Accomplice (1946)

Let's be realistic.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This film noir thriller was made by the notoriously cheap PRC studio although they do manage a handful of decently-shot car chases to break up the otherwise low budget narrative. It's a private eye film with Richard Arlen doing his best impression of Humphrey Bogart as a sleuth whose encounter with an old flame sets him off on a journey involving murder, deception, and all kinds of crooked activities.The plots of these films almost write themselves and ACCOMPLICE is a rather undistinguished film for what it is. Veda Ann Borg's femme fatale is a bit wishy washy and the actress lacks the kind of magnetism and charisma to make her character truly work. Arlen is a bit of a damp squib too, although some of the supporting cast make for delightfully weaselly characters.Once two thirds of the running time is up the action shifts to the desert and becomes more action-oriented, in fact it resembles a western for the most part which is a far cry from the metropolitan setting of the early part of the movie. ACCOMPLICE is a cheap and rather forgettable slice of film noir action although aficionados of the genre might well get a kick out of it.

Richard Arlen proved he hadn't lost his looks or his ability to put over his style of easy going acting but he was given no help in this movie which started off in an urban setting, moved on to a mink farm!! then ended up in the West where Arlen, by this stage of his career, was more at home. It was typical P.R.C. fare which meant it was not that great!!Arlen played Simon Lash (a pulp detective created by Frank Gruber who also had a hand in the script), a suave private eye who is approached by an old girl friend who left him at the altar to marry a rich banker, Bonniwell. He is now missing with suspected amnesia and Lash is convinced that the only reason for Bonniwell's disappearance is the old story - embezzlement of funds but Joyce (Veda Ann Borg) is convincingly upset enough to make him think there is more to it!! In the meantime another banker goes missing and Lash then finds a secret love nest that Bonniwell has set up with Evelyn Price (Marjorie Manners), the only person in the movie who seems genuinely concerned at events. Unfortunately she isn't around for long and once again Lash is on the trail of a mystery assailant who leads him to New Mexico and a castle run as a hideout by a crooked marshall for criminal fugitives.By the time the surprise mastermind shows up viewers are too bored to care - let's say that Lash had a lucky escape when he was left at the church. Veda Ann Borg made dozens of these movies and she was a welcome addition as the hard boiled Joyce. Every detective needs a side kick and Tom Dugan was adequate in the role. Silent movie hero Herbert Rawlinson has the small role of Springer. Director Walter Colmes tried to inject some excitement into the endless chase scenes by shooting close-ups of the speeding cars - close enough so you can read the make of the car!!

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.

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.