Homicide

A cop is drawn rather inexplicably into an apparent suicide, leading him into a meandering investigation.

Despite a promising start, the movie descends into a lackluster crime drama with little to salvage it from the celluloid wastebasket. The plot's neither tight nor coherent, plodding along in uninspired fashion, with the usual bruising fist fights where no one gets marked up and a wounded hero who quickly recovers in true Hollywood fashion. In a better movie, these clichés could be overlooked, but here they simply add to the general contrivance. What surprises me is that this is a studio production (Warner Bros.). I could understand the slipshod results coming from a cheap indie outfit, but not from the gangster experts at Warners. Still, no film with that great tough-talking slattern Esther Howard (the landlady) can be a total loss. My suggestion-- catch the movie if the only alternative is a political speech.

A talky disappointment, HOMICIDE is decently reasonably well-acted, but there's not much more to say about it. The detective lead, Robert Douglas is quite good. However he lacks on-screen appeal. It may have been better to cast Warren Douglas (no relation) who plays the unfortunate victim, in that role. We do see Helen Westcott--an underrated Warners player, Robert Alda, and the always colorful Esther Howard as a flop-house owner. The interaction between Howard and Douglas are among the best things in the picture. Also pretty good are the flirtation scenes with Douglas and Westcott, while a desert fight between Douglas and Alda is a highlight. So it's not a total letdown. But it certainly isn't a Film Noir by any stretch of anyone's imagination, just because it's a crime drama in b&w from 1949.

An engaging Robert Douglas ("The Fountainhead") is L. A. police detective Michael Landers, a man sharp enough to figure that the recent suicide of a war veteran and wannabe ranch hand was most likely a murder instead. His evidence is slim, but he has a gut feeling about the matter. He convinces his bosses to let him go on "vacation", and goes out of his jurisdiction to investigate the matter further.

Overall, this B level crime picture from Warner Bros. (not really a noir) is decidedly minor, but it does provide undemanding entertainment for fans of the genre. It goes far on the talents of Douglas, who usually played bad guys in bigger films, and the loveliness of Helen Westcott ("The Gunfighter"), the cigarette salesgirl who lends him a hand. The fight scene in the desert, late in the film, is a highlight. The supporting cast fares pretty well: Robert Alda ("Rhapsody in Blue") as bartender Andy, Monte Blue ("Key Largo") as the local sheriff, Warren Douglas ("The Inner Circle") as the "suicide", Richard Benedict ("Ace in the Hole") and John Harmon ("King of the Underworld") as thugs, James Flavin ("King Kong") as Boylan, and especially Esther Howard ("Murder, My Sweet"), with whom Douglas has good chemistry, as the landlady.

Overall, this will show lovers of vintage B crime movies a pretty good time, even if the story / mystery is not that great. At least, like so many pictures of this kind from this era, it gets to the point pretty succinctly, not going on any longer than it has to.

Six out of 10.

A serviceable police procedural from 1949, Homicide veers from the mildly absorbing to the silly. Its opening shows promise: A drifter just out of the Navy, looking for work as a farm hand, stumbles across a murder in an orange grove. The killers pay him off to testify that he witnessed an accident, then dispose of him too, making it look like he hanged himself in a cheap Los Angeles boarding house (its landlady is Esther Howard, best remembered as Jessie Florian in Murder, My Sweet).

One police detective (Robert Douglas) thinks there's something fishy and, going by a book of matches and a saccharin tablet, takes a leave of absence to pursue his investigation to a desert spa, where the bartender (Robert Alda) suffers from diabetes. A clue! The plot involves an underground wire used by a nationwide gambling syndicate. But Douglas, operating on his own, finds that his cover is burned and his life is in danger....

Homicide's worst misstep is in the casting of its lead. The ostentatiously British Douglas (40 at the time and looking comfortably middle-aged) is passed off as a Canadian to somehow explain his working for the LAPD. A better explanation would be why they hired a detective who's thick as a brick. The most entertaining part of the movie is listening to him try to sling American slang in his brittle B.B.C. accent; it's like watching a movie with subtitles.

This routine little murder mystery is not so much on plot, however, I always find the movies made on location in the Los Angeles area in the '40s and early '50s interesting-it's nice to see that there were actually areas that were not covered with glass and concrete, before the Eastern Carpetbaggers moved in and turned the area into what they had fled, i.e. the worst of Detroit, Chicago and NYC. Another reason to recommend this one is that it features the lovely Ms. Westcott, second only in B movie beauty to Marie Windsor. Otherwise this is a routine tale of a detective hunting thieves that have turned to murder.