They Made Me a Killer

A typical Hitchcock set-up: hero gets hijacked in a bank robbery, in the getaway the robbers kill a clerk, hero gets caught by the police and charged with the robbery, he runs away to eventually be rescued by a girl, who continuously saves the situation, combining her smartness with the hero's. Many scenes are shot in the dark when they constantly cut the fuses to make it difficult for the crooks, and you hear how hard they are fighting, but you cannot see a thing, until the fisticuffs are over with and the place is wrecked including some casualty. It is good for a B-thriller with appropriate music, but you wouldn't recommend it to anybody nor watch it again, no matter how much you missed on the way. But the trick with the juke-box heightens the quality of the plot and your interest, but still, you will be glad when it is all over.

Sixty four minute shorty from pine thomas, which became the low end production house of paramount. June (britton) tries to help tom (lowery), a guy who just landed in big trouble. Some shady new friends just held up a bank, and tricked tom into being the getaway. But he doesn't stick around to face trial... he runs off to try to prove his innocence. Can he find his abductors, and prove his innocence to the coppers? The sound and picture quality are pretty bad, and the background screen effects are soooo cheesy. It's exactly what we expect, with no big names. Directed by william thomas. He was nominated for a short film in 1943. Lowery died young at 58 from a heart attack. It's all just okay.

Satisfying noir B-feature that does everything it needs to do in little more than an hour. The screenwriter billed here as Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring) was the screenwriter and original novelist of Build My Gallows High/Out of the Past, and also wrote The Big Steal and Baby Face Nelson among others. The dialogue is clipped and menacing ("We'll bump him on the way," one of the heavies says casually) and the often claustrophobic spaces are used to good effect. Robert Lowery, who played Batman in the 1948 movie serial, has the right air of the doomed noir hero initially caught between the hard-bitten gangster's moll and femme fatale, Betty, (portrayed perfectly by Lola Lane,) and the innocent and beautiful schoolteacher, June (Barbara Britton), who eventually decides to help him prove his innocence after he is unwittingly embroiled in a bank robbery which leaves two dead. The cast is uniformly good, and the tension never lets up. The DVD I saw was in very poor condition; I hope someone will set about restoring this film to its full glory. As Lem Dobbs said on the commentary to Double Indemnity: "There's no such thing as a bad film noir." This low-budget gem proves him right.

The term 'cut to the chase' is redundant in this fast paced crime thriller. Within seven minutes Robert Lowery has been railroaded into driving the getaway car from a bank robbery, having been suckered into believing that gang member Lola Lane wanted to buy the vehicle. A few shootings and some erratic motoring later, Lowery finds himself unconscious behind the wheel of the crashed automobile, gun in hand. The gang?....Nowhere to be seen.

Grim, granite faced, gruff voiced D. A., Paul Harvey has little time for Lowery,s plea of innocence and when witness Byron Barr (himself under suspicion) dies in hospital, Lowery's determination to resolve the matter alone reveals a ruthless streak. It's one thing to overturn a bed to foil pursuers, but one occupied by a man who passed away moments earlier? Can't a man die with SOME dignity? Seconds later, his boundless desperation results in an uncooperative nurse having a close encounter of the fist kind, before Lowery escapes.

Befriending Barr's sister (Barbara Britton), they have a common goal in tracking down the gang. Along the way, Will Wright adds to his encyclopedia of bit parts, as a blacksmith, whose lame brained attempt at apprehending Lowery, results in a headache he aint never gonna forget.

Ultimately, the movie flattens out, but remains engaging and lives up to its noir billing, with some scenes shot in such impenetrable darkness, it's almost impossible to discern what's taking place.

Crude and unpolished, to the point where even 1940's audiences must have found it a bit clunky, 'Killer' is hardly a hidden gem, but there is nonetheless something curiously appealing struggling to shine through the murk of this low budget quickie. It possesses an intangible period charm which entices you into returning for a further helping. File under 'Intriguing Obscurity.'

Lola Lane's final film appearance.

The plot's pretty conventional, but with an unusual wrinkle . An innocent guy is trapped into helping bank robbers execute a robbery, and now the cops are chasing him. As the pursuit goes on, he joins the robbers in their hiding spot. Now the question is which way will he go. Will he join the crooks or work with a girl friend to clear himself.

Hard to believe veteran leading man Lowery could work up such energy for a programmer considering he'd done about a hundred of them. But he does. In fact it's his energy and the glowing freshness of Barbara Britton that carry the film. Then too, Lowery's character, Durling, is none too moral, meaning he's really tempted to join the bad guys once he's on the lam. And that amounts to a good, human touch from outstanding scripter Dan Mainwaring. It also helps that director Thomas keeps things moving, though the corner shoot-out and the hospital escape appear awkwardly done. Add to the mix a fine supporting cast, especially spider woman Lane and housemother Risdon. But please tell me, where did wardrobe get that fur-collared overcoat that's about to swallow Lane's head and then maybe the world!

Looks like this is one of those 40's B's that was reaching for noir while remaining within the crime story genre. Anyway, the minor touches manage to lift results to the slightly-better- than-average category.

(In passing—I'd long thought the name Byron Barr in cast lists referred to an early Gig Young, the former being his real name, the latter his stage name. However, in researching this film, I discover there was in fact a second actor named Byron Barr who kept his original name, and he's the one in this movie. Of course, Gig Young remains the much better known of the two.)