The Clay Pigeon (1949)

the audience applauded

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

**SPOILERS** Snappy little known film noir thriller involving amnesia victim US Navy man and former Japanese POW inmate Jim Fletcher, Bill Williams. It's Fletcher who's to stand trial for treason as soon as he's recovered enough to be released from the Naval Hospital he's a patient in.Were kept in the dark to exactly what Fletcher did until he escapes from the hospital and gets in touch with is best friends Matt's, and fellow Japanese POW, wife Martha Gregory, Barbara Hale. It's through Martha that Fletcher expects to find out just what all the fuss is about him being a traitor to his country! It's then that we find out that it was Matt whom Fletcher was reported to have turned over to the Japanese for stealing food out of the POW camps mess hall! For that "herrndous" crime Matt was both tortured and executed by the Japs for not only theft but wanton disrespect for the mighty Japanese Empire and its God-like leader Emperor Hirohito!Not for one moment believing, but just playing along with him, a word of what Fletcher says about him being innocent in her husbands death Martha is later convinced in that he's telling the truth when both her and Fletcher are almost run off the road, after he kidnapped her, by these two thugs who were tailing them. It's later when o the lamb when both Martha and Fletcher are dining in this L,A Chinese Restaurant, the White Lotus, that the truth comes out to what all this mystery of Fletcher being a traitor to his country is really all about! That's when the owner non other then Ken "the Weasel" Tokoyama, Richard Loo, dropped in to pick up the weekly receipts! It was the Weasel who was in charge of the Japanese prison camp that Fletcher and Matt were held in! Not only that it's the Weasel who can prove Fletcher's innocence by exposing the real traitor who ratted out Matt, in him raiding the camp mess hall, to his Japanese captors!Had hitting thriller with the confused, due to his amnesia, Jim Fletcher on the run and at the same time trying to find out the truth to who set him up in being accused in turning in his best friend Matt Gregory to the Japanese who later had him executed! The only chance, besides the Weasel, that Fetcher has to prove his innocence is to contact his friend and former POW Ted Niles, Richard Quinn,in L.A who can prove that he was in fact a "Good Joe" who stuck by his fellow POWS through thick & thin. That's in Niles himself being together with both Fletcher and Matt in the Jap prison camp and knowing that he wouldn't under any circumstances, even the threat of death, turn over his friends, like Matt and himself, to the Japs to be tortured and executed!***SPOILERS*** The film gets even more stranger when it comes out that the Weasel is now, four years after the war, working with the L.A mob in a plan to get their hands on some 100 million dollars of US counterfeit currency that was stashed, before the attack on Pearl Harbr, in a secret safe house by the Japanese Government to be used to undermine the US economy when the war broke out! Heart-stopping final as Fletcher now held hostage by the Weasel and one of his accomplices fights for his life in preventing the Weasel & Co. from throwing him off a speeding train that he was tricked into boarding!

The only weakness in THE CLAY PIGEON is that it's easy to spot the real fall guy--and the viewer knows it's not BILL WILLIAMS. The real culprit telegraphs his guilt in what are supposed to be subtle hints, but anyone who is a fan of film noir will spot the villain right away.Otherwise, it's a good little post-war thriller, not an A-film but just as tense and intriguing as any of the big films about amnesia victims who went through harrowing things during the war that they prefer to forget. Only gradually do we learn more about Williams' torturous experience and what really happened is far different than we supposed.BARBARA HALE is excellent in a well-written role as his helpmate, at first thinking he did cause the death of her husband in a prisoner of war camp, but later realizing that she's willing to do all she can to help him clear his name.Since Hale and Williams were a married couple at the time (they're the parents of William Katt who looks so much like his dad), they have a good chemistry with each other right from the start.This is the kind of post-war film noir that RKO did so well, usually with stars like Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer or Kirk Douglas. But Williams and Hale are excellent in the leads and the story moves briskly toward an exciting climax where the villains are about to toss him in front of an oncoming train.Enjoyable vehicle of this kind, well worth catching.

This is a short and very gripping B movie. It hasn't got an ounce of fat and offers the highest possible viewing pleasure. Story and script are by Carl Foreman who wrote the screenplay for High Noon. Strange as it may sound, one of the major assets of The Clay Pigeon is a cast which consists of little known actresses and actors.There are several movies of the period which start with a war veteran who wakes up in an army or navy hospital with amnesia. In this case, the young man does know who he is and where he was, but he has no idea why he is accused of treason. Everybody in the hospital lets him feel that he should be hanged after he gets well. The strong and scary opening sequence has him sleeping as hands stretch out for his face from outside the frame, fingering it tentatively while he opens his eyes in astonishment, then sliding down to his throat in an attempt to strangle him before a nurse intervenes. They belong to a blinded veteran who wants to know „how a traitor looks like".The accused escapes from the hospital and tries to find out what it is all about, aided by the widowed wife of a war buddy (strong performance by Barbara Hale). He finds out that the alleged treason refers to his time as a POW in a Japanese camp; he is said to have ratted on other prisoners who stole food rations, just in order not to starve. He also remembers being beaten savagely by a sadistic Japanese warden called the Weasel. A whole landscape of scars on his chest tell from this ordeal. „But now you're as strong as an ox again", the woman who helps him says encouragingly, „and just as dumb", he adds.The search directs the couple to L.A.'s Chinatown, and much of that part of the movie was filmed on location. To his surprise the veteran spots the Weasel who is already well established within the local gangland. The movie then builds up to a dramatic finale on a train – with a much better set design than in Fleischer's Narrow Margin – and a happy ending.As the title suggests, The Clay Pigeon is a full fledged film noir. The movie has a very good script (although it sometimes stretches credibility) and a surprisingly rich imagery (night scenes on roads and in towns, a trailer beach colony, different locations in downtown L.A., including Chinatown). I suppose its message is above the ordinary political (the GI who waits for his court martial while a „real" former war criminal is alive and well and living in California, the veteran's open distrust of the institutions the hints of a connection between the openly criminal world and the „serious" business community as shown after the veteran's visit in a real estate agency).It seems The Clay Pigeon is a film that waits to be rediscovered. It stands its own in the genre (and is not even mentioned in the Silver/Ward Film Noir Encyclopedia). I can recommend it.

Reasonably well directed with a nightmare atmosphere to it, the film looks fairly good in the stark black and white, but it is quite a routine noir thriller overall however, with predictable events and situations all the way through. The flashbacks used have an interesting, artistic style to them, but there is little else of note here. The acting and technical aspects are only adequate, and the plot is nothing special, in many ways similar to a Hitchcock thriller, even though Hitch would have made it more exciting and intriguing had he been at the helm. But, at the very least, the film has an appropriately compact running time, which leads to it rarely feeling like it is overly drawn out.