Coffins on Wheels

This is another episode of the Crime Does Not Pay series. Sleazy used car dealer Nick buys a wreck and cleans it up. What he doesn't do is make it safe. He sells dangerous junk cars with superficial fixes. Tommy Phillips is a teenager eager to buy his first car. The trouble is that the car comes with bad brakes.

This is actually a very effective episode. It has some action. It has a good villain. It's got the consumer protection angle. It's very effective. I would make one change. Announcing the death of the child should be done in silence. It's done badly here with weak acting. More than anything, it would concentrate the punch to the line where they change the charge to manslaughter. That would be more powerful.

I was pretty happy as I watched "Coffins on Wheels", as several of the Crime Does Not Pay shorts preceding this one were pretty dull and preachy. This is because the great series took a bit of a nosedive when WWII began, as MGM began focusing less on organized crime and violence and more on topics like civic duty and patriotism. Yet, somehow, the series avoided these preachy topics and got back to their roots with "Coffins on Wheels".

This film is about unscrupulous used car dealers who buy unsafe cars and give them cosmetic changes to make them seem road-worthy. The jerks in this one have no trouble selling a teenager a car with faulty brakes and it ends up leading to a thrilling and bloody accident. But, as you'd expect with the series, the baddies get theirs in the end! It makes for a very exciting film--one that won't disappoint.

A few folks to look for in this one are a very young Darryl Hickman, the cowboy star Allan 'Rocky' Lane and Roy Gordon. Who is Gordon? Well in the films in this series, the films are introduced by some important government official. In this particular film, it's supposed to be Mr. Blake from the Department of Motor Vehicles, but like ALL the films he's just an actor!

A crooked used-car dealer buys a wreck for $20, slaps some paint on it and sells to to Darryl Hickman. Its brakes fails almost immediately in this cautionary CRIME DOES NOT PAY short.

We see the dealer's "mechanic" fix the brakes using asbestos-covered paper, then another man complains about his car. This one goes to the police, who can do nothing save point out the flaws and useless "repairs" on his car; the contract says the car was sold "as is". When Hickman takes his brother and friends for an outing, however, it becomes more than a matter of money....



This MGM series told a lot of cautionary tales about rackets in its first few years. This is a pretty good one.

Raymond Bailey is credited as "Ray the Lab Tech" but the actor in this short is definitely not the Raymond Bailey we all know as Mr. Drysdale.

During the scene where the faulty brakes are being examined in the garage there is a policeman standing behind the car that may possibly be Mr. Bailey but it is very difficult to tell.

Other parts of this short are quite interesting such as the older vehicles shown in the street scenes and the prices discussed as well as the dialog between the characters.

Seeing actors like Walter Baldwin, the original Barber on the Any Griffith Show, in his early days is also quite interesting.

This is a well done but predictable short from the series popular during the early '40s illustrating that crime does not pay.

Used car dealer (CY KENDALL) uses smooth talk and unethical tactics to convince buyers they're getting a good deal when it comes to purchasing a used car. In actuality, they're getting cars that have been superficially painted and customized cheaply to correct whatever flaws existed.

A teen-ager (who looks much too young to be driving in the first place) is gullible enough to buy a car that is really a pile of junk painted over and given a few gimmicky things to make it appear like a real buy. What he doesn't know is that the brakes are weak. A strip of asbestos around the brake drum is used to fix a brake problem.

The dealers protect themselves by selling the autos in a condition described as "sold as is." An elderly gent is sold a car that has serious clutch problems but is denied a return on his money when he makes a complaint.

It's up to the D.A. (ALLAN LANE) to bring the bad guys to court after a serious accident kills one boy (DARRYL HICKMAN) and puts the other into the hospital.

"These cars would have been a death trap even if the brakes had held," says someone after court proceedings are over and the men are convicted and sent to jail.

At the end, we hear the narrator say: "This case must serve as a warning to the public."

Summing up: Good public service announcement, fast moving and swift in making its point.