Parole, Inc.

I love Michael O'Shea, Turhan Bey, and Lyle Talbot so I looked forward to this 1948 B noir, directed by Alfred Zeisler.

It was a bit of a chore. I ended up watching a colorized version because the black and white had no captions. Then there was a notice about the colorization and some project by IMDb.

After that, I sat through a long diatribe against the parole system and how vicious criminals are released. Finally the film started.

Michael O'Shea is in the hospital covered in bandages telling the story of how he got that way.

It seems that paroles are being bought. Who is buying them, and who is being paid? At the behest of the police commissioner (Talbot) Government agent Richard Hendricks (O'Shea) goes undercover to infiltrate the system and find out.

He meets a club owner, Jojo (Evelyn Ankers) who has crooks managing something called a punchboard scam, which has to do with gambling. Richard, using an assumed name, wants to do a job but needs a buddy out of prison. This leads him to Rodescu (Bey) who is filtering money to some of the parole board.

Sending fake telegrams, he sets up a rendezvous between the board and Rodescu. Unfortunately for Richard, a glitch in some paperwork puts him in danger.

Fair noir with some suspense and decent performances. Michael O' Shea had a wonderful, upbeat screen persona. The exotic Bey left Hollywood and pursued photography in Europe when his career faded after the war. However, he returned in the '90s with Babylon 5 and worked through the '90s.

After a Tyrone Power memorial service, I walked by casting director Marvin Paige on the phone. He put his hand over the receiver and said in a conspiratorial voice, "I'm on the phone with Turhan Bey. We're talking about Tyrone." Cracked me up.

Lively actor O'Shea manages to give a lift to this otherwise routine programmer. For some reason these 'undercover' crime films were popular at the time, maybe because of the built-in suspense of being found out by the gangsters. Anyhow, Hendricks (O'Shea) manages to infiltrate a gang that sells paroles to imprisoned convicts. Heading up the gang, in a twist, is the lovely Evelyn Ankers, otherwise known as the queen of scream for her many horror movie roles. Making a belated appearance as the gang's attorney is the sleekly swarthy Turhan Bey (Rodescu).

I'm not sure why the narrative is told in flashback from Hendricks' hospital bed. Maybe to assure audiences that whatever the dangers, he survives. I wish there were something especially noteworthy about this exercise. There may not be, but the movie's smoothly done, surprisingly so for tightly budgeted independent production (Orbit Productions). Okay as a harmless time passer.

There have been a lot of paroles. The board is corrupt. O'Shea is sent to infiltrate those suspected of being on the take. He is able to sweet talk his way into the confidences of the ring, but eventually, he must face the real leader, played by Turhan Bay (What a name). Anyway, the plot thickens and one of his confidantes gets killed. It bothers me a bit that even though the guy was a criminal, he had a nice human quality to him. There is some slipshod police work and O'Shea, who looks a little like the mummy in a hospital room, narrates into a giant microphone, telling what happened. I guess a movie in the forties isn't going to have anyone think that the good guys are vulnerable, though he does take quite a beating. This is one of those little films that one barely pays any attention to.

Filmed by a Poverty Row studio with a largely unknown cast, augmented by former Universal stalwarts Evelyn Ankers and Turhan Bey, PAROLE INC., is a good example of a so-called "problem picture" designed to draw attention to one of the iniquities blighting late Forties American society.

In this case it is the corrupt parole system whereby habitual criminals are let out of jail on the promise of reform and promptly resume their nefarious habits. This is chiefly due to a corrupt system headed by lawyer Barney Rodescu (Turhan Bey), who bribes two of the five- person Parole Board to vote in the prisoners' favor while trusting in the Board's ability to return positive verdicts.

Intrepid federal agent Hendricks (Michael O'Shea) volunteers to expose this racket by posing as a master criminal, infiltrating the racket at its lowest level and discovering how it works. He frequents The Pastime Club, a seedy joint run by Barney's fiancée Jojo (Ankers), and peopled by a clutch of hoodlums all in baggy suits and snap-brimmed hats. The rest of the story is predictable.

For an action thriller PAROLE INC. is remarkably static with too much time devoted to lengthy voice-overs from Hendricks as he tells what happened to a tape recorder from his hospital bed. The two nominal stars do what they can with the material: Bey looks immaculate in his tailored suits, but shows a tendency towards sadism, even though he assaults no one. He has a good line in dialogue delivery, describing one of his unfortunate minions as "a jackass," and vowing to get rid of any double-dealers daring to cross him.

On the whole, however, Alfred Zeisler's B-Movie is rather too moral for its own good, even though it dramatizes a scenario common to late Forties movies, suggesting that corruption is so rife in American institutions that no one knows how to separate friends from enemies.

This low-budget little crime thriller actually turned out to be better than I thought it would be. Cagney-like Michael O'Shea plays a federal investigator who goes undercover to expose a crime ring that gets undeserving prisoners paroled in its care, resulting in a crime wave that's wracking the city. O'Shea is quite good as the feisty agent posing as a convict on the lam, and Turhan Bey is fine as a slick, villainous lawyer. The script by "B" veterans Sherman Lowe and Royal Cole is serviceable if predictable, and some of the supporting performances are weak, but little-known director Alfred Zeisler keeps things moving along, although a little raggedly. All in all, a pretty good example of the low-budget independent "B" thriller of the late '40s. Worth a watch.