Crime Against Joe

Crime Against Joe is a modest noir thriller with much to be modest about. Red herrings as murder suspects are fine, but in this case too many were created in the story leaving a lot of loose ends in what should have been a more coherent script.

The title character is John Bromfield a returned Korean War veteran with a severe drinking problem. That's how we first meet him, living with mom Frances Morris and trying to become a painter. Another Toulouse L'Autrec, taller, less talented and as big a boozer.

But one night when Bromfield has had a snootful and gets a ride home from buddy Henry Calvin a cab driver, there's a murder of a woman and he's the number one suspect. Back in high school he was a big man on campus, but he's a flop now.

Here's where it goes completely haywire. From the town drunk he sobers up real fast and with the help of Julie London a rollerskating server and singer at a fast food place he puts the pieces together.

I knew Henry Calvin was in the cast. But the man with the girth best known as the rabblerouser from Ship Of Fools, the Wazir in Kismet and most of all Sergeant Garcia in Zorro is absolutely unrecognizable. That deep bass voice is not employed at all.

Granted this was a program filler, but little care was taken with the preparation of Crime Against Joe.

Crime Against Joe (1956)

The point of seeing a B movie like this isn't always to find a great masterpiece in the rough. There are the moments or originality, the bit performances, the style of photography or writing. But there is also the glimpse into a time period that sometimes seems more real exactly because it isn't all polished up and idealized.

And this is a pretty interesting, not so bad movie. It's set and shot in Tucson in 1955 (there's a calendar on one wall), a very low point for Hollywood movies, and this is coming from the fringes of that (one of the producers was the "third writer" in "Casablanca). There is one star, of sorts, a white crooner (and looker) named Julie London, who is lovely and sincere and not half bad..

John Bromfield is the centerpiece, and if he's a hair clunky, this makes him kind of more believable as a good-looking guy named Joe Manning on the outs. He's an ex-soldier who thinks he's an artist but knows not a very good one. He drinks too much. He wants a woman in his life, and the movie begins with him kissing his wise mother goodnight and he goes out on the town. "Well, I'm looking for a girl," he says to the singer from the bar (another torch singer, Alika Louis, who appears here in her only movie).

One of the social revelations of the movie is attitudes toward drinking and driving. Joe gets hammered while sitting in his car, drives to a diner, and is visibly drunk as a couple of cops say hello to him (one even chuckles, as if it's kind of funny). More chilling encounters with the cops come later. A killer is bumbling around town, and it looks like it's either Joe (and we don't know it) or the cops are going to think it's Joe (and it's not). It's a pretty tense situation held back only by some occasional awkwardness.

What makes it work, though, is the down to earth acting because it builds up the Hitchcockian mood of a wrong man under suspicion. Witnesses misinterpret things, evidence gets piled up based on presumptions. It's good stuff. And then Joe has to figure out the crime for himself, which he applies himself to with intelligence. (His acting gets better as he sobers up.)

And by the end you see why the movie has its title. It's no masterpiece, but it has enough going on to keep a movie lover glue, I'm sure.

This is a strange offbeat little movie. At times it is dumb and clichéd 1950's police drama and at times it is philosophical and quite interesting.

In the second scene of the movie, we have Joyce Jameson running at full speed screaming that she's been attacked. It is quite jilting. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie never matches the energy of this scene.

The standout in the cast is Julie London. She is best known as a successful 1960's singer of sultry ballads, but she did do a number of acting gigs. Here she plays a car hop named "Slacks." She is in love with the lead character "Joe." However Joe shows only a passing interest in her, as she has dated his good friend "Red." Julie manages to make the character extremely sweet, nice and strong. She is the opposite of a Femme Fatale, a real Penelope standing by her man.

Rebecca Blair (from the television series "Daniel Boone")is the only other person in the cast I knew. She literally "sleepwalks" though her part, although she does have one good scene at the end as a troubled teenager confronting her overprotective "Dad." While the sum does not add up to much, some individual scenes are clever enough to make this "Wrong Man" genre piece worth watching. It was apparently filmed in five days, so don't go in expecting great production values. For those who like early Roger Corman movies, you'll probably enjoy the similar style.

Despite a very low production budget, and a no-name cast (except for the talented Julie London), Crime Against Joe pulls off a bit of an upset as an entertaining film. Although I figured out the killer after about fifteen minutes (and disregarded the enormous red herrings that followed), I was still entertained by the film and its dynamics of a small town, where everyone seems to know everyone else. A libertine mother of a supposed "artist" finds Joe living off of his mother. This is not a crime against humanity, but it does put Joe in a bad light. Slacks, played by London, works at a drive-in burger joint and goes out with Joe's best friend. A couple of late-night murders are committed and Joe is a prime suspect. See if you can figure out the killer quickly. It will surprise some folks.

John Bromfield is Joe in "Crime Aganst Joe" a 1956 B film also featuring Julie London, Patricia Blair, Joyce Jameson, Alika Louis, Rhodes Reason and Henry Calvin.

Bromfield plays an artist who lives off of his mother (Frances Morris) and laments not being able to find the perfect woman. When a bar singer (Louis) winds up dead after he's left the bar dead drunk, his high school pin is found next to her body.

He then becomes a person of interest to the police. Joe has an alibi - he actually ran into a sleepwalker (Blair) and returned her to her home, but her father lies to the police about it. Joe is then arrested.

Joe's waitress friend Slacks (London) lies to the police about seeing the singer with someone else, and Joe is released. He's determined to find out the identity of the killer - someone from his high school class.

Supposedly the story was by Decla Dunning and the script was by Robert C. Dennis. I'd love to know which one was responsible for the sleepwalker bit and that whole subplot of the overly possessive father who discourages his daughter's dates - it's a riot. That plot line just sort of died out and wasn't fully resolved.

That business of the high school pin...well, this is a pretty flimsy film, and I figured it out fairly quickly. It's made very cheaply, too - the sound in all the interiors has an echo.

Julie London is slightly miscast as the waitress friend - if the singer hadn't gotten killed after just one song and a few lines, London would have been perfect for that role, and it would have given her a chance to be her usual glamorous self. The murdered singer, however, played by Alika Louis, is very attractive and a great type.

Blair as the poor repressed sleepwalker is very pretty in full makeup and perfectly coiffed hair as she sleepwalks in her nightgown. Bromfield's acting is loud and not very good or believable, but I liked Frances Morris, who played his mother.

Nice of her to support him, but from the looks of those canvasses, he wasn't going to be making much of a living painting.

Not very good.