Coffins on Wheels

This is another episode of the Crime Does Not Pay series. Sleazy used car dealer Nick buys a wreck and cleans it up. What he doesn't do is make it safe. He sells dangerous junk cars with superficial fixes. Tommy Phillips is a teenager eager to buy his first car. The trouble is that the car comes with bad brakes.

This is actually a very effective episode. It has some action. It has a good villain. It's got the consumer protection angle. It's very effective. I would make one change. Announcing the death of the child should be done in silence. It's done badly here with weak acting. More than anything, it would concentrate the punch to the line where they change the charge to manslaughter. That would be more powerful.

This is a predictable short of the "Crime Does Not Pay" series. No surprises, but it does hold one's interest for the 15-20 minutes of the film. It also provides an historical perspective for our current consumer protection laws. This short is broadcast occasionally on TCM.

An MGM CRIME DOES NOT PAY Short Subject

A crooked car dealer sells COFFINS ON WHEELS, used cars which are dangerously unfit to be on the road.

This little film served as an admonition to car buyers to only purchase vehicles from reputable dealers. It is well made and fast moving, getting its message across effectively.

Darryl Hickman plays the tragic young Billy. Allan Lane is the determined police lieutenant. The vile car dealer is performed by Cy Kendall and his sleazy salesman by an uncredited John Gallaudet.

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Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

I was pretty happy as I watched "Coffins on Wheels", as several of the Crime Does Not Pay shorts preceding this one were pretty dull and preachy. This is because the great series took a bit of a nosedive when WWII began, as MGM began focusing less on organized crime and violence and more on topics like civic duty and patriotism. Yet, somehow, the series avoided these preachy topics and got back to their roots with "Coffins on Wheels".

This film is about unscrupulous used car dealers who buy unsafe cars and give them cosmetic changes to make them seem road-worthy. The jerks in this one have no trouble selling a teenager a car with faulty brakes and it ends up leading to a thrilling and bloody accident. But, as you'd expect with the series, the baddies get theirs in the end! It makes for a very exciting film--one that won't disappoint.

A few folks to look for in this one are a very young Darryl Hickman, the cowboy star Allan 'Rocky' Lane and Roy Gordon. Who is Gordon? Well in the films in this series, the films are introduced by some important government official. In this particular film, it's supposed to be Mr. Blake from the Department of Motor Vehicles, but like ALL the films he's just an actor!

Raymond Bailey is credited as "Ray the Lab Tech" but the actor in this short is definitely not the Raymond Bailey we all know as Mr. Drysdale.

During the scene where the faulty brakes are being examined in the garage there is a policeman standing behind the car that may possibly be Mr. Bailey but it is very difficult to tell.

Other parts of this short are quite interesting such as the older vehicles shown in the street scenes and the prices discussed as well as the dialog between the characters.

Seeing actors like Walter Baldwin, the original Barber on the Any Griffith Show, in his early days is also quite interesting.