Roaring City

Yes, I meant what I said in the summary. Despite a confusing plot and perhaps one too many twists, this is a dandy low-budget example of film noir. One of the biggest reasons to watch it is to see Hugh Beaumont playing such a jaded and noir character. This guy is as far from the Ward Clever character that Beaumont played on "Leave It To Beaver" as you can get!! In fact, his dialog is so snappy and he is so different that I strongly advise you to watch! Sure, I know that Beaumont actually played in a lot of cop films and on TV in roles as crooks, prosecutors and policemen--but this one is so much grittier and amoral than anything I'd seen. Another big reason to watch is because it's not just Beaumont--ALL the people talk with some of the darkest and snappiest dialog imaginable--it's like a textbook example of the genre. Along the same lines, the action is amazingly gritty. I've never seen another film with so many 'dames' getting slapped around!! While this may sound offensive, it really adds to the realism and the women in this film, like the men, are vipers. Finally, a reason I loved it probably won't matter to the average noir viewer, but I loved seeing Eddie Brophy playing such an atypical character. Brophy almost always played low-brow sorts--most often dumb thugs. Here, however, he plays so much against type it made me laugh. Here, he's called 'the Professor' and talks like a Harvard lecturer!! And, he doesn't come off as dumb at all--and sounds quite convincing. Oh, and if you think you recognize his voice, he played Timothy in Disney's "Dumbo".

As I said above, the plot seemed incidental. It all begins with Beaumont playing a private detective who will do almost anything for a buck. A crook wants him to place some bets in his name--as a boxing match has been fixed (boxing not on the level--say is ain't so!). But, when the losing boxer WINS, things start spiraling out of control and Beaumont finds himself suspected of the murder. There is LOTS more to it than that and who is responsible and why is dandy....but the road there is full of a bazillion twists and turns. Relax is my advice...and just enjoy the ride. This is a wonderful example of a low-budget noir film that manages to be better than many of the bigger studio efforts! See it.

Hugh Beaumont, who previous had played Michael Shayne for a series of detective movies at PRC in the 1946-47 season (entertaining films, but having little to do with the Shayne character as depicted in the Brett Halliday novels), put the trench-coat back on for a series of three hour-long feature films as detective Denny O'Brien, released in short succession through Lippert Pictures in 1951. One interesting element about these films is that each consists of two half-hour-long stories, almost as if one is watching back-to-back episodes of a television show. Another interesting element is that the films seem to have borrowed a number of elements from the radio show PAT NOVAK FOR HIRE, starring Jack Webb. Not only is O'Brien a man who rents a ship at the pier and does odd jobs, not only does each film start with monologues very similar to those of Webb, not only does O'Brien have a drunken ex-college-professor sidekick who does some legwork for him, but one of the three films has a plot line lifted directly from a Novak episode! (Perhaps other plots of these movies are lifted from Novak episodes I haven't heard) In any event, these three films are all enjoyable outings with Beaumont radiating the same kind of charm he always did, yet still being convincing as a tough PI spouting hard-boiled dialogue. This particular film has two stories: one of a fixed fight that O'Brien is hired to bet on, and the other where O'Brien is hired to pose as a woman's husband for an evening. Like the PAT NOVAK series, someone hires the detective to do something, he winds up getting beaten up or knocked out, and he wakes up with a dead body, and a police inspector who doesn't like him trying to pin the murder on the detective. That's the formula, and I like it. As often happens with Lippert films, there is a fine b-movie supporting cast, and there is no time wasted on non-essential items. I've owned this film for about 15 years, and I have no doubt watched it five times in those years. Beaumont fans will NOT be disappointed. The other two Denny O'Brien films are DANGER ZONE and PIER 23, both of which I also recommend to detective film fans who do not mind bargain-basement productions in the PRC/Lippert vein. These are directed by the ever-reliable William Berke.

Hugh Beaumont plays against what folks of my generation see him as: the perfect dad to a perfect family. He ain't no family man here. But, what is he? He seems to be a private investigator without a license holding down a day job as a renter/seller of old boats at the shoddy end of the San Francisco harbor. As Dennis O'Brien, Beaumont isn't exactly Sherlock Holmes (though he does have a low rent professor sidekick and go-fer), nor is he Sam Spade. He's a stupefyingly poor down mix of the two if you're generous.

Actually, with Beaumont there's something ,almost, to like as his charisma occasionally comes through. But, then there's the quirks that apparently the producer and director insert. For one, the "tough guy" dialog is downright laughable akin to the intentional use of such for comedic effect in the Steve Martin flick "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid". Only it's unintentional here thus really bad without the comic relief. It's a big fail.

Also, because this isn't actually a feature B flick at all things never flow. The producer/director/writers have stitched together two segments that must have been meant for a TV pilot and first episode (that were not good enough even for that). So, it's a fledging wannabe movie. The word "clunky" comes to mind even if it was a money move to meet the demand for the double features of the day. Besides Beaumont there isn't much in the acting department either. It leaves one thinking even if there wasn't a financial loss careers were muddied. Somewhere in this mess something quite a bit better could have been crafted around Beaumont's character. It wasn't and instead this is the lame result. It's basically a waste, a which is a generous way to say it's laughably terrible. Don't bother with this one.

As a PI, Beaumont's (O'Brien) got all the macho moves and snappy rejoinders down pat. In fact, dialog may be the programmer's chief asset. The movie's really two separate half-hour stories in a single one-hour package, but don't bother with the plots. They're too complex for brief run-times, and really just an excuse to move the cast around cheap apartment sets. I'm just sorry we don't see more of atmospheric San Francisco where the shenanigans ostensibly occur. I could also have used more of the stately blonde (Valerie) instead of guys in trench coats threatening one another. Seems like O'Brien's main purpose is to get slugged and then wake up amid dead bodies. Nothing special or unusual here, except for Ward Cleaver making a pretty darn good tough guy. Trouble is the blended half-hours are more unwieldy than satisfying.

Hugh Beaumont is an unlicensed private investigator. He gets involved in a couple of murders, almost pulled in by police inspector Richard Travis, and investigates by getting his head pounded in and with the aid of alchoholic Eddie Brophy in this brisk film noir from Lippert.

It's based on a couple of scripts from radio's Pat Novak For Hire, a local show that starred Jack Webb at the beginning of its career before it went national briefly with another performer in the lead role. There's a lot of exposition, fancy metaphors, and a voice over by Beaumont explaining what's going on.

On the plus side, the copy was one of the few good prints of a movie shot by Jack Greenhalgh, and is quite lovely. It shows why he was for a long time, the youngest member of the American Society of Cinematographers. Despite the script not being opened up particularly for the movies, it has some striking images.