Una signora pericolosa

Bernard B. Ray cannot be accused of dragging his feet with this quickly paced little B-feature. "Duke" (Neil Hamilton) is a private eye who is working with his lawyer wife "Phyllis" (June Storey) to try and get to the bottom of the murder of a prominent judge. They are sure the girl in the dock is innocent, and when more bodies start to pile up and it soon becomes clear that the couple, too, are targets, they have to get their skates on and discover who's up to no good. The story here is quite decent and the actors - though really pretty middle-drawer - do enough with the sometimes quite lively script, lethargic production and aided by a fun car chase at the denouement to keep the thing moving along adequately for an hour. It's low-budget, production-line cinema that did a job at the time and though unremarkable, is still perfectly watchable.

...and this was a real mystery, as far as why it was made.

"Dangerous Lady" from 1941 is about a husband and wife, Duke Martindale and his wife, Phyllis, an excellent attorney.

They are working to clear a woman falsely accused of murdering a judge.

Two people who know what happened end up dead.

Duke and Phyllis sally forth, despite a big car chase and being held prisoners themselves.

This wasn't very good. It's from a Poverty Row studio, and as the other review alluded, they did these films in a few days with no retakes. June Storey and Neil Hamilton (the Commissioner on Batman) were good. I just wish I could have seen them; the print I watched was dreadful, as if it had been copied from a copy. Probably was.

June Storey was actually a costar of Gene Autry for ten films, and while she was alive, she appeared at western and memorabilia shows. She retired early on.

Both of them deserved better.

Most folks today would have no idea who Neil Hamilton was, even though he was a movie star in the late 20s into the 40s. Those who might recognize the name might remember him as Commissioner Gordon from the old "Batman" television show....but very few would know about his pictures in which he was a handsome leading man. As I expected, Neil Hamilton was excellent in this picture...and he made the movie watchable in the lead. Unfortunately, nothing else about the film was particularly good.

The story is very similar to the popular Thin Man movies. Duke (Hamilton) is a detective who used to be a cop...and he has a long history of hanging out with all sorts of unsavory characters and helping them with their problems. His wife, however, wants him to stop this nonsense. She's a successful lawyer and wants him to begin working for more respectable types. However, when Duke is pulled into another case of an unsavory group of characters, his wife finds herself inextricably pulled into it and soon begins to understand why Duke associates with these sorts of folks. In particular, they work on convincing the police that a lady who escaped from jail is actually innocent of murdering the judge assigned to her case.

Poor writing is THE problem with this budget B-movie. Too many cliches, too much bad dialog and too many familiar moments make this watchable...but just barely.

Cheap Thin Man ripoff from PRC attempts to use Neil Hamilton and June Storey in the roles of sophisticated detectives, and they are good. The rest of the cast, alas, isn't up to their acting ability and make a mess of the story. Some interesting early film-noir photography and the leads make this watchable.

Black and white Alpha video.

Hester Engle (Evelyn Brent) is accused of murder and is being framed. Ex-policeman/detective Duke Martindale (Neil Hamilton) and his sleuth wife Phyllis (June Storey), who just happened to be an attorney, believe that someone in the police force is doing the framing. Meanwhile, his nemesis in the force, Police Sergeant Brent (Douglas Fowley), thinks that Duke is responsible for a murderer and is covering up for Hester.

Unfortunately, this movie is mediocre in many ways.

See June Storey again in "The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance" (1941), which is part of the Lone Wolf series of movies.