Shake Hands with Murder

Patsy Brent (Adrian), and Eddie Jones (Jenks) are co-owners of a bail bond business. Patsy wants to stick to the small stuff but Eddie believes they should think big and go after the bigger bond crimes. When he posts a $25,000 bail for an accused embezzler, Steve Morgan (Fowley), Patsy is livid. She insists they find Morgan, turn him over to the police and get their bond back. She accidentally meets Morgan but doesn't realize it's him. Patsy and Eddie go to the investment company Morgan supposedly embezzled from and while there, the company's president is found dead. Patsy tracks down Morgan and they then together search a hunting lodge where Morgan thinks one of the investment company board members has hidden the stolen bonds. The board members have been tricked into coming to the lodge and Morgan sets a trap to catch the thief and killer. It's all rather silly but Iris Adrian, Frank Jenks and Douglas Fowley make it a fun time killer on a rainy afternoon. All together, those three must have been in hundreds of movies. Typically, Adrian and Jenks make with the wisecracks. Fowley plays a good guy in this movie, as often as not he generally played a bad guy.

This is a quickie and a cheapie which at the time went under the genre heading of a 'gag and gangster comedy'. In fact, there aren't any gangsters in it, and the only crime is white collar crime by businessmen. The leading lady is Iris Adrian, who despite being only 32 was already making her fiftieth film. She is one of those wise-cracking dames, but her voice is so loud and rasping, the wisecracks can be injurious to your health. Best to wear ear plugs. Despite the fact this film was made for about ten dollars, and shows it, it is amusing and diverting. I call a picture a C picture when it was made for ten dollars or less. B pictures can cost as much as a hundred dollars. (That was a joke.) Well, they cranked these things out to make double-bills and that is why they were about an hour long and nobody took much trouble over them. Maybe they made them in the lunch hour. They threw in a glamour guy, a few spooky looking guys, a wise-cracking dame, her sidekick whose jokes never quite make the grade, a couple of heavies, a respectable citizen or two, and thought of something to happen. A story idea helped from time to time. In this one, Iris Adrian is actually the lead player as a female bail bond broker. Naturally, she has to be a bit tough because she is bailing hoods all the time. But as we know from the movies, tough gals always have wilting romantic hearts buried somewhere deep inside, covered in the dust of having been trampled on too many times. Oh yes, the plot. Somebody has stolen some bonds from a financial company, and it is one of the board members. Then the Chairman is strangled because he is onto the crook. Follow the dots from there.

A ditzy bail bonds duo (Adrian & Jencks) stand to lose all their money when they gamble on springing a big time executive from jail who unfortunately disappears after release. Then, while tracking him down, they get caught up in a related murder. Now they have to find the fugitive and solve a murder at the same time.

Actually the flick's almost two movies stitched together. The first half features Adrian tracking down the bail bond skipper. But the blonde toughie almost disappears as Fowley takes over the second-half whodunit part. I expect there's a backstory to the odd shift. Nonetheless, color galore is supplied by brassy sassy Iris Adrian as the bail bonds executive. I kept expecting her usual role to arrive with a plate of food or take a dinner order. Still, she's a powerhouse in an unexpected leading part. But pity poor Frank Jencks, her business partner, who she treats like a dim-bulb go-fer, while Douglas Fowley gets to play a good guy for a change. And watch for two other traditional baddies: the mustachioed Jolley and the hulking Stutenroth.

Director Herman films in straightforward fashion without much noirish embellishment or mood. Note how Fowley replaces Adrian in the second half as the detective. He's a more plausible crime-solver, but the ditzy blonde would have made a more creative impression, having her stumbling ways somehow catch the culprit. Anyway, for fans of Adrian, myself included, the programmer amounts to something of half-a-showcase, plus an unusually inventive reveal.

Darn tootin' they were and that was high cotton for two players usually delegated to the bottom half of the cast list, and sometimes not credited at all.

But it ends up as being mostly an Iris Adrian and Douglas Fowley movie, when Patsy Brent (Iris Adrian), girl bail bondsman...bondswoman...the heck with it...girl bail bond broker, finds that her partner, Eddie Jones (Frank Jenks), who is trying to acquire a better class clientele has invested all of their capital to bail Steve Morgan (Douglas Fowley), investment company executive who has been framed on an embezzlement charge out of jail. And Morgan has disappeared.

Trying to find Morgan, Patsy stumbles across the body of John Clark (Herbert Rawlinson), Morgan's ex-boss, not to mention now late boss. Patsy spots Morgan and catches up with him at a mountain lodge, where he convinces her of his innocence. They spend a week searching together for the missing bonds Morgan was accused of stealing, and spending a week at a mountain lodge with a man is nothing new for characters played by Iris Adrian, and the suspicion is she really wasn't in that much of a hurry to find the bonds.

They finally find the bonds hidden in a secret compartment which has been rigged as a booby trap. Well,that's what Fowley called it while looking squarely at Adrian and keeping a square face all the while, which wasn't that easy for Fowley, who was not known for overlooking a chance to smirk. Anyway, this booby trap is rigged so that when the panel is opened a wire leading from the panel to a suit of armor, causes the arm of the armor to raise and fire a gun hidden within it to fire at the person opening the panel. And, no, I don't care to explain it again. Even Iris understood it explained that way.

Morgan tricks the board of directors into coming to the lodge and, when they arrive, he asks them alone one by one to open the panel, telling them that's where the missing bonds are hidden. He knows the guilty person will, knowing the panel is still booby-trapped, refuse. The board includes characters played by Gene Roth, I. Stanford Jolley, Forrest Taylor and George Kirby, so there is no shortage of usual suspects. But the film has zipped right along and is now in need of some padding, so Morgan gets to test them all and the culprit is the last tested. The suspect listing above may or may not have anything to do with which one was tested last.

Iris Adrian is partner with Frank Jenks as bail bondsmen. Jenks has closed what he thinks is a great deal; he's collected $2,500 from Douglas Fowley against a $25,000 bail. The trouble is that Fowley is accused of stealing $100,000 in bearer bonds, and if he takes the stolen money and scarpers, they're on the hook for more than they have. So Miss Adrian follows him to his office, and discovers a corpse.

It's a rough little mystery from PRC, but it shows what they could do with a decent script, a competent director like Albert Herman, and good performers: turn out a watchable comedy-mystery. It's a subgenre made for a direly cheap production company, because you don't have to be a good writer to turn out a good mystery, you need to play fair with the rules and the audience -- Agatha Christie certainly proved that. You won't hail this as a classic, but you'll watch it painlessly to the end.