You Can't Escape Forever

The entire film uses that hectic non-stop dialogue style that was far more frequent in the black and white days. It makes it kind of difficult to feel involved, more like you are watching a comedy show than a film. And the means with which the main story is introduced, in the same blase fashion, doesn't lend it any gravity. In the end you feel you have watched a long episode of an old sit-com.

You Can't Escape Forever is an odd duck: it's a bottom of the bill second feature that successfully blends comedy, romance, gangsters, and old dark house thrills. George Brent plays the crusading editor of a local paper out to put the kibosh on the activities of a local black marketeer, played to absolute perfection by Edward Cianelli, surely one of the least appreciated heavies of Hollywood history. Brent is aided by lady love/gal reporter Brenda Marshall and comic foil Roscoe Karns, and the film manages to take in a trip to the Death House, a deserted columbarium, and a lonely hearts club apparently modeled after Conan Doyle's Red Headed League. There are some very well choreographed action sequences and beautiful cinematography by James Van Trees and Tony Gaudio, the masters of low budget photography. If you like 'B' features, you will be more than satisfied with You Can't Escape Forever--even if the title seems somewhat inappropriate considering that villain Varney (Joe Downing), in an apparent oversight by Joseph Breen's office, actually DOES escape the chair!

Warner Brothers more than most studios liked to remake their feature films, it sure saved costs. You Can' Escape Forever is the 3rd cycle of 4 that originally began with Hi Nellie.

Brenda Marshall girl reporter faints at an execution and fails to report on a last minute pardon by the governor. So this budding Lois Lane is assigned the sob sister column by her editor George Brent. Then Brent makes an even bigger faux pas and he's dumped by the publisher in he same column.

But Brent and Marshall team up in life and on the job and make lemnade out of their shared lemon to bring down a gang of black marketeers. Homage to World War 2 which was figuring into all remakes.

Roscoe Karns is their photographer and good comic foil. Villains are the impeccably cast Eduardo Ciannelli and Gene Lockhart. It's a serviceable remake of the Paul Muni classic.

"You Can't Escape Forever" is a great title for a film, although I'm not convinced it fits this story. This movie is really crisply done. All the scenes clip along and never linger too long. The reading of the lines by the actors are so rapid fire that Frank Fox the dialogue director must have worked overtime. The opening execution scene made me chuckle. There always seems to be a thunderstorm happening when someone is about to be strapped to the electric chair. In this case they did use the atmosphere as part of the story and not simply a clichéd mood device. I didn't find "Forever" a waste of time, but there was nothing about it that will linger in my movie memory banks for an extended period of time.

Marshall's character SHOULD have been fired and yet she was angry--made her very easy to hate turns silly=propaganda While on the surface this film can look a lot like "His Girl Friday", soon it becomes very apparent it is not. It's a shame, because George Brent was capable of doing better pictures than this one. And, you could do a lot better with your time.

The film starts off okay. An annoying reporter (Brenda Marshall) is sent to cover an execution for the newspaper. But, she passes out and misses it--and doesn't realize that the man was given a last second pardon. Not willing to admit the truth, she phones in the story to her editor (and boyfriend), Brent, and reports that the killing went off as scheduled! As a result, he demotes her to do a society column. Now here is where the film started to annoy me. She SHOULD have felt lucky not to get fired--but she is nasty and balks with her demotion. I grew to dislike her because of this--and it was only about 5 minutes into the movie. Later, Brent himself is demoted to this same thankless job--and he spends the rest of the film trying to break a huge story to earn his way back.

While this COULD have worked, the film had three major problems. I already mentioned how unlikable Marshall's character was. In addition, the dialog tried to be smart and zippy like "His Girl Friday"--but it just wasn't that good and showed it. But most importantly, the end just made me cringe. Adding this propaganda angle hurt the film because it seemed VERY gratuitous and unnecessary. Overall, a pretty limp little film--one you will no doubt also think is a bit limp.