Postal Inspector

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 !

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.

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.

I kept singing "You've never seen anything like it" from Doctor Dolittle as I watched this because I hadn't seen anything like it.

Ricardo Cortez plays a postal inspector who meets up with a nightclub singer on a plane having trouble landing. The singer sings a song to help calm everyone. The plane lands and we find that the singers manager is Bela Lugosi a Mexican business man in deep with the mob. After several scenes of Cortez showing what a postal inspector does the singer takes a shower and sings. A friend of Cortez is actually wooing the singer and everyone ends up at a night club where we get another song. Lugosi finds out that the younger inspector is going to be moving some old currency so he plots to steal it so he can get out of debt. A flood happens as the robbery goes down. There's another song before Cortez springs into action.

All that and more in an hour.

As odd mixes of genre's go I'd be hard pressed to come up with one as loopy as this.

I have no idea if I liked it, but I do know its a unique viewing experience. If you want to see how to put mutually exclusive genres together and make it kind of work this is the movie for you. See it and you too can sing that you've never seen anything like it...

This film stars Ricardo Cortez as the title character investigating various mail fraud schemes, and, ultimately, the theft of 3 million bucks earmarked for destruction. Patricia Ellis plays a nightclub singer who falls for Cortez' brother. Bela Lugosi plays the nightclub owner who pulls the heist.

The second half of the film takes place during a flood, with Cortez promising everyone the mail will still get through, by train, plane, or boat if necessary. Right. I can't even get my store circulars delivered on time during a sunny day.

Cortez is better than usual, and Ellis is very attractive. She sings a few songs which are not memorable, including this ditty aboard a plane flying through dense fog while her maid (Hattie McDaniel) bugs her eyes out a la Mantan Moreland: "Here we are together flying high, We're up in heaven, you and I, We'll be coming down to earth someday, But in the meantime, let's be gay."

Well, I guess if you think you're about to crash, it's a good time to experiment with your orientation.