Big Town After Dark

Pretty good little programmer. No one expects Oscar bait from Pine-Thomas's budget productions. Still, the cast appears motivated, while the script, though convoluted, has a couple good twists. I'm particularly impressed with an animated Reed who too often delivered wooden performances, but not here. Seems he's playing editor of a city newspaper that's trying to take down the town's gambling casinos. At the same time he's working to keep his staff together while trying to accommodate the boss's ambitious daughter. But things aren't always as they seem, as he eventually finds out.

Kudos to director Thomas—half of the Pine-Thomas producing team—who shows skill at directing. I wouldn't be surprised if his presence behind the camera had a lot to do with motivating the cast. My only gripe is with the under-use of the great Hillary Brooke. Her regal presence always adds to movie proceedings. Here, however, she doesn't have much to do after the opening scene.

Anyway, nothing memorable here, just a good little time-passer based on a popular radio program of the time.

After an argument causes his best reporter "Lorelei Kilbourne" (Hillary Brooke) to tender her 2-week notice, a newspaper's managing editor "Steve Wilson" (Phillip Reed) immediately hires a fairly attractive young woman named "Susan Peabody" (Ann Gillis) to replace her. Naturally, the fact that Susan just happens to be the niece of the man who owns the newspaper causes some speculation but what concerns Lorelei even more is the suspicion that Susan isn't being totally honest about her past. However, when news breaks that Susan has been kidnapped by some local gamblers, things begin to take a deadly turn for everyone involved. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a passable crime-drama which was diminished somewhat by the paint-by-numbers direction and rather mediocre acting overall. Be that as it may, although this clearly wasn't a great movie by any means, I found it to be adequate for the time spent and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

It''s the kind of crime drama that spread in the forties, it is easy to confound it with many other of this kind. It iis talkative, boring, despite the short length. A newspaper man denouncing, fighting against gambling ring. Who cares? I tried to watch it closely but failed. I got asleep, I highly prefer Phil Karlson's SCANDAL SHEET or any other Horace McCoy's novels adaptation. I won't advise to any buff to watch this one at any cost. Watch it only if you have nothing else to do, because it is rare and bearable. I don't know the director and am not in a hurry to discover his filmography. That's all.

"Big Town After Dark" is a decent B-movie from tiny Pine-Thomas, a company known for its mediocre and sub-par Bs. Fortunately, this is one of the better films they made.

Steve (Phillip Reed) is the managing editor of a newspaper. His day is looking pretty glum when his star reporter, Lorelei (Hillary Brooke) announces she's quitting to become a literary writer. He's desperate to keep her there...but he has another problem to deal with...his boss wants him to hire the niece...and she has no experience at a newspaper. Then Steve gets an idea....use the boss' niece to try to keep Lorelei with the paper. Little did he know that this would NOT be a particularly good idea!

This film has a lot of noir elements--the nasty bossman who runs the town and a local gambling den, folks getting the snot knocked out of them and murder! Well worth seeing and an interesting story once it got going.

A typical reporter crime movie. As usual, there is a crack female reporter and her sidekick, the guy she loves, who's having to go it alone. Enter a little 21 year old femme fatale who plays the innocent and disrupts things. She is trouble from the start, but the blinders are on and she manages to work things up. She has connections to a gang that runs a gambling palace in Big Town. Anyway, this is pretty much what you would expect. There are misleading clues, bad judgments, sloppy reporting, just plain carelessness. It's interesting how these guys get themselves into life and death situations and don't bother to have any backup. Suffice it to say, even though the big lug has a fixation on this little woman, it's the rock solid older woman who pulls him back to his senses. Unfortunately, he ends up in the hospital in the process. A decent film, but no new territory.