La rapace

This movie, recently made available through a set of film noirs (Volume 4) packaged with two on each disc, gets points for originality. I mean, how many movies - much less film noirs - do you see someone executed, then brought back to life, then shot in the back minutes later? Now that's what you call having a rough day!

Robert Armstrong's "Frank Olins" had to endure all that one day. He's the crook who has the money stashed away somewhere and "Margot Shelby" (Jean Gille) is the woman who is bound-and-determined to get it - all of it. "Frank" claims a few times that if he isn't going get the money when he gets out of jail, nobody will and those aren't words that "Margot" wants to hear! Frank knew this dame and other members of his gang, most notably "Jim Vincent" (Edward Norris) were not trustworthy.

Well, he certainly was right about "Margot." She's the femme fatale - one mean mother - who has only one thing on her mind: money. She never wants to return to her old, poor, dingy ways of her youth in small town England. Now, she's in America, part of gang and she knows how to manipulate men. Of course it helps to be extremely pretty and have a great body, which she does. She plays the men and, well.....like most noirs, the ending is not particularly a happy one for most of the characters in this story.

Personally, in this film I enjoyed seeing a lot of familiar faces from TV programs and such of the 1950s, beginning with a young Sheldon Leonard who plays the tough, pursing cop in this movie. I also thought Armstrong sounded a lot better than in his early '30s adventure stories. Speaking of sound, the music in here was ill-timed, dominating some scenes which took away from the dialog.

Make no mistake, though: this is Gilles' movie. For classic movie fans and particular film noir buffs, this is worth checking out. It's always fun to see a new "face," and that certainly applies to Gillis, whose character reminded me a bit of Peggy Cummins' one in "Gun Crazy."

I thought the ending of this film - the final minute - was especially good. So many times, you get the ending that doesn't stay true to the main character, but this one did.

Jean Gillie (Margot) devises a plan to spring her lover Robert Armstrong (Frank) from prison. She gets help for her plan from Edward Norris (Jim) and an unwilling Herbert Rudley (Dr Craig)). The idea is to get Armstrong to locate some hidden money for them to share. However, there are ulterior motives at play......

Methylene blue is at the centre of this story. It is used in the plot to revive Robert Armstrong after he has been killed as it is an antidote to cyanide poisoning. However, be careful if you want to experiment on someone you don't like very much as it serves as an antidote to the poison while you are living and not after you have died. It takes nothing away from the good idea for the plot though. However, poor Robert Armstrong doesn't live for very long after he is revived and so we don't get to see the side-effects of this drug, which turns your urine green and makes the whites of your eyes blue - we would then have been in a completely different film genre, possibly a comedy horror.

The cast do well despite 3 of them not being very good at acting - Jean Gillies, Herbert Rudley and, in a minor part, Marjorie Woodworth. Jean Gillies, while she is the driving force behind the film is either very good as demonstrated by her ruthlessness while at the steering wheel on the way to dig up the money and her determined self-confidence as she knows what she needs to do, or dreadfully unconvincing as in her scene when she talks about coming from the dirty street to which she never wants to return (her posh Kensington accent fools nobody - she's NEVER been a girl from the streets) and her insane encouragement to Herbert Rudley to dig for the money. Her OTT hysterics are not convincing in both these examples. It is funny to watch, though. Herbert Rudley plays a broken man for most of the film and comes across as a wet fish which is frustrating, although he comes good right at the beginning when he finally becomes a man and pulls a trigger. Still, he is annoying to watch for most of the time as this story unfolds in flashback. As for Marjorie Woodworth who plays Rudley's nurse and girlfriend.....ha ha ha....she's just terrible.

The film is well-paced and atmospheric, eg, the scene when Herbert Rudley is reviving Robert Armstrong and the scene where Jean Gillies engineers a flat tyre situation as she, Rudley and Norris make it to the location where the loot is buried. It is a shame that the film has been cut as it would have been far more powerful and disturbing to see Gillies do what she does to Norris twice as originally filmed as opposed to the one time she does it (which is shocking enough). And her laughter as she fools Sheldon Leonard who plays Sergeant Joe Portugal provides a memorable ending. She was one mean bitch.

The acting is sometimes wooden, the dialogue is sometimes woeful (a very annoying comedy duo at the morgue provide an example of this along with the claptrap speech about coming from that dirty street that Gillies delivers), a posh English accent seems a wrong choice for the lead role and the music is sometimes way too over dramatic but somehow, it doesn't seem to matter. What would normally be a recipe for disaster strangely has a very different effect and produces an entertaining film.

It is sad to discover that in real life, Jean Gillies died of pneumonia 3 years later in 1949 in London.

1946's Decoy is a fascinating noir, directed by Jack Bernhard, whose intention it was to showcase his wife, Jean Gille, for American audiences. Gille had worked since 1935 in British films.

Unfortunately, two things happened to railroad Gille's career - she and Bernhard divorced, and then she died of pneumonia three years after this film was made.

Tall, slender, with silky blond hair and a British accent, Gille has a formidable role here as the noir femme fatale, Margot Shelby, who will stop at nothing to find and possess $400,000 a death row killer has hidden.

To that end, she plays all ends against the middle. He plans to go to his grave with his secret, determined to be the only person who will ever spend that money. No matter how much he loves Margot, he won't tell her where it is.

Margot finds out that methylene blue is the antidote for the gas used to execute prisoners and convinces a doctor (Herbert Rudley), who works at the prison, to administer it after the execution.

Once you're dead, you're dead, except in this film, I guess. Well, somehow, the doc revives this guy, and Margot, the reluctant doctor, and her boyfriend (Edward Norris) go after the loot.

The story is told in flashback by Margot to Sergeant Portugal (Sheldon Leonard), though at the start of the film, we see the segment leading up to Margot telling her story. I actually went back and watched the beginning over.

Gille is tough as nails, and while her acting style is overt, it's perfect for this type of film. She might have enjoyed a career as a noir femme fatale in the U. S. were it not for her misfortune. Good movie, if you can buy resurrection.

I have to say that Decoy was one interesting cinematic experience. The story had a lot of holes in it and the plan that was made by the bad guys had a lot of faults in it.

But what makes this film get as high a rating from me as I give it is the presence of Jean Gillie who made only one more film after this one before dying at 33. Just like another British beauty Kay Kendall.

Gillie is one devil woman and she's got one devilish plan to $400,000.00 of stolen loot that Robert Armstrong has hidden away. She's been Armstrong's moll for years, but he's going to the gas chamber. Never mind Gillie's found a way to beat the gas chamber. But it involves getting a doctor and another hoodlum to pull it off.

The key is Dr. Herbert Rudley who supervises the executions. There's a chemical if administered within a short time that can counteract the effects of cyanide. Gillie puts on quite a campaign to vamp Rudley and soon he's just putty. Her other hoodlum boyfriend Edward Norris is amused at Rudley, but he's also thinking with his crotch.

Even Sheldon Leonard playing a cop instead of gangster for once is also not immune to Gillie when she turns it on. If some company could have bottled what Gillie had and sold it to the government it would be quite a formidable weapon.

The script isn't all that great, but Gillie and the cast of sex struck males really put this Monagram classic over.

A stingingly bizarre noir entry every fan should seek out. Why? First, this ultra-rare crime drama has one of the two or three most ruthless and irredeemable femme fatales in B+W history, Margot Shelby, as blisteringly portrayed by standout brit Jean Gillie. Second, it features one of the strangest hybrid sci-fi/noir premises, introducing an exotic chemical to reincarnate the dead as the conceit to get Margot's man-slaughtering act started. Third, it all actually comes together in this strangely involving prison breakout cum road picture, which takes us all the way from the death chamber to a grove of trees in the woods (another death chamber) and back to where it all began, in a family's quiet suburban house (still another death chamber).

Once you get past the reincarnation, the plot is fairly conventional set pieces which mostly hold up and which benefit from a honey of a twist at the end. Along the way there, we get to see greed, betrayal, spinelessness, insanity, bravery, more betrayal, submission, redemption and more Jean Gillie, whose gin blossom charm and hyena-like guffaw at once blends Richard Widmark's killing debut in KISS OF DEATH with the murderous cackle of SPECTRE in the mirrored killmaze in MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. Either way, she is death and she is irresistible. As is this movie. Find it and you'll see.