The Last Installment

Last Installment, The (1945)

*** (out of 4)

Small time criminal Clyde Peeler (Cameron Mitchell) is set to be released from prison the following day when his cell mate offers him a job in his gang. Peeler says he'll think about it but he finally accepts the job after reading about the life of a famous gangster in a magazine. What Peeler doesn't know is how that story ends but the warden is going to tell him. This is yet another good entry in MGM's Crime Does Not Pay series and once again we learn the downside of being bad. This episode is a little different from some earlier ones as there isn't any introduction at the start of the film and the majority of the film is a flashback. The main guy, Mitchell's character, is only briefly seen, although he ends up doing the narration from start to finish. The movie has a pretty good story, although I do think the gangsters could have been built up a little better. We do have some good scenes with the two different sides doing battle over the West Side and this includes a couple shootings. The moral of the film is pretty easy to swallow here and the way the ending is handled was pretty good and effective.

The only reason I watched this episode of the series was to see CAMERON MITCHELL in his first screen role. He's hardly in it--only at the start and finish--but narrates most of it.

He's in jail about to be released and still thinks the life of a gangster can be a glamorous one. He reads all about the exploits of one of his favorite criminals--and in the end, is shown what has happened to that "glamorous" creature who is now a sad relic of the man he used to be. This, supposedly, convinces Mitchell to go straight once he's released.

It's totally unconvincing and fails to make its point with any distinction. Definitely one of the weakest entries I've ever seen in this so-so documentary series, never subtle in its approach.

Prison cell mates Clyde and Griff are both short-timers. Clyde is considering going straight, but Griff offers him a taste of the roaring 20's. Griff suggests connecting with his criminal cohorts. Clyde is reading a magazine story about glamorous 20's gangster Bull Moose Brannigan.

It's A Crime Does Not Pay Subject short. At its core, this is a character reading a magazine story of a semi-fictional biography. It's not the most compelling way to tell a story. It doesn't help that some of the shooting deaths are done laughably bad. That always breaks me. This is a flat bad scared-straight story.

This installment of the Crime Does Not Pay series begins in prison. A young punk (Cameron Mitchell) is looking forward to returning to a life of crime after his release. Much of this is because while he was in prison, he entertained himself by reading about the exploits of a big-time gangster of the roaring twenties--'Bull Moose' Brannigan (Walter Slade). And the film then goes through a long series of flashbacks showing Brannigan's exploits. However, the soon to be paroled man has not yet finished the story--and the warden invites him in to his office to let him know the rest of the story.

While this film is a bit preachier than most, it is clearly violent and the sort of thing that hearkens back to the best films in the series that were made in the 1930s. During the war years, most of these shorts dipped in quality. But with the war practically won, MGM returned to making crime films about crime! Well worth seeing and entertaining.

Cameron Mitchell is on a two-year vacation courtesy of the Bureau of Prisons. As his time nears its end, he enjoys reading about Bull Moose Brannigan, a very successful criminal of the 1920s. When his cell mate tells him there's a place in the gang after he gets out, Cameron thinks about it, while the audience sees the career of Brannigan on the screen.

During the War, MGM's CRIME DOES NOT PAY series had a lot of war work, worrying its audience about sabotage and spies and such like. Even so, there was the occasional episode that hearkened back to its roots, looking to warn its audience that the straight and narrow path was the best one. This is a pretty good episode with that message.