Assigned to Danger

There's a payroll robbery, and the insuring firm sends investigator Gene Raymond looking for Noreen Nash in a remote resort; she was married to the supposed mastermind. She owns the resort, but is closing it down, preparing to sell it, but Raymond sweet-talks her into letting him stay for a couple of days, pretending to be a doctor looking for some rest. It turns out that her husband, Robert Bice, is there, badly wounded, and Raymond is dragooned into tending him; if Bice dies, he's told, so does Raymond.

It's a dark crime drama produced by Eagle-Lion as they dug their way out of their PRC roots. Happily, the director is Budd Boetticher, still credited as Oscar, and he puts some depth and variety into the characters. Miss Nash regrets her marriage, but figures she is now damaged goods, and western heavy Gene Evans is there as a mute, brutish handyman. It's a fast B movie with little pretensions, but plenty of foreboding and heat.

This is a wonderful gem among gangster thrillers of the lesser kind: The story is two-dimensional, and all except the beginning takes place inside a secluded hotel without a telephone out in the wilderness somewhere. The moment Gene Raymond arrives there he is filled with misgivings, as nothing seems right: the hotel refuses to accept him, since it is being sold off, but later the hostess Noreen Nash changes her mind and lets him stay. Another couple is moving out of the hotel having had enough of its "Fawlty Towers" nature. A deaf-mute, Joey, is haunting the place as some sort of factotum, but he is helpful in scaring anyone off by his scary nature. In fact, he becomes the hero of the play. The plot thickens as the gangsters arrive, one of them seriously wounded, and the gangsters force Genie Raymond to fix him up, believing him to be a doctor, while he is just an insurance company investigator. The plot goes on thickening, while remaining quite logical and consistent all the way, the script is a masterpiece delivering delightful repartees all the time, and the acting is fair play all the way. This is a bleak thriller with great dramatic potential for anyone to enjoy thoroughly.

Dan Sullivan (Gene Raymond) is an insurance investigator. He's working on a case and the trail leads to a small hotel. However, once he's there, he realizes he's in way over his head, as a gang of very dangerous criminals are hiding out there. In fact, one is badly injured and possibly dying. Due to a mixup, the criminals THINK that Dan is a doctor and they force him to care for their injured boss. He realizes that he better go along with it, as they'll surely kill him if they find out his's not able to help them. So Dan has to bide his time...waiting and hoping for an opportunity to escape.

The plot is much like that you see in "The Desperate Hours"...simple but very exciting. In fact, it's much better than the average B-movie....much of it due to the wonderful moody atmosphere. Well worth seeing.

Budd Boetticher directed 1948's Assigned to Danger.

Gene Raymond plays an insurance investigator hoping to get a line on an $80,000 payroll robbery. He traces the sister of one of the robbers to a resort she owns. While there, the crooks arrive, and one of them is seriously injured. Thinking Raymond is a doctor, they force him to help.

Gene Evans plays a mute man with a unibrow. He works on the property.

I've always found Gene Raymond a bland, serviceable leading man. As he matures, he moved out of those roles and became more interesting.

Though this is low-budget, Boetticher does a good job ramping up the tension in this dark film. The dialogue and atmosphere aren't much.

Assigned To Danger / Budd Boetticher (1948). Eagle-Lion Films. Eagle-Lion Films was a British company owned by financier J. Arthur Rank. In 1945, Poverty Row company PRC had a sleeper hit in "The Enchanted Forest" a fantasy film in color that, at 84 minutes, was a standard feature film, rather than the usual programmer of 55 to 75 minutes that PRC put out (run times short to allow a double feature). That was when the managers at PRC thought they could do better so decided to let themselves be absorbed into the U.K. Eagle-Lion, a little more upscale, and ditched the PRC brand. By 1948, however, Eagle-Lion was still producing the same kind of studio bound double feature films ("Assigned To Danger" is 66 minutes long) that PRC was known for. It's not a bad little film. All the actors a competent and take the proceedings seriously. After a botched robbery which got the leader seriously wounded, the hold-up men take refuge in a remote resort hotel in the mountains. Meanwhile, insurance investigator Dan Sullivan (Gene Raymond, "The Locket") gets wind of a gang connection at the resort and drives up there. He takes an immediate liking to the hotel's owner Bonnie (Noreen Nash) but she encourages him not to stay, saying she has sold the property and is closing up, but she rents him a room for one night. That is when the band on the run shows up. Due to a misunderstanding, the desperate robbers believe Dan to be a doctor. They demand that Dan fix up the wounded man but will kill him if the man dies. Also with Gene Evans (The Steel Helmet, The Bravados) in his second credited role. There is a whiff of The Petrified Forest about this picture as well as the same year's Key Largo.