You May Be Next!

"You May Be Next!" is a B-movie that manages to be a bit better than normal, thanks to a most unusual plot.

Neil (Lloyd Nolan) is an expert on radios and one night he's scouting out locations for a new radio tower. However, he isn't too careful and his equipment ends up jamming all the local radio frequencies...including the police's who are looking for a gang of crooks. As a result, the crooks make a clean getaway. But the leader of these crooks learns about Neil's mistake and he decides to steal Neil's equipment and kidnap Neil to start a reign of terror...and profitable crime.

The story is interesting and as you'd expect, Nolan is quite good in the lead. Not a must-see story, of course, but a dandy B-movie that is entertaining and better made than you'd expect. My only complaint is the leading lady. Neil thinks she has an amazing singing voice and wants to make her a radio star, though I think she sings worse than my dog when she is lonely and starts to howl!

Radio engineer Lloyd Nolan meets nightclub singer Ann Southern, and tells her he can get her a tryout at the station he works for. At first she doesn't believe him, and then Nolan gets into a beef with pompous, incompetent station manager Berton Churchill and pops him one, which gets him fired and her tryout cancelled. Meanwhile, Douglas Dumbrille, who runs the nightclub Miss Southern sings at, gets a bright idea. His gang of crooks have been using a radio transmitter to jam police wavelengths, which keeps them from being pursued. Why not pretend he's actually Nolan and blackmail Churchill by threatening to block his broadcasts.

Nolan, as usual, offers a solid, unbelievable performance, and Miss Southern actually could sing; she had been performing with Artie Shaw's orchestra. The details of how Nolan sends word of where he's being kept by Dumbrille's hoods is sent out early, and everyone studiously ignores the obvious clue until the time arrives to end the movie. I also don't know what the title refers to.

You May Be Next! is a pretty good little Columbia programmer with a broadcasting setting that has as its main plot mechanism the jamming of signals, whether accidental or deliberate (on the part of some gangsters.) It offers stars Ann Sothern and Lloyd Nolan decent parts and in the supporting cast there is a stand out contribution by Berton Churchill as a stuffy radio chief and get a load of that futuristic looking radio repair car. It doesn't wear out its welcome as it is all over within 66 minutes.