Cover Up

Despite the title and Dennis O'Keefe as the star, this B film is not a film noir. It is about a small town in Middle America where everyone in the town seems to be trying to conspire to cover up a murder. Dennis O'Keefe arrives in town as an insurance investigator. He is there as a matter of routine because the company for which he works has provided life insurance for the deceased. The sum insured is mentioned as $20,000, and everyone speaks of it breathlessly, and it is hard to realize that in those days $20,000 really was a substantial amount of money. That says a lot about inflation over time. The man is said to have committed suicide. However, O'Keefe is very smart and he soon realizes that the man was murdered. His efforts to bring this to the attention of the local sheriff, played by William Bendix, meet with a stone wall. There is a double indemnity clause in the insurance policy which says that if the person is murdered the payout will be double. But when O'Keefe offers to pay the extra $20,000 to the niece of the murdered man, she refuses it, insisting that her uncle committed suicide. O'Keefe is baffled by this refusal of so much extra money. The murdered man turns out to have been 'a poison in his community', who was hated by everyone in town. In fact, everyone in town had a motive to murder him. It is a very good yarn in theory, but mystery and tension are sacrificed to other aims, namely to concentrate on the dilemma of O'Keefe's budding romance with a girl called Anita, played by Barbara Britton. The murdered man was killed with a 9 mm German Lugar. Both the sheriff and Anita's father have such Lugars. Things are looking very bad indeed, as one of them seems to be the killer. The other main aim of the film is to concentrate on the cozy, though currently unsettled, life of the small town. It is snowing and it is nearly Christmas. People are lighting up their trees and getting the turkeys ready for roasting, tying up their presents, and O'Keefe (who has no family of his own) gets involved in the festivities while he is at the same time carrying out an investigation which threatens many of those with whom he is associating. If the intention had been to make a film noir, a great deal more mystery and suspicion and conflict would have been created, and the film would be dark and moody. Instead, the film attempts to retain a cheerful air, which belies the tensions underneath. Barbara Britton smiles charmingly, O'Keefe is falling for her like a schoolboy, her father is genteel and reassuring, and only the sheriff appears truly suspicious, though even he has a twinkle in his eye and casts mischievous little smiles aside from time to time, which suggest that he is not a bad guy after all. No attempt is made by the director to suggest any real sense of threat or menace. Everybody is simply too goody-goody, and there are no obvious villains. Well, the ending has something to do with the season of the year, and it is by no means obvious, but I won't spoil things by discussing that. The catchline for the film is: 'a small town with big secrets'. That is certainly true, but don't expect a nail-biter. The suspense is so diluted in this film that it should rather be described as diverting than absorbing. As a result, Dennis O'Keefe is not as effective as usual, because he was best in films where things get really tough, and here he has to be Mr. Nice Guy who in between wooing his gal dabbles in proving and explaining a murder, and worrying whether his gal and her father are involved in it. In other words, the focus is on the romantic conflict rather than on whodunit. You could call this a 'soft noir', or perhaps a 'black marshmallow', since it aims to be tasty, chewy and sweet with a dusting of crime sprinkled over it for appearance's sake.

Before his company will pay out, an insurance investigator (Dennis O'Keefe) arrives in a small town to look into an apparent suicide. But he immediately begins to suspect something's not quite right. No gun, no powder marks, no bullet, no coroner's report, and no sheriff's report seem to lead to no suicide. Was it suicide – or was it something even more sinister?

It may not be the noir I was expecting, but Cover-Up is a nice little 40s style mystery. The plot kept me going up to the end. It's full of red herrings and I could have never guessed the outcome. Other than the It's a Wonderful Life style ending, I've got nothing to complain about. The cast is more than capable with Dennis O'Keefe, William Bendix, and Barbara Britton giving nice performances. I'm not all that familiar with Britton, but it's easy to see why she was a Revlon Girl for more than a decade. The cast also features Doro Merande who steals every scene in which she appears.

I picked up the DVD on the budget Geneon label. If you don't mind a lack of extras (and that includes the absence of a menu), it's not a bad deal for the money. The cover art is misleading. I have no idea what movie it was taken from, but it most certainly wasn't Cover-Up.

A good, economical little b movie, with a wonderful female lead , Britton, who is stunning and a straight faced male lead, O Keefe. Enough red herrings to keep one amused, as long as you are not looking for a classic.

An insurance investigator (Dennis O'Keefe) arrives in a small town right at Christmas time to find out about an apparent suicide that his company may have to pay out for. He's met an attractive inhabitant (Barbara Britton) on the train ride into town. The person who O'Keefe's character is supposed to believe killed himself turns out to have been very unpopular. The evidence of his death points not to suicide but to murder, though everyone in the town from the bus driver to the sheriff (William Bendix) seem totally unfazed about what has happened. This could have been a lot more exciting if the townspeople had gone farther in trying to stop the investigation. They are all so nice and yet this guy is dead, and not by his own hand. So, ergo, it would seem that they are, in fact, not so nice after all, and that this town is covering up murder, though the film seems to be telling us that that is OK, that the dead guy somehow had it coming and that the spirit of Christmas overrides the evil of his murder. Nonetheless, a few parts stand out for being bizarre, most especially the one played by Doro Merande as Hilda, the housekeeper for Barbara Britton and her family, who in one scene is outside setting fire to the dad's fur coat and later tells everyone that it was an accident. All in all, though this is a strange movie, which is a good point, it seems shackled and prohibited from reaching its true realization.

Shortly before Christmas the most hated citizen in a small town dies by gunshot wound, declared by the law to be a suicide. Into town comes insurance investigator Sam Donovan (Dennis O'Keefe) to investigate the death and see if all loose ends are tied up since the deceased has a 20K life insurance policy - about 200K in today's money. Nothing could be less conclusive than this investigation. When Sam goes to talk to the town sheriff and ask about the weapon, the sheriff (William Bendix) says it is missing. When Sam asks about the bullets that killed him, the sheriff says the coroner left them in the deceased since it was obvious what killed him and how he died. Only when Sam threatens to get a court order does the sheriff produce the bullets.

In other words, if the sheriff was trying to deflect suspicion of this being anything but a suicide his obvious lies and stonewalling has had the expected opposite effect. In fact everybody in town is stonewalling Sam. Thinking this could be murder, Sam continues to dig, and continues to get furtive glances and obvious lies from everybody in the town. It also turns out that the deceased was just plain mean and everybody from the sheriff on down had a motive to kill him. Meanwhile Sam is having a serious romance with the daughter of the town banker who also had a motive to kill the insured.

What are the odd devices in this film? The hated deceased/insured guy is never seen. He is dead before the film begins and we never see him in flashback. There is another character who turns out to be important to the plot who is never seen - the town doctor who was out of town but has a heart attack shortly after returning who is talked about in the most glowing of terms by everybody. Again - never seen in live action or flashback.

So we have a death that may be murder against the backdrop of a small town Christmas post-war, the descriptions by the townspeople of two dead people who seem to have had opposite personalities but whom we never see for ourselves, and all of the townspeople acting like pod people when it comes to stonewalling the investigation, including the sheriff who is so obvious that he creates doubt rather than eliminates it. And why does the insurance company let their guy even try to prove it is murder when they will have to pay out double if it is? A reason is given, but I don't buy it, not even from corporations sixty years ago.

Watch this one if you can. It certainly will keep you interested and guessing.