Bureau criminel

HOMICIDE BUREAU is a nifty little police "B" melodrama from 1939 of interest mainly for the very beautiful (and very young, age 20) Rita Hayworth in the female lead as a forensics expert who replaces a police department's veteran (aged 60 and forced into mandatory retirement!). Across town, ex-felon Marc Lawrence trails a man into a pool hall and shoots him down in the presumably empty hall. The bartender happens onto the scene and (in an astonishingly incredible scene) the ex-con (gun still in his hand) is startled and darts away - the bartender then spots the murder victim's gun (he had been beaten to the draw) picks it up and chases out into the street where he spots the murderer driving away and then begins to shoot up his car but the man gets away. He is later able to identify the man but the man insists he has gone straight and is now a junk dealer and when his gang members replace the windshield with a new, broken windshield and plant a gun in the car that was not the murder weapon, he is released much to "copper" Bruce Cabot's disgust. The man is in fact in the salvage business - but is part of a ring that is selling black market scrap metal to foreign countries to make munitions. There are two more murders, close calls for several cops including the chief, and lots of action before a predictable finale in this 58-minute little pistol with a hard-line "once a crook, always a crook" mentality.

Rita is absolutely gorgeous and to her credit, does suggest a woman with the intellect to handle her position although her role is quite secondary. I've never been particularly impressed with Bruce Cabot before but he is sensational here as a cop so hard he makes many more famous film noir tough-guy movie policemen seem like milquetoast. Marc Lawrence is very good too but the movie is stolen by Norman Willis as the gang leader. Willis, looking like a tougher Ricardo Cortez and sounding like a scarier Edward G. Robinson, played a ton of henchmen in films during this era (usually in small roles) but I don't think he ever had such a major menacing role to rival his gang leader/businessman here. I'm not quite sure who Richard Fiske plays in this movie, a cop or a crook, his role is quite small despite his billing, but he later became a real-life WWII hero, dying in action in 1944. This Columbia "B" may be long forgotten but it's a remarkably successful venture into Warner Bros. mean streets territory.

One thing that surprised me in this film was the amount of scientific documentation it exhibits. A female scientist is assigned to the police department in a forensics position. I was also surprised at how little controversy was shown about that fact. But during the course of the movie, comparison of materials (from a single source or not), ballistics evidence, weapon edge evidence and more are all showcased. Not quite a commercial for police as scientific marvels, seeing as how another part of the main story involves whether or not police ought to be able to rough up criminals or not, but considering how far before the Miranda ruling this movie was made, it now comes across as an interesting look at the state of forensics in the late 1930s. For true devotees of The New Detectives (and maybe CSI, though it has little to do with crime scenes per se), this is certainly an interesting title.

Homicide Bureau is a modest B crime movie with Rita Hayworth as a forensic expert in a small part and Bruce Cabot as a violent cop (see his scene where he beats Marc Lawrence). The best scenes are those showing the police methods, some violent and some scientific, which is unexpected in a 1939 movie. Director Charles Coleman directed a few movies in the 30's and became after an assistant director on some strong classics. Script writer Earl Snell wrote more than a hundred titles, all B movies that have no reputation, maybe there might be some surprises.

Bruce Cabot is a detective who is angry that so often gangsters get away with their crimes because of stupid things like the Bill of Rights! When time and again the cops are thwarted, he suggests pretending these civil rights no longer exist (or at least temporarily put on hold). At one point, he says basically "just let me beat the truth out of him" to the Captain! However, despite this start, the film is actually NOT a "let's beat the gangsters to a bloody pulp" film, but excels at showing the forensic work the police and police labs (headed by Rita Hayworth in a bit of unusual casting) do in order to catch criminals. Plus, in order to keep the film from being too cerebral and low-key, there is some dandy action as well--particularly during the exciting ending.

While so often the term "B-movie" has come to mean a cheap or badly made film, HOMICIDE BUREAU is evidence that just because the production values are lower than a big-budget film doesn't mean the film is second-rate. Sure, Bruce Cabot and the then unknown Rita Hayworth were not particularly famous at the time, but they were good actors and the writing is far better than a typical crime film. In fact, compared to the gangster and cop films being made by rival (and bigger budget) studio, Warner Brothers, this Columbia picture seems far more realistic and less formulaic. One reason the film worked so well is that I THOUGHT by introducing Miss Hayworth that the film would become a clichéd "women have no place in a man's world" diatribe, but the fact that she was a woman (and a beautiful one at that) was not an important part of the film--the police came to accept her very quickly and the film centered instead on good old fashioned police work. The bottom line is that the film still holds up well today and held my interest throughout.

Homicide Bureau (1939)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Fun and fast paced Columbia 'B' film has Bruce Cabot playing a homicide detective who wants to use force to get confessions from some gangsters trying to take the city over. If you're a fan of 'B' films then you should get a kick out of this one since there's never a dull moment within its 57-minute running time. There's plenty of fast action as well as a nice shoot out at the end that makes this one a tad bit better than most in its field. Cabot is always worth watching and he does a nice job here. Rita Hayworth has a small supporting role as a forensic expert.