Respect the Law

I really enjoy the Crime Does Not Pay series of short films from MGM. However, after recently purchasing the DVD set, I notice that the quality and style of the films seems to have declined around WWII. In the earlier films, there was lots of action, violence and realism. However, starting in around 1940, topics changed from mobsters and killings to patriotism and civic duty. Not surprisingly, this sort of stuff comes off as preachy and is far less interesting to watch. While the usual MGM polish is still present, the films are a lot less watchable.

"Respect the Law" sure has a preachy title--and its purpose is to instill good citizenship with a message about as subtle as a stripper at a Baptist picnic! When the film begins, a businessman doesn't want to be bothered with the cost of paying for exterminators at the docks. Instead, he just bribes the official in charge of inspections. However, when Bubonic Plage breaks out because of all the rats, he and the inspector sure regretted their less than patriotic behaviors. In other words, if you cheat, you HATE America! Preachy, preachy, preachy. There's really nothing more I need to say about this one. It's watchable but also comes off as heavy-handed and a bit ridiculous.

How selfishness endangers society. Apropos during the Covid pandemic.

Respect the Law (1941)

*** (out of 4)

Thirty-third entry in MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series with this one taking a look at minor crimes and how they can be just as dangerous as major crimes. In the film, a ship dock owner (Richard Lane) buys off a Health Inspector so that he can avoid cleaning the rats off his dock. This doesn't seem too big at the time but soon the rats bring in a plague that starts killing hundreds of people. This isn't the best film in the series but it's another good entry that gets its point across even though it's pretty heavily handled at times. As with most films in the series, I'm really not sure how much good they did as I'm sure people forgot the message as they walked out of the theater but perhaps these did leave their mark on a few. Lane, from Columbia's Boston Blackie series, turns in a good performance and you can also look for a young Hugh Beaumont from Leave It to Beaver fame.

Richard Lane is confronted with a city ordinance to beef up his docks. Instead, he bribes inspector Frank Orth to avoid the expense. The result is rats, rats, and bubonic plague, because Crime Does Not Pay!

Moroni Olsen plays the doctor in charge of quelling the plague; often in this long-running MGM series, he played the head of the criminal gang. I'm sure he appreciated the change of pace. He had entered movies in 1934, and quickly established himself as a capable character actor, able to play Porthos or the Pope in more than a hundred movies over the following twenty years. He died in 1954 at age 65.

It's A Crime Does Not Pay Subject from MGM. The premise is that small crimes lead to greater crimes. In the short, Johnson scoffs at the $26k rat-proofing ordinance and uses a $2500 bribe to get around the order. Soon, rats over-run the docks which leads to an outbreak of plague.

While I'm fine with this episode, there is a danger to the message. Quite frankly, this speaks more to the imbalance of perception between white collar crimes and other crimes. A bribe to a city official is a much bigger danger to society than one would expect. One could take the message of this short and propose a broad indiscriminate sweep of all crimes like jaywalking or curfew violation. I would massage the message to making white collar crimes into a more important level instead of the broken window theory of crime.