Sensation Hunters

Grim and sour, this well made Monogram noir from 1945 is almost their answer to PRC's bleak hit DETOUR. The three main women in this film are exceptionally beautiful, especially Constance Worth. Lead actress Doris Merrick is the sweet factory worker with the most hideous family who falls for the worst guy in town. She ends up in Club Paradise, which is sort of a casino nightclub brothel, and a crooked pathway to doom. What a sad tale of hard boiled despair. Even her charming and likable trumpeter pal Ray gets jailed for a month, in which she has enough time to go wrong. The sets and costumes are very good, as is the music score. There is an astonishing epileptic set of clumsy tap dance routines, so unexpected and badly presented, it is as if they were shoehorned in to flesh out the running time. They are genuinely 5 star terrible and do not even match the music on the soundtrack. There is undertones of DOUBLE INDEMNITY and well crafted occasional spookiness. The opening is a zinger. However the original title SENSATION HUNTERS is ridiculous. CLUB PARADISE is far better and more tawdry in an appropriate Monogram style. It's pretty good all round, and I would love to see an uncut DVD: the one available has terrible TV commercial hack marks with large bits of some scenes missing.

This picture exhibits the same strain of pessimistic fatalism that underpins Edgar Ulmer's "Detour." Robert Lowery's blase demeanor is perfect for the role of the blue ribbon heel, Isabel Jewell is on hand to do her reliable turn as the cynical doxie, and there are a couple of lively tap numbers thrown in for good measure during a night club sequence.

The hopeless moodiness of a factory town cabaret is effectively established throughout.

Pair it with "Detour" and you'll have the perfect downbeat double bill, provided you accompany it with a steady stream of Chesterfield cigarette smoke, and a couple of quickly downed "side-cars." Good job Monogram.

The plot and characters hold your attention with suspense and an ending that you hope you're wrong about. Probably too melodramatic for some tastes, but for others it's nice to see something from that era without the over-the-top silliness that (all due respect) they considered "comic relief."

In "The Bad and the Beautiful," Kirk Douglas plays a successful producer who fires his director (clearly based on Fritz Lang) because that director isn't goosing up a certain scene. On his way out, the director warns that you can't use the same tone all the way through: you have to build a film with ups and downs, with rhythm and song.

The producer takes over and ends up with a movie that he shelves. It had passion in every scene but no life.

This movie could be that one. Superficially, it has a lot: sexy girls, musical numbers that aren't bad (at least compared to the norm), more or less competent actors (again, compared) and a pretty good setup.

The story revolves around the Paradise Club, where our heroine — a good girl with oafs for father and brother — ends up as a "dancer." A good half of the movie is spent getting us there and introducing the characters.

She is loved by a beginning bandmaster who makes good (in another club) by the end of the movie. But she loves a gigolo who has already been through the club's owner, a strong, sexy blond. He is completely without redeeming value, but all the girls love him. During the story, he hits up his old loves for money until he ditches our heroine, then comes to her for money to leave town with her best friend.

This could have been a noir "Moulin Rouge" where the performance and life overlapped, and you can see that writer had something like that in mind, even highlighting that the second half of the movie could be a dream.

But it has no variation in tone at all. Things start at 35 miles per hour and stay there forever. That has killed this movie, so dead that it is all but unavailable, and I'm the first commenter.

Now that's dead. Kirk would understand.

(This movie is in the public domain.)

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Where is George Sanders? When I watch a film where it is question of a cad, I always think about George Sanders, I don't know why...This little film is however not uninteresting, first because it is rare, and second because the topic and story telling could have been worse, far worse, regarding of the low budget. And a Christy Cabanne is also a gem to purchase; he was a prolific director for the industry, maybe too prolific; the quality was forgotten, except for a couple of movies such as OUTCASTS OF POKER FLATS and a MUMMY feature. So, yes, this little movie deserves to be watched and not despised at all. Good little drama. And acting is rather very effective for such a B picture which looks like an Edgar G Ulmer's film. .