Marked Men (1940)

Just perfect...

For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

When there's a prison break, the escaping cons carry Warren Hull away with them. They are recaptured, but he is not, and they blame the death of a guard on him. Hull makes his way to Tempe. Arizona where, along with screen dog Grey Shadow (in his film debut), he goes to work for John Wilson and his daughter, Isabel Jewel. Yet bad luck pursues him. The marshal recognizes him and he is about to turn himself in, when the cons, who have escaped again, turn up in Tempe and rob the bank, killing a man. Hull is assumed to be part of their gang, and flees, making his way into the desert to track them down and prove his innocence.It's an okay little picture, mostly interesting for location shooting in the Arizona desert. It's surprising to realize through the poor prints and ludicrous credits of Jack Greenhaigh -- REEFER MADNESS and ROBOT MONSTER were two of the best remembered of the almost 200 features that he shot -- that there were tremendous reserves of technical ability in Hollywood. Although he worked in the Bs for his entire career, Greenhaigh was a respected craftsman and for many years held the record for being the youngest member of the American Society of Cinematographers.As for the director of this movie, Sam Newfield, a lot of people thought of him as a hack. Well, maybe. However, he turned out over 200 movies in 30 years behind the megaphone, and made money and careers for a lot of people. In a field of commercial art, that's worth at least as much as someone who turns out beautiful movies that the critics love and no one pays to see. This one was bright, quick, decently acted, and kept me watching, unlike many a well-regarded work of art.

Warren Hull, a decent actor with a face that is neither handsome nor ugly but as interesting as a hard-boiled egg, escapes from jail somewhere in the East. He manages to hitch hike his way to southern Arizona where he meets a dog he calls Wolf in the middle of the Sonoran desert.First things first. This really IS the Sonoran desert, not a studio mock up. It's surprising, almost shocking, to see location shooting like this in a B movie. Yet there it is in all its overheated glory -- saguaro cactus, cholla, ocotillo, palo verdes, and rocky bluffs that don't look the slightest bit Californian.Hull is trailed through the desert by a half dozen howling wolves, but one of them detaches himself from the pack and joins Hull as a companion. "Wolf" isn't really a wolf. He's a German shepherd apparently kicked out by his owner. This is some dog. His ears are so big they're almost fluorescent and they stand straight up like Batman's. And that TONGUE. Wolf constantly slavers away with this organ hanging a foot out of his mouth.They say a man's best friend is a dog, but I consider that to be no more than propaganda perpetrated by dog people. Cats don't have that disgusting habit of panting and drooling hydrophobia all over the place. And they don't make a lot of noise either, not if you kick them properly once in a while. I camped several times in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument with my cat Bandido. There were no wolves but in the evening Bandido and I heard the far-off yipping of coyotes. Well, man, did Bandido's hair stand on end or what. I couldn't stop laughing. He was frightened too by the numerous Western Diamondback rattlesnakes that emerged at twilight, but it must be admitted that they were fiendishly defensive when approached.Anyway, back to Warren Hull and Wolf, baking in the desert, both pretty chipper considering their circumstances. Finally they reach town -- Tempe, Arizona, just southeast of Phoenix. Tempe, home of Arizona State University, was a small town when this was shot, and even when I stayed there a generation or two later, with a chuckwalla squeezed into every other rock crevice in the vacant lots, a charming, laid back little city with vest pocket parks and Mexican fan palms. Now it's a pristine and expensive example of urban sprawl.Hull meets Isabel Jewell, a nice young blond who invites him in for a snack. She's not a Hollywood beauty nor a bravura actress. Her high, piping, girlish voice is a handicap but she's still appealing in her innocent in her lust for a bourgeois life with a husband and a cottage to call home. As I watched Hull sitting there, chatting with Jewell, I couldn't help wondering why he was so well dressed and groomed -- clean shirt, tie, proper haircut -- and what exactly he'd been eating while hitching across the country without any money. Well, some things man was never meant to know. Jewell's father happens to be a doctor in need of a handyman and Hull fits the bill.Hull becomes a popular fellow in town and he and Jewell decide to marry. Alas, the local cop twigs to Hull's identity as an escaped convict and -- well, then things get really improbably. The same gang with which he broke out of the slams shows up accidentally in little Tempe and robs the bank. Hull feigns joining them, in hopes of finding a way to prove his innocence. He succeeds and marries the girl wearing stockings with seams that run up the back.I've kind of made fun of it but it's not a bad movie. It's diverting in its unpretentious way and not without some charm. It isn't helped, though, by clumsy editing, crude direction, impossible coincidences, and loopholes in the plot.

Although Marked Men starts rather haphazardly once it gets going it turns out to be a pretty nice drama with both men against men and men against the elements present in it.I could never quite buy why Warren Hull was in prison, how could he be that naive? Allegedly a group of some rather rough types ask medical school student Hull to do a driving job for them. It turns out being the getaway driver in a bank robbery. Later on Hull can't make anybody believe that he got innocently roped into it.It doesn't wear well today, but I'm guessing that those Depression Era audiences people did a lot for money and just learned not to ask questions until the consequences smacked them in the face.In any event leader Paul Bryar likes Hull's company so much that he takes him along during a jail break when a couple of guards were killed. Now Hull is on the hook for murder, but he gets separated from the others as they pull yet another job.Hull and a German shepherd dog start traveling together after meeting in the desert. Then Hull arrives at a small town and settles there, even meeting Isabel Jewell and her doctor father John Dilson. But he can't escape the gang and in the end goes back to the desert where Bryar and the group are fleeing after some more robberies.What's a mediocre film up to this point becomes a fine drama in the end. All the elements of vicious greedy men with little water come to the fore. Worst of all is Bryar who cannot control his own greedy impulses. But it's here where Hull proves to be the toughest.This one is from the poverty row studio PRC. But occasionally they turn out a decent film and this is definitely one of them.

The dog plays an important role. He has a handsome face, not a great build. The thing is: He isn't even listed in the credits.The film itself is a modest Western being passed off as a film noir. OK: It starts with a prison break. A guy hides out. But he hides out in Tempe, Arizona. I felt this to be a Western.It isn't bad. It isn't memorable either. Isabel Jewell plays the sympathetic woman who meets the escapee. Enough of the plot. No spoilers here.The acting is pretty basic. I didn't see a good print but I didn't have the sense I was missing out on great cinematography.It's your call, really. And the dog, who is called Wolf, is appealing.