Girl in Room 13

Great broads, great hats,, nice film stock. The rest is cardboard. Sometimes broads, hats and garish colour can make for a good night in.

There are B-movie pleasures to be had here. Worth a watch for curiosity value and those sumptuous "pushed" colours. Donlevy goes along for the ride and retains his dignity. The quirks on offer had me happily mesmerized for 80 minutes. Like it or loath it, it is a unique little film, and possibly, in its own way, a kitsch classic.

If John Waters and a young Rainer Werner fassbinder had a baby this might be it.

Not one, but two voluptuous females (both, like the rest of the supporting cast, with obviously dubbed voices) turn up in private eye Brian Donlevy's hotel room as he saunters about São Paulo investigating counterfeit banknote plates, pursued throughout by a noisy musical score by Gabriel Migliori.

People get killed, and both the locations and and the ladies look ravishing in gorgeous early sixties Eastmancolor, so there's something for everyone.

The last directorial credit of Richard Cunha (of Frankenstein's Daughter fame), this plays a lot like a color, Brazilian-set version of some of those early-50s syndicated TV detective shows with established stars such as George Raft or Cesar Romero, which makes sense since Mr. Cunha worked in early 50s TV. The always-reliable Brian Donlevy brings his usual gruff authority to the role of a US detective sent to Brazil to find an woman accused of a crime in the US who has assumed another identity in Brazil. He finds her eventually, but first gets sucked into a criminal plot and meets a mysterious but attractive British lady (at least she speaks with a British accent!) with whom he gets involved. A USA/Brazilian co-production, GIRL IN ROOM 13 benefits from the Brazilian setting, and most of the characters except for Donlevy and three others are Brazilian. The pacing is rather TV-show-like, but there are enough double-crosses and detective-film conventions to keep you watching, and of course Donlevy's understated yet strong presence, the element that holds the film together. A shame Mr. Cunha did not direct more films in the crime/detective genre, as GIRL IN ROOM 13 is a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes on a rainy day. (Don't know if this has ever been on video--mine is taped off a UHF station in the late 80s)

An American detective (Brian Donlevy) arrives in Sao Paulo to bring an alleged murderess (Andrea Bayard) who works as a nightclub singer back to face justice. She is involved with a counterfeiter (Victor Merinow) who tries to frame the detective.

A low budget US-Brazilian crime film that was poorly directed and edited with the only positives being the colourful locations and Brazilian settings as background. One time actress Elizabeth Howard surprisingly has a nude scene.

A terrible film that is a delight from start to finish. Garish colours, hackneyed dialogue, risible plot, laughable nightclub routines... it's all here with brief flashes of what must have been considered at the time as daring glimpses of female flesh. This would have been excellent fodder for the bottom of a Sixties drive-in triple bill, when everyone had either fallen asleep, was making out and not watching, or had left.

Needless to say, highly recommended!