it goes along.

Though not finest quality direction, it does move well with some snappy dialogue and interesting staging.

Don't expect academy award performances, but it's still worth a watch, just for a few chuckles and to see it's influence on much later noir spoofs.

--Are you troubled...frightened...suspicious...or merely curious?

--Your problem is my problem.

--Contact Johnny Strange, Private Investigator

And when the camera pans away from a gloved female finger on this Yellow Pages ad, we see on the floor a dead body. This is going to be a case that involves Johnny Strange (Warren Douglas), of Action, Inc.

It's also going to be a case with three beautiful blondes, gruff police lieutenant Webb (William Frawley), smooth, lethal hood Duke York (Ricardo Cortez) and, of course, the corpse. He was Anthony Fitch, a famous radio personality whose specialty was scandal.

For Johnny, it all started when one of those blondes, Gerry Smith (Adele Mara) walks into his office just as he was phoning in an ad for a secretary..."blonde, beautiful, between 22 and 28, and with the skin you love to touch and a heart you can't." Gerry disconnects him, claims the job for herself, and shortly is fielding a call for Johnny to meet a woman with a problem at 7 p.m. The woman turns out to be wearing a heavy veil and sporting a Spanish accent. She takes him to the home of Fitch, where Fitch's body is cooling. It's not long before Johnny is knocked on the head and set up for murder. Even when he's cleared, and trailed by Webb as well as by Gerry, he narrowly escapes a one-way dive off a cliff at the hands of Duke York. Then there is the suspicious reaction to several questions by a nightclub singer who is one of the other blondes. It's not long (for a second time; the movie only runs 57 minutes) before we learn Fitch also dabbled in blackmail and that he was just about to blow the lid off some high society secrets. Johnny figures out why his secretary has been so helpful and who the murderer is. But, of course, he can't prove it. So he gathers all the suspects, plus Webb, to recreate some key scenes in a live radio broadcast coming from the dead man's home. You guessed it...the killer panics in front of a nation-wide radio audience. Johnny gets some free publicity for Action, Inc. And it looks like Gerry is going to sign up for a permanent job.

The Inner Circle is strictly a bottom-of-the-bill programmer, but it does no harm. It combines light-hearted murder with romance, which almost always is a pleasant way to waste a little time. The gathering of the suspects for a radio broadcast where they recreate their roles is so odd and awkwardly written that it has a great deal of weird charm. I wouldn't go out of my way to buy this movie. If the price were more than $5.00 I wouldn't buy it at all. Still, one of the pleasures is Will Wright, a grand character actor, who plays the gardener on the dead man's estate. Wright was a lanky, elderly man who could be counted on to play friendly, slow-speaking old coots. He was at his best, however, as corrupt, aging, defensive whiners. When he showed us mankind's unreliable lower nature, he could give any movie he was in a kind of grubby quality. He's one of my favorites

This is a romantic, comic mystery. Warner Brothers turned out a lot of these in the thirties and early forties. Jane Wyman was often the girl.

Here, we have several girls. We have the secretary who appears out of nowhere. She works for a private investigator, Johnny Strange. (Was there another noun that could be added to Johnny to make a name for a movie character in that decade?) Then there's the mysterious veiled woman who calls for his services. Then there's Virginia Christine (Mrs. Olson of the coffee commercials a few decades later.) She sings in a club. Then there's ... OK: No more about the plot.

That excellent and durable actor Ricardo Cortez somehow found himself at Republic. He turns in a variation on his usual cynical, suave performance. It's not his worst, either. But he is fourth-billed, below William Frawley, who plays a cop. And Adele Mara gets top billing.

It's fun to watch. It could very easily have been better but it isn't terrible.

The mystery is easy to solve, I'm sure everyone who watched this film knew who the killer was right from the start of movie. Way to easy. They did try to throw suspicions another way a couple of times but it didn't hold water so it was easy to hold on to your first and correct guess.

If I were Johnny Strange: I would have been upset if someone came into my office and started taking it over the way the new secretary did. Even worse when she would not let me answer my own calls when I told/asked her to hand me the phone and she refused. Then I would have been furious when she told the police that I shot the man when I did not. On and on with this girl... I would not have liked her from the start even if she (or he in some cases) had a pretty face.

Yea Johnny "Angel" (as I'm calling him) really is Strange, about as strange as his strange secretary.

Not a bad film - kinda cute.

5/10

Warren Douglas, with his B-movie leading-man good looks, appeared in a string of low budget murder yarns. Although regular commercial TV was still a few years away, this film seems to have a 'look' similar to television's detective shows of the 1950's. In fact, a number of this film's supporting cast members would be commonly seen in supporting roles on television, less than ten years hence.

In this particular outing Warren Douglas plays a private eye named 'Johnny Strange' (no kidding), who runs a detective agency called (get ready--) "Action Incorporated".

The story line is somewhat commonplace, starting with the murder of a well known radio personality, and involving a strange "Spanish woman" (that's how the other characters refer to her), some skulking house servants, a missing diamond, a duplicate beautiful blonde, and--of course-- a blustery, mis-guided police detective (William Frawley, who could play these roles in his sleep).

This poverty row feature might turn up on TV, but more likely than not, you'll have to rent or buy a copy of this film from a dealer of video obscurities. Although typical of it's genre, it's an enjoyable watch, nonetheless.

Recommended.