I Cover Chinatown

Elaine Shepherd arrives in San Francisco to visit with sister Polly Ann Young. Miss Young is married to Theodore von Eltz. Eltz owns a jewelry store at the edge of Chinatown with his brother. Their main income is as a fence. Miss Young has found out, and proposes to leave him. She vanishes. In the meantime, Miss Shepherd has met Norman Foster and Vince Barnett, who operate a sightseeing bus.

Foster also directed the movie, his first time wielding the megaphone, and he does a terrific job for a Poverty Row B movie. The dialogue and visual pacing move right along. There's a lot of location shooting on San Francisco's streets, and references to actual San Francisco institutions. Foster does such a good job that he makes Barnett not terribly annoying, and Harry Gribbon is okay in a small role as an express man.

Foster would appear in a couple of other movies over the next few years, and then again starting in the 1970s. In the meantime he directed B movies and television. He died in 1976, aged 72.

A couple hoods operate a jewelry store but it's really a front for their illegal activities. One of them is married and his wife has been kept a virtual prisoner by him and she's had enough. However, when she confronts him for this and his illegal activities, he kills her! Coincidentally, the wife's sister is coming to visit and when she arrives, he creates a story about them having an argument and her leaving for a day or so to cool off. But when days pass, and she keeps asking about her sister, the hood springs into action. Fortunately, the woman has just made a couple friends on her way there...and these guys help her because the police are about the dumbest I've ever seen in an old B-movie...and that's saying a LOT! Can they solve the murder on their own since the police are a bunch of potatoheads?

This film stars Norman Foster...as well as directed by him. In fact, he did so well directing that he quit acting to direct full-time after this B. Overall, not a great film by any stretch but enjoyable. It would be better had the police shown some level of competence but here they are there strictly for laughs.