O Morto Desaparecido

Bargain basement filmmaker Edgar Ulmer offers up a fetish laden noir of probably a 10 day shooting schedule with reasonable facsimiles of moments from Laura, Shadow of a Doubt, Out of the Past and Chinatown to present the viewer with a rather breezy run through police corruption and procedural abuse. It's quite a bargain for the price.

Straight arrow homicide detective Ray Patrick is on a winning streak and up for a promotion when his next case gets compromised by a dame he feels he railroaded and now wants to clear. But she wears him down with her plea of innocence and they illegally set off to find the guilty party his commanding officer in pursuit.

In spite of the incredulous plot Ulmer once again, with little, works wonders with cast and crucial tight editing that offers momentary top tier suspense at fire sale prices.

As no nonsense dick gone rogue Paul Langton is no Mitch or Dana Andrews in Laura but he expresses the same veneer and a nebulous incertitude that bedevils them; in this case by a blonde fatale, no Jane Greer but the tragic Barbara Payton, a walking noir reality as convincing innocent. There's also some solid small bits with Kate McKenna as witness Miss Sparrow stealing both her brief scenes.

Ulmer for his part packs a tremendous amount of seedy backdrop to the story as Patrick steps on rights ( no one ever thinks to ask for a lawyer in the face of gross malfeasance) and goes through women's underwear draws with abandon in the pursuit of justice, making it clear he is not interested. Form wise Ulmer does not waste time and he offers up some fine montage, provocative inferences and enough subtle deceptions to make this a bit of an enjoyable overachiever.

The best thing about this jumbled programmer is the intimidating snowstorm Detective Patrick (Langton) has to slog through. I almost went to the closet for my parka. The movie's main draw now, I expect, is Hollywood bad girl Barbara Payton's final movie. Too bad she couldn't work up some emotion. Outside of her sweaters, it's hard to see how veteran cop Patrick could fall for her so quickly, and jeopardize his career, to boot.

All in all, you may need a scorecard to track the convoluted plot—something about who's killed whom and whether the dead are really dead. It may also help to turn off your sense of disbelief when you turn on the movie. Anyhow, Patrick's got 77-minutes to figure it all out. Langton's fine in the lead role, while Tracey Roberts makes for an intriguing mystery woman. I wish Roberts had made more movies; she's definitely a distinctive presence.

Five years earlier and I expect cult director Ulmer would have delivered an atmospheric noir. But not here. The lighting and photography are strictly pedestrian, and it's anybody's guess why. In my book, the results amount to forgettable 50's crime drama.There are a couple of noir earmarks-- a compromised fall guy, a half spider woman-- but crucially there's no noirish mood that might implicate the ambivalent nature of reality itself.

Too bad the star-crossed Payton didn't go out on a stronger note. Still, she looks bored with the whole procedure, so maybe it's just as well.

When a man is found with his face destroyed by fire in a fireplace, the prominent Police Detective Ray Patrick (Paul Langton) is assigned to the case. Soon he captures the singer Eden Lane (Barbara Payton), who was the man´s mistress, and solves the case. Eden is sentenced to prison and while Ray is transporting her by train, she claims that she has just seen her lover alive in a train station. Ray believes the woman and helps her to escape to hunt the man. Meanwhile Police Captain Bert Rawley (Robert Shayne) hunts the couple down.

"Murder Is My Beat" is a flawed but entertaining film-noir directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. The plot has many coincidences and most of the twists are not believable but it is worthwhile watching at least once. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Morto Desaparecido" (The Vanished Dead")

The other reviewer did not have anything good to say about this movie. Well, it is cheaply made and obviously, Edward Ulmer didn't have much of a budget. He mostly directed B-movies anyway. However, this was one of his later films and his star was Barbara Payton. Her sad sad life was on the down-swing at the time she did this, her final film. She was only 28 years old and this marked the end of her career which had started only five years earlier. If you watch this film, you will see a very good performance by Barbara Payton. This may not be a true film-noir, but it is a dark, downbeat drama with a great musical score. I believe this is worth 77 minutes of viewing time. Enjoy!

A man's body is found face down in a fireplace, face and fingerprints charred beyond identification. Clues lead to his mistress, bar singer Barbara Payton (alas, we get to hear nary a note). Homicide cop Ray Patrick tracks her to a mountain cabin, but a blizzard forces them to spend a (chaste) night together, and she starts to get under his skin. On the train back to Los Angeles, she spots the man who was presumed murdered standing on a platform; against his better judgement, Patrick joins her on the lam to uncover the truth -- a confusing pastiche involving her roommate, a double blackmail scheme, the wrong body and, somehow, ceramic figurines....

Of all the directors who started out in European cinema but fled to America, Edgar G. Ulmer worked with the most crippling resources. In Murder Is My Beat, he returns to Detour's depressing terrain of thrown-together fugitives holing up in crummy motels. But instead of the full-tilt, well, savagery of Ann Savage, there's the catatonic passivity of Barbara Payton, a beaten-down, ill-used blonde. (How much of this depends on acting ability is anybody's guess. At this final outpost of her movie career -- five years earlier, she'd been James Cagney's moll in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye -- Payton had already begun her sad drift toward the demimonde.) Though the story relies too much on explication rather than exposition, its fatalistic inertia keeps the viewer interested but off balance. It's another cheapie noir saved from utter mediocrity by the genuine, if compromised, talents of its director.