Decoy

(April, 2000): Just saw a rare print at the American Cinematheque Noir festival and the film knocked my socks off. As evidenced by this performance, Jean Gillie would have been one of the greats of Noir had she not died in 1949. She powers through this film, getting man after man to do her bidding, never taking no for an answer. And the obstacles that would stop a lesser character don't bother her in the least. The problem confronting her: her boyfriend is on death row. Only he knows where $400,000 from a robbery is. And she uses her feminine wiles to persuade him, and two other men, to discern the location of that dough because, *she wants that money.* Even the gas chamber doesn't slow her down ... which is where the slight sci-fi element is introduced. If this turns up on late-night video, set your VCR. You will be amazed.

And makes Barbara Stanwyck and Ann Savage look like Ned(Jane?)in the first reader in the process. And, in "Decoy", femme fatality is a more apt term as all the male characters she encounters have less chance of surviving than Elisha Cook Jr. did going against Jack Palance in "Shane"...zip,nada,none,nought,zap and gone. Sheldon Leonard survives an encounter but only because she is dying when he shows up. The surprise is that she didn't take him out on the way out. Repeated viewings still figure him for no better than even at that. The taglines and blurbs on the posters and ads paint the following picture of her Margot Shelby character: "SHE TREATS MEN THE WAY THEY'VE BEEN TREATING WOMEN FOR YEARS!" Another line defines that as; "She Two-Times, Steals, Cheats, Double-Crosses...Anything To Get What She Wants...and then KISSES THEM OFF." Actually, she runs a car over Edward Norris, which was lack of good judgement on his part for hanging around with a broad known for..."kissing quick and killing quicker." She takes doctor Herbert Rudley away from Marjorie Woodworth,as she needs him to revive her just-executed in the gas chamber boy friend---no lack of plot in this one---which accounts for the only credibility gap in the film...somebody please tell me why Marjorie Woodworth wanted Herbert Rudley in the first place. Good riddance,Marjorie, you can do better although, come to think of it, you seldom did. Gillie gives Rudley a shovel, makes him dig up the buried money and then, in payment for past favors and services, shoots him dead. She had to double check to make certain as there wasn't much difference in his performance either way. Bottom line: Jean Gillie gets a wing to herself in the Femme Fatale Hall of Fame.

Given this film’s rarity (it went unseen for 30 years), I guess even self-confessed film nuts could be excused for never having heard of it – that is, until its announcement as part of Warners’ fourth “Film Noir Collection” on DVD. While some of the pairings in that 10-Movie 5-Disc Set were done without rhyme or reason – and it had seemed to me to be so here as well! – the film actually had a connection to its companion piece, CRIME WAVE (1954; which I’ve just watched a couple of days ago), via the credit on both of blacklisted scriptwriter/actor Nedrick Young (he appeared in the latter but only wrote DECOY).

Being a Monogram production, the film wears its Poverty Row status on its sleeve – with a bizarre plot (involving the re-animation of the dead: this has to be the only vintage crime outing to take the genre into the realm of sci-fi!), gritty look and second-rate cast – but which it generally manages to turn in its favor. In my review for CRIME WAVE itself, I had written how surprised I was that the film proved to be so good – this, then, came as even more of a shock (joining the ranks of such ramshackle ‘B’ noir gems as DETOUR, DILLINGER {both 1945} and GUNMAN IN THE STREETS [1950])! The film was devised as a showcase for British actress Jean Gillie by her husband, director Bernhard – however, the couple would divorce soon after and (even more sadly) Gillie herself would be dead of pneumonia in just a couple of years’ time! Still, hers is one of the most unscrupulous femme fatales ever conceived – ensnaring practically the entire male cast in her obsessive pursuit of money – and which she plays in a slightly overstated (but, under the circumstances, entirely fitting) manner.

The rest of the cast includes Edward Norris as Gillie’ crooked associate, Robert Armstrong as her ageing gangster boyfriend currently on Death Row and the only one who knows the location of a stashed cache' containing $400,000, Herbert Rudley as the small-town doctor enticed by Gillie into her unholy revivification scheme, and Sheldon Leonard as the cagey and dogged cop on their trail. Norris is somewhat stiff, while Armstrong (the original Carl Denham of “King Kong” fame) brings his typical zest to the role of love-struck and over-the-hill duped mobster – but both Rudley (bemoaning his betrayal of the code governing his profession) and Leonard (secretly enamored of Gillie himself, he’s willing to answer her plea at the moment of death to “stoop to her level”…but she just laughs in his face!) match the lady’s display of cool elegance disguising an essentially hard-boiled nature. Incidentally, Gillie’s character anticipated such celebrated noir bad girls of the ‘deadly sweet’ variety as Jane Greer in OUT OF THE PAST (1947) and Peggy Cummins (coincidentally, another British actress) in GUN CRAZY (1950) – but also Gaby Rodgers in KISS ME DEADLY (1955) in view of her similar histrionic outburst when finally laying hands on the long sought-after object of contention.

Unfortunately, it’s been revealed that the print of DECOY utilized for the DVD is slightly censored: one of the main characters is trampled no less than three times by a car which has Gillie at the wheel – however, we only get to see this once in the current version! For the record, Bernhard (whose first directorial effort this was) had been an executive at Universal – responsible for such popular ‘B’ horror outings as HORROR ISLAND and MAN-MADE MONSTER (1941; which I still haven’t managed to check out!). Finally, I’m to follow DECOY with another noir of his – the evocatively-titled BLONDE ICE (1948), via the “Special Edition” released by VCI…

A stingingly bizarre noir entry every fan should seek out. Why? First, this ultra-rare crime drama has one of the two or three most ruthless and irredeemable femme fatales in B+W history, Margot Shelby, as blisteringly portrayed by standout brit Jean Gillie. Second, it features one of the strangest hybrid sci-fi/noir premises, introducing an exotic chemical to reincarnate the dead as the conceit to get Margot's man-slaughtering act started. Third, it all actually comes together in this strangely involving prison breakout cum road picture, which takes us all the way from the death chamber to a grove of trees in the woods (another death chamber) and back to where it all began, in a family's quiet suburban house (still another death chamber).

Once you get past the reincarnation, the plot is fairly conventional set pieces which mostly hold up and which benefit from a honey of a twist at the end. Along the way there, we get to see greed, betrayal, spinelessness, insanity, bravery, more betrayal, submission, redemption and more Jean Gillie, whose gin blossom charm and hyena-like guffaw at once blends Richard Widmark's killing debut in KISS OF DEATH with the murderous cackle of SPECTRE in the mirrored killmaze in MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. Either way, she is death and she is irresistible. As is this movie. Find it and you'll see.

What a great B movie. In the powerful opening minutes, a wounded man hitchhikes to a San Francisco hotel, where he shoots an unarmed woman (Jean Gillie) and dies. While she lay dying, the woman tells a police detective (Sheldon Leonard) the events that led up to this. Her killer was a doctor she had duped into helping her bring her executed convict boyfriend back to life (!) so she could find out where he had stashed some loot. All through her story, it becomes clear this woman is pretty heartless and sadistic.

Jean Gillie was married to this film's director. This was his attempt to make her a star. Unfortunately nobody really became a star making pictures for Monogram, no matter how good they may have been. A short time later the pair divorced and Gillie moved back to England. She died there of pneumonia at the age of 33, just 3 years after this was released. Gillie showed how much potential she had in this movie. It's a shame her life was cut so short. Nice to see Sheldon Leonard playing a detective. He was usually playing tough gangsters. He's plenty tough here, even if he is on the right side of the law. Edward Norris and Herbert Rudley are both good. Robert Armstrong, the biggest name in the picture at the time, has little screen time as the executed boyfriend but does well with what he has.

Exceptional film noir from Monogram, a Poverty Row studio not known for much that was exceptional. There are a lot of memorable moments in this one. The beginning and ending are really great. The atmospheric scene where Armstrong is brought back to life is another highlight. With a couple of changes this could have easily been turned into a horror movie like The Man They Could Not Hang. It's definitely one you'll want to check out.