Chantage

This film starts with a bang - literally. It also ends with a bang. You see Edward G is an oil-fire fighter in Oklahoma - and he's doing really well. Great job (if a little dangerous), great house, great wife, great kid. Trouble is he is actually a fugitive from a chain gang - and his past is about to catch up with him. A shame it does really because the scenes of Eddy walking fearlessly into fire-balls are unforgettable. A story about the lives of oil-fire-fighters would have been a lot more interesting than the rather dull blackmail leading to a return to chain gang stuff. The chain gang scenes never live up to those of the masterpiece "I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" - but I wouldn't be surprised if Hitler got a few ideas on his slave labor camps from this film. Were the chain gangs of the thirties really this brutal? If so there were a few "war criminals" in the Southern USA.

Anyway the film drifts back to oil fires at the end - and the climax is really spectacular. It is enhanced by Ed's magnificent performance, and an unforgettable snivelling evil performance from Gene Lockhart. Both rise above the ordinary material. Also impressive is Guinn Williams, but the very talented Ruth Hussey is given little to do but look worried, and Bobs Watson is VILE as the cry-baby son. All in all good MGM entertainment, with some great sequences.

Almost 30 years before John Wayne did his tribute film to Earl 'Red' Adair the famous fighter of oil fires, Edward G. Robinson starred as a man with an oil fighting company, married to Ruth Hussey and with a son in little Bobs Watson. But in Black mail he's a fugitive from a chain gang being convicted of a robbery he didn't commit and escaping. Robinson keeps a low profile, as low as he can, but it isn't the law that spots him.

No it's Gene Lockhart and he knows him from when the robbery was committed. It was when both were in the navy and Lockhart was the real thief, but got scared and the money from the ship's purser which he stole in Robinson's bunk.

Now the scurvy little sneak develops a new scheme after first ingratiating himself with Robinson asking for a job and then rats him out with an exchange for a confession. You have to see how this works and I can't believe Robinson fell for it, but Lockhart gets control of an oil well that Robinson has a lease on and Robinson goes back to the chain gang.

Gene Lockhart made a career of playing all kinds of rat roles, but he really tops himself in Blackmail. You will love seeing how he gets his in the end.

The chain gang scenes are copied well from the classic film from Robinson's home studio of Warner Brothers. Chain gangs are as bad as they were when Paul Muni was serving on them and he too was framed for the crime he was sentenced for by circumstance. There's also a nice supporting part for Guinn Williams as Robinson's lunkhead assistant who has a good heart and actually proves valuable to him.

Fans of Robinson will like Blackmail it holds up well after almost 75 years.

Tough guy Edward G. Robinson, who normally dominates every movie he's in, is upstaged in this one, a good, unambitious actioner, first by raging oil well fires, then by the sly performance of Gene Lockhart, as a particularly loathsome, scheming villain, complete with a baby talking Down East accent. The movie is otherwise unexceptional though very skillfully made at MGM, and features an innocent Robinson on the run from the law for a crime he did not commit. As his sidekick, Guinn Williams is presented as so moronic one wonders how he can hold down any job, much less function as E.G.'s second in command in such a dangerous profession as putting out oil well fires, but the ways of Hollywood are sometimes mysterious. The capable Ruth Hussey is wasted in the boring and irritating role of the wife, from whom we want the movie to get away as quickly as possible. Robinson at first seems out of place in the Oklahoma oil fields but is so robust as the hard-driving entrepeneur hero that this is easily forgiven, and besides, he always excelled at playing fearless men.

**SPOILERS** Having made a success of himself in the fire-fighting business in Oklahoma putting out oil well fires John Ingram,Edward G. Robinson,had it all. A booming business at the hight of the great depression a beautiful wife and darling nine-year-old son Helen & Hank, Ruth Hussey & Bobs Watson,who thought the world of him and the respect and admiration of the entire community. John he also had something that could destroy everything he achieved and worked for the last nine years, a dark and mysterious past.

Being convicted of breaking into the safe of his employer and having the stolen money found under his mattress John Ingram, who's real name is John Harrington,was sent to work on a prison chain-gang for five years. Escaping from prison John made his way to Oklahoma and started a new life and now with his old friend Bill Ramey, Gene Lochart, showing up on the scene that new life,as well as his freedom,is about to end. John giving Bill a job on his oil well to keep him quite about his past doesn't at all seem to work when Bill starts to put the squeeze on him for money and demands $25,000.00 to keep his mouth shut. John not having that much cash agrees to give Bill $5,000.00, his entire life savings, when Bill reveals the truth about the robbery that put John away and caused him to become a fugitive from the law. He was the man who broke into the safe and hid the stolen cash under John's mattress.

Having the $5,000.00 bank check sent to Bill's hotel and Bill having his confession sent by mail to the local police department would free John from being hunted by the police. It will also give Bill, a homeless vagabond, the security of living out his last years after he serves out the five year sentence that John was straddled with. As you would expect Bill doubled-crossed his friend and had him put back behind bars and his oil well taken over by Bill who used the blackmail money, that John gave him, to buy him out while he was doing his time with the chain-gang.

Determined at first to do his five years and then get back to his wife and child, as well as his fire-fighting business, John realizes that he has nothing to come back to with Bill buying him out and throwing his wife and son out of their home and on the street. Getting letters from Helen about how fine everything is John knows that things are a lot worse then the news he's been getting from her when he has a talk with his lawyer and co-owner of his business Moose McCarthy,Guinn "Big Bill" Williams. "Big Bill" broke the bad news about the raw deal John got both here in the chain-gang and at home due to the sleazy actions of his "friend" Bill Ramey.

Breaking out of jail with fellow prisoner Diggs(John Wray), who ends up getting shot and killed, John makes his way back home to Oklahoma. John's determined to settle the score with that lowlife Bill Ramey and get him to confess his sins, or better yet, and crimes that sent him away not once but twice to serve hard time in a southern chain-gang for crimes that he didn't commit.

Edward G. Robinson, in a good-guy role for once, is very good as the maligned and wrongly convicted John Ingram. The ending of the movie, even though very contrived and predictable, is very effective and rewarding to both John and his family, as well as the movie audience. John beats a confession out of Bill Ramey by forcing him to face the hell that he faces and faced every time he went to work putting out dangerous oil well fires.

All chain gang movies take us on a journey. We start with a nice guy, usually innocent, being brutalized on a chain gang until he becomes a seething mass of controlled rage out for vengeance. This movie is no exception.

Edward G Robinson has been victimized before so his situation here is no real surprise. The surprise is the object of his rage. A total psychopath named Ramey, played by non other than Gene Lockhart of all people. The casting director in this movie was a genius. Who would have ever thought of this perennial nice guy as a villain. Crybaby Bobs Watson does his bit as EGR's kid Hank. Big Boy Williams is his loyal affable self. It is no wonder he stayed busy for decades. Only Ruth Hussy drops the ball in this one. She just doesn't seem gritty enough for this kind of melodrama.

It may sound crazy, but there is something comforting about the savage routine of a chain gang when compared to the terror of escaping and becoming a fugitive. You would think that every police force in the country has nothing to do but search for this guy.

I won't get into the ending - it's a little hard to swallow, but I think it's worth waiting for. Just remember, this takes place long before the Miranda decision. This is a little programmer that gets lost between "I Was a Fugitive From a Chaingang" and "Cool Hand Luke", but as chain gang movies go, this is a winner.