Postal Inspector

This film stars Ricardo Cortez as the title character investigating various mail fraud schemes, and, ultimately, the theft of 3 million bucks earmarked for destruction. Patricia Ellis plays a nightclub singer who falls for Cortez' brother. Bela Lugosi plays the nightclub owner who pulls the heist.

The second half of the film takes place during a flood, with Cortez promising everyone the mail will still get through, by train, plane, or boat if necessary. Right. I can't even get my store circulars delivered on time during a sunny day.

Cortez is better than usual, and Ellis is very attractive. She sings a few songs which are not memorable, including this ditty aboard a plane flying through dense fog while her maid (Hattie McDaniel) bugs her eyes out a la Mantan Moreland: "Here we are together flying high, We're up in heaven, you and I, We'll be coming down to earth someday, But in the meantime, let's be gay."

Well, I guess if you think you're about to crash, it's a good time to experiment with your orientation.

I doubt that any movie ever made better use of stock footage of floods than "Postal Inspector." Every time the tale sags -- or more accurately sogs -- it's back to some unfortunate town where the river is rising, the dam done burst, homes are being washed away and people are trudging through muck and mire (not to be confused with the vaudeville act of the same name,) trying to escape the deluge. The big chase scene even replaces cars and horses with speedboats. The plot centers on Bela Lugosi as a night club owner, drowning in debt, who tries to steal $3 million in old bills being transported by the US Post Office. Fortunately, Ricardo Cortez is there to sink him, aided by Patricia Ellis as a night club singer who manages to warble a few Frank Loesser tunes before the water rises. It's actually not a bad little thriller and manages to float along in a fast-moving 58 minutes.

This was long thought to be a lost film, but it has been resurrected using a number of different prints so quality varies, but entertainment is still consistent. This is an odd film being a mixture of genres namely thriller,disaster, musical and quasi-documentary about the post office. A number of crimes involving the post office are shown mainly tragic, but a couple are very funny. Eventually it centres on a train robbery of old banknotes en route to the federal mint. Ricardo Cortez is all suave self assurance as the leading detective assigned to the case, while Patricia Ellis is drop dead gorgeous as a chanteuse who may be involved with the robbery. Bela Lugosi as a club owner with links to a gambling syndicate only has a small role. Last part of the film takes place in a flood with stock footage lifted from the Johnstown flood interspersed with new studio shot scenes which blend quite well. Some may dislike the jingoistic tone of the film regarding the post office, but the movie fairly zips along and the denouement is exciting.

Postal Inspector (1936)

*** (out of 4)

A city is being ravished by a flood when a group of criminals (including Bela Lugosi) decide to steal three million from the post office, which gets the postal inspector (Richard Cortez) involved. I was really shocked to see how much I liked this little film that has some wonderful comic moments dealing with various ways people get ripped off and the ending was full of great action. The special effects of the city being ripped apart by water were all very well done, although some stock footage was used. An interesting note was that this was Lugosi's final film for Universal under his Dracula contract.

I kept singing "You've never seen anything like it" from Doctor Dolittle as I watched this because I hadn't seen anything like it.

Ricardo Cortez plays a postal inspector who meets up with a nightclub singer on a plane having trouble landing. The singer sings a song to help calm everyone. The plane lands and we find that the singers manager is Bela Lugosi a Mexican business man in deep with the mob. After several scenes of Cortez showing what a postal inspector does the singer takes a shower and sings. A friend of Cortez is actually wooing the singer and everyone ends up at a night club where we get another song. Lugosi finds out that the younger inspector is going to be moving some old currency so he plots to steal it so he can get out of debt. A flood happens as the robbery goes down. There's another song before Cortez springs into action.

All that and more in an hour.

As odd mixes of genre's go I'd be hard pressed to come up with one as loopy as this.

I have no idea if I liked it, but I do know its a unique viewing experience. If you want to see how to put mutually exclusive genres together and make it kind of work this is the movie for you. See it and you too can sing that you've never seen anything like it...