Inspetor Postal

I doubt that any movie ever made better use of stock footage of floods than "Postal Inspector." Every time the tale sags -- or more accurately sogs -- it's back to some unfortunate town where the river is rising, the dam done burst, homes are being washed away and people are trudging through muck and mire (not to be confused with the vaudeville act of the same name,) trying to escape the deluge. The big chase scene even replaces cars and horses with speedboats. The plot centers on Bela Lugosi as a night club owner, drowning in debt, who tries to steal $3 million in old bills being transported by the US Post Office. Fortunately, Ricardo Cortez is there to sink him, aided by Patricia Ellis as a night club singer who manages to warble a few Frank Loesser tunes before the water rises. It's actually not a bad little thriller and manages to float along in a fast-moving 58 minutes.

The British Board of Film Certifiers banned Universal's THE RAVEN as "overly brutal and sadistic" and gave THE INVISIBLE RAY an A (for Adults Only) Certificate. This pretty much ended the genre that we now call Universal's "Golden Age". So where did this leave its top terror stars, Boris and Bela? For awhile, nowhere! Boris ended up playing a kindly old grandfather type in NIGHT KEY (1937) and Bela ended up in the musical comedy/drama playing a Mexican nightclub owner! Ricardo Cortez (whose real name was Jack Kranz) plays the title role and much of the movies 58 minute running time shows him dealing with people who have been the victims of mail fraud. This provides a lot of intentional humour. Cortez's brother is a Treasury officer in charge of getting worn out bills back to Washington. The girl he is in love with sings in Lugosi's nightclub and lets slip a casual comment that $3 million in old bills will soon go out of the local bank. Bela is in debt to a gagnster and decides to steal the shipment. As if that were not bad enough the town is threatened by a flood! Republic would take that plot and stretch it out for a 12 chapter serial so believe me this film will be long on action. Bela played a similar character in the 1930 film WILD COMPANY. He is not menacing at all until the last 10 minutes of the film when he becomes a crook. Ricardo Cortez had worked with D.W. Griffith (THE SORROWS OF SATAN, 1926) and had been the first actor to play Sam Spade (THE MALTESE FALCON, 1931). Watch the supporting cast for Guy Usher, who would face Lugosi on less equal terms in THE DEVIL BAT (1942) and Hattie McDaniel who had already costarred with Bela in MURDER BY TELEVISION (1935) and would go on to appear in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939). The terror genre would start up again within 3 years but the old days were gone for good. This is still a fun film to watch even if it is just to see Bela in a relatively normal character role.

1936's "Postal Inspector" appeared to serve several purposes for cash strapped Universal following the March 1936 ouster of the extravagant Laemmles: a Warners-style glorification of a rarely spotlighted branch of government, a vehicle cheaply built around newly shot stock footage of heavy flooding in Pittsburgh PA, and a way to fulfill their three picture contract with Bela Lugosi, having failed to use him on "Dracula's Daughter" or a fourth pairing with Boris Karloff (they would finish Karloff's deal in Feb. 1937 with "Night Key"). Not only that, but this innocuous programmer also had the audacity to feature Patricia Ellis as Connie Larrimore belting out a whopping four songs by the film's midpoint, making for an awkward musical enabling her songbird to trill at the nightclub owned by Lugosi's Gregory Benez, his kindly nature hiding a dark secret of being heavily in debt to an impatient loan shark who has already murdered a previous client. The plot finally settles in at the 40 minute mark, as Benez and his confederates choose to rob a shipment of $3 million worth of retired currency (the driver a fatal casualty), a crime that could be pinned on Charlie Davis (Michael Loring), brother of Postal Inspector Bill Davis (Ricardo Cortez), because his car was used by the thieves. Severe flooding in Milltown finds cops and robbers engaging in a speedboat chase until the villains are apprehended and Charlie is free to wed childhood sweetheart Connie. More romantic trifle than serious drama, the daily activities in the inspector's office offering some novelty as many people are defrauded through the mail, basically those who can least afford it. Offbeat enough to still provide light entertainment as an hour long programmer, but little material for Lugosiphiles, 4th billed Bela on screen for barely 7 minutes in a bland role that still shows he was capable of playing a character without any sinister shadings, the main reason for film buffs to seek out after missing in action for decades.

This was Bela Lugosi's last film on his first contract with Universal. As such, it is not too bad. The Actman-Loesser songs are silly but certainly not hard to listen to. There is evidence of some post-production editing on this one - it barely clocks in at an hour. The familiar background score by Clifford Vaughan was reused many times by Universal as stock music for the next 7 years. Worth looking at once if only to see Bela !

This was long thought to be a lost film, but it has been resurrected using a number of different prints so quality varies, but entertainment is still consistent. This is an odd film being a mixture of genres namely thriller,disaster, musical and quasi-documentary about the post office. A number of crimes involving the post office are shown mainly tragic, but a couple are very funny. Eventually it centres on a train robbery of old banknotes en route to the federal mint. Ricardo Cortez is all suave self assurance as the leading detective assigned to the case, while Patricia Ellis is drop dead gorgeous as a chanteuse who may be involved with the robbery. Bela Lugosi as a club owner with links to a gambling syndicate only has a small role. Last part of the film takes place in a flood with stock footage lifted from the Johnstown flood interspersed with new studio shot scenes which blend quite well. Some may dislike the jingoistic tone of the film regarding the post office, but the movie fairly zips along and the denouement is exciting.