Accomplice

'Accomplice' is a low-budget noir caper film, starring Richard Arlen after his career was long past its peak. I always liked Arlen; during the peak years of his career (late silent era to mid-30s) he was almost the exact equivalent of the modern Harrison Ford: an action hero, in the classic adventurer mould, who still had credibility as a serious actor in thoughtful dramas. 'Accomplice', regrettably, was made (on a VERY low budget) after Arlen's energies had run out, and it's a poor example of his craft.

Private detective Simon Lash (Arlen) is contacted by Joyce, an ex-girlfriend who jilted him at the altar. Joyce is played by Veda Ann Borg, who always looked trashy, and who gives a mechanical performance in this movie that makes me wonder if she's related to the Borg Collective (in Star Trek). Joyce's husband Jim has been suffering from bouts of amnesia, and now he's gone missing altogether. Jim was a bank executive, and Private Eyelash (I mean, private-eye Lash) is a cynical sleuth, so he naturally assumes that Jim's 'amnesia' was a pretext for embezzling bank funds. But then Lash investigates, and no funds are missing. Then, of course, he investigates a little more, and...

'Accomplice' sets up an interesting premise, but the script gets murkier — and the characters' motivations more contrived — as it proceeds. Noir films usually take place in a world where everyone is corruptible, everyone is motivated solely by self-interest, and the very few people who don't conform to those rules are subsidiary characters who get exploited or bumped off very early in the proceedings. 'Accomplice', however, belongs to that dismal subgenre which I call 'goodie noir', in which everybody in the world is a crook or a scoundrel EXCEPT the hero, who is always motivated by purely virtuous instincts and decency. I find this sort of story utterly implausible. Down these mean streets a man must walk, yadda yadda.

'Accomplice' is made even more painful because it's made on a wretchedly small budget. The film's director Walter Colmes (who?) shows an Ed Wood-like penchant for setting up his camera at the most ludicrous angle, over and over. We get too many car chases in this movie, and in each car chase we get lots and lots and lots of close-ups of spinning tyres. Ed Wood was an angora fetishist; is it possible that Walter Colmes was a rubber fetishist? The ending of 'Accomplice' is extremely contrived. Former silent-film star Francis Ford (John Ford's older brother) gives a welcome performance in a supporting role. I'll rate 'Accomplice' 3 points out of 10.

There are a couple of B-noir movies--Shack Out on 101 comes to mind--that sometimes entertain with their low-budgetness. Sometimes, like in Detour, they absoltely shine.

Accomplice has a good, writerly story in there somewhere. I gather from the credits it's from some serial novel about a private detective. But the writerly touches are so buried in the low budget and crummy acting that it's hard to find it. Still--it flashes through sometimes. An eccentric desert castle for the denouement. A detective who loves old books and Jesse James mythology. Some cool location shots in Lancaster. Chase scenes along Route 66. Some potentially interesting flirtation between old lovers and new lovers.

But it never comes together as the movie races along (only 60 minutes!) and the actors try to find the camera. There's also a great blooper where the lead PI ends a scene forgetting his line: "Better take your sleeping pills, it's a long way to....(pause) uh...." CUT.

Guess they missed that one in the editing room. Nonetheless, some lowbudget guilty fun, highlighting the thing line between bad/good and just bad/bad.

Richard Arlen is an eccentric P.I. His last case finished profitably, he's spending his time and money on old books, and is not looking for new cases. However, when Veda Ann Borg walks in,he changes his mind. Her husband had suffered a bout of amnesia and has now disappeared. Arlen suspects he's been tapping the till, but when he turns up dead, the case goes in a new direction.

It's a decently directed PRC mystery, with lots of actors past their sell-by date: not only Arlen, but Tom Dugan, Marjorie Manners, and even Francis Ford as an old coot. It's cheaply produced, of course, with most of the scenes shot on small sets, and occasional shots of Arlen walking into buildings, but the final third opens up a bit, with some location shooting around Shea's Castle in Lancaster. It's a well-tangled mystery, so that's a plus, but strictly second feature all the way through.

While Richard Arlen's early film career was amazingly successful and he was featured in the first Oscar winner, "Wings" (1927), despite his good looks the roles he was given in movies declined over the years until he was consigned to playing only in B-movies in the 1930s and 40s. Most of these are modestly enjoyable but slight films made for third-rate studios like PRC...and "Accomplice" is certainly a prime example of the sort of subpar Bs he made during this era.

In this movie, Arlen plays a private detective who makes the mistake of taking a case from his old girlfriend...a woman who ended up leaving him for another man. Soon, he's embroiled in a weird case where things just didn't seem to make sense until late in the movie. It went from Arlen being hired to find a missing husband who experiences bouts of amnesia to a case involving murder!

The film has some action and the plot is a tad confusing and muddled. None of it is bad....though none of it is particularly good either. An okay time passer and nothing more.

Richard Arlen steps into Humphrey Bogart's shoes as a hardboiled private detective who gets hired by his former flame Veda Ann Borg to find her missing husband Edward Earle. Some years earlier Borg left Arlen flat at the altar as she traded upward to marry a man with money. Earle's got it all right and may have a love nest going with Marjorie Manners.

He also has a mink farm and a body with his head blown off with a shotgun is identified by Borg. The local sheriff Archie Twitchell thinks that Arlen might well be an Accomplice to Earle's murder.

Several homicides later we learn the solution. Richard Arlen's Simon Lash has a lot in common with Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade.

This PRC film has the usual cheapness associated with Poverty Row. But they have an intriguing film. And you'll love as much as I did two desert rats in Francis Ford and Earle Hodgins and the racket they've got going.