Don't Gamble with Strangers

"Don't Gamble with Strangers" is a B-movie from Monogram Pictures...a studio that specialized in Bs as well as movie serials. Monogram was well known for making films on the cheap...some very bad, a few very good. This one falls somewhere in between.

When the story begins, two card cheats meet up and form a partnership. Mike (Kane Richmond) is the tougher and meaner of the two...and he aims to get whatever he can out of life no matter who he steps on...including his partner, an old partner who did him wrong, his own brother and an assistant district attorney. He's so cocky and takes so many chances, you figure sooner or later he'll get what's coming to him.

Aside from a very odd and surprising finale, the film is pretty much what you'd expect...a film trying hard to push across the message that crime doesn't pay. It's not exactly subtle, though the acting is decent and the story moves along swiftly, so it makes for a decent time-passer...but not much more.

This film is not as bad as might be expected. The supporting characters are well developed and Miss Hayes is both menacing and vulnerable. Miss Warren was only in five films and this is a decent role for her. Great voice, perky looks, should have worked more.

as being good because it isn't. It has an interesting opening credits sequence with a deck of cards and then we meet Bernadette Hayes (Fay) as she fleeces some innocents at a poker game. Kane Richmond (Mike) is watching and twigs what is going on. These two then team up as a brother/sister combo to rip people off on cruises, casinos and the like.

I only watched this film about a week ago and can't remember much about it apart from the story not being very good. The fact that it is unmemorable speaks volumes. It's not memorable for a reason.

It zips along but falls short of any grabbing storyline – the usual man/woman love thing goes on and Richmond falls for another woman other than his pretend sister which obviously gets to her. There is a gangster set-up and nightclub wrong-doings but when the film finishes, nothing really sticks in the mind.

Kane Richmond and Bernadene Hayes are a couple of card sharps hustling people who think they know how to play poker. When they hit a new town, Miss Hayes thinks their partnership will continue. She discovers that Richmond has quite a past and plans for the future.

It's a Monogram movie directed by William Beaudine, so you might want to give this one a miss. The performers and crew try their best, with some nice noir lighting by cameraman William Sickner, but the script is pretty straightforward, and Beaudine was not the director to seek out depths; he started directing for Biograph towards the end of Griffith's time there, and through the early sound era, he was an accomplished journeyman. However a period in Britain left him out of favor when he returned to Hollywood, and he was relegated to the cheapest of B movies, prized for his ability to get the most script pages on film during a day's shooting, rather than excellence.