Sensation Hunters

"Sensation Hunters" (also called "Club Paradise") is a tough movie to love. It's not just that it's a cheap B-movie but the characters are difficult to like or care about in any way. So, while you might understand Julie (Doris Merrick) and her actions, you don't like her or care about the mess she makes of her life. And, as for her family and associates, they're most reprehensible jerks! Not exactly the makings for an entertaining movie.

When the film begins, you see that Julie lives in a family made up of scum. Her mother isn't 100% awful but she's weak and ineffectual. As for her father and brother-in-law...pure scum. So it's not surprising that Julie would want to get out of this home and get a man of her own. But Ray (Eddie Quillan) is a bit of a wimp and although she's been going out with him for some time, she doesn't love or even seem to respect him. Oddly, when an obvious jerk blows into town, Julie is taken with Danny (Robert Lowry). He makes no bones about it...he's been with LOTS of women and has no desire to become tied down with anyone....and yet Julie is stuck on him immediately. He's given her no reason to hope that he's the right man for her or anyone...but she is just crazy about the guy and is a real enabler. Sadly, while NOT entertaining, this sort of situation is rather realistic as often girls from abusive homes often seem to glomp onto losers like Danny. I saw this time and time again when I worked as a social worker and therapist. And, if the film is going to be realistic, her life will be miserable as a result of her poor choice in boyfriends. So what does become of Julie?! Does she somehow make something of herself or make some smart choices?

While the film has MANY strikes against it other than the characters (such as the women who sing in the film...none of them are particularly good), it fortunately does not tack on some nice, sappy ending. The film begins miserable and ends miserable. This makes for lousy entertainment BUT at least is a nice nod to realism. In some ways the film has a real noir sense to it. Too bad that the bad really outweighs the good.

Doris Merrick lives at home and has a job at a defense plant. She wants more, and falls for Robert Lowery. He looks like a big roller at a local club and she falls hard. When he disappears, she goes out with trumpeter Eddie Quillan who tries to impress her. They wind up in jail. Her father bails her out, gives her a suitcase with her clothes and tells her not to come back. She goes to work at the club, and various hard-up relatives come by for money -- she has a lot of crumpled-up $5 bills.

It's a cheap, tawdry Monogram picture, but director Christy Cabanne makes that work in this story of the downfall of a girl, who wanted more and settled for cash. I've been looking at a lot of Japanese movies set in the same, tawdry world, shomin-gekki about poor people in a tough world, and it fits right into that sort of genre. The difference is that in Japan, it was an A genre, with major stars; in the US, with minor actors and actresses, it's set in a world where the big movies are all film noir. Here, it's a cheap and tawdry genre with the directors fallen from once-haughty levels.... and it all works.

Grim and sour, this well made Monogram noir from 1945 is almost their answer to PRC's bleak hit DETOUR. The three main women in this film are exceptionally beautiful, especially Constance Worth. Lead actress Doris Merrick is the sweet factory worker with the most hideous family who falls for the worst guy in town. She ends up in Club Paradise, which is sort of a casino nightclub brothel, and a crooked pathway to doom. What a sad tale of hard boiled despair. Even her charming and likable trumpeter pal Ray gets jailed for a month, in which she has enough time to go wrong. The sets and costumes are very good, as is the music score. There is an astonishing epileptic set of clumsy tap dance routines, so unexpected and badly presented, it is as if they were shoehorned in to flesh out the running time. They are genuinely 5 star terrible and do not even match the music on the soundtrack. There is undertones of DOUBLE INDEMNITY and well crafted occasional spookiness. The opening is a zinger. However the original title SENSATION HUNTERS is ridiculous. CLUB PARADISE is far better and more tawdry in an appropriate Monogram style. It's pretty good all round, and I would love to see an uncut DVD: the one available has terrible TV commercial hack marks with large bits of some scenes missing.

The plot and characters hold your attention with suspense and an ending that you hope you're wrong about. Probably too melodramatic for some tastes, but for others it's nice to see something from that era without the over-the-top silliness that (all due respect) they considered "comic relief."

For being a B-feature, this is actually a very clever and sophisticated noir, although it deals entirely with the night club rabble. Julie has a terrible family with a cruel unnatural bully for a father and a brother who drinks, so naturally she isn't very happy there. Her boy-friend plays the trumpet and has some great expectations but gets mixed up with racketeers and loses all his money on dice, which joint gets rounded up by the police, and he is put in prison for 30 days. Her father throws her out, seeing she has hit the downhill road to perdition. She still makes the best of it as a dancer and singer but is seduced by a good-for-nothing who occasionally leaves town to get away from his creditors, who are not funny. Her boy-friend with the trumpet eventually turns up again with a band and is a success, she has an opportunity here, but that other guy spoils it. It's a bleak noir of no hope, and when the curtain falls you know it's the end of the show. There are similarities and styles recalling the hand of Ulmer, but this is no Ulmer film. The "Club Havana" by him of the same year was also a noir with revolver shots but so much more efficient all filmed in five days and depicting life of one night, while this is more drawn out, the time period is extensive, there is actually no end to this dwindling spiral of bad turns, while Doris Merrick, like a lower class Joan Fontaine, makes an indefatigable good impression and always tries to make good, which in the end was of no avail.