Lady in the Death House (1944)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

The Worst Film Ever

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Poverty row cheapie starring Lionel Atwill as a criminologist who tries to stop an innocent girl from being executed in the electric chair. Told through flashback, the story begins with Atwill befriending Doug Fowley's character, a scientist who's going to do big things someday but until then he has to make ends meet as the executioner at the state pen! He wants to marry Jean Parker but she refuses, having pretty strong opinions on capital punishment on account of her dearly departed dad being a criminal. Things get even more melodramatic when a guy who was blackmailing Jean winds up murdered and she's tried and convicted for the crime. If you guess that Fowley's job as executioner figures back into things, congratulations. On top of all this, Jean's sister is acting shady and doesn't seem all that broken up about Jean being fried extra crispy. Leave it to Lionel Atwill to solve everything, albeit taking his sweet time to do so. It's not a bad little B movie. Very cheap as you would expect from something made by PRC. But it's perfectly watchable and even curiously entertaining at points. Bonus points for excessive "wipes." A sure sign of a top-notch production.

The short-lived P.R.C. movie production company had a history of making junk in a really short period of time, and other than the classic film noir "Detour", most of their films are quickly forgettable. Like the slightly more well known Monogram, they produced a ton of Z grade westerns, some action films that took clichéd looks at the enemies of World War II, and a smaller amount of horror, dramas and comedies. This is a sort of exploitation drama about a young lady (Jean Parker) who faces the electric chair where her own boyfriend is the one who will pull the switch. Kindly psychiatrist Lionel Atwill rushes to prove her innocence of murder with the help of Parker's younger sister Marcia Mae Jones who truly believed her to be guilty. This is a very tense streamlined drama where nail biting must have replaced popcorn munching. The performances are all very good with Atwill being particularly outstanding. Nice to see him playing a good guy. Also nice to see Jones playing a not so annoying teen for a change! This is one of those times where I give two thumbs up to what was once considered the one movie studio where serious actors did not want to work.

****SPOILERS**** With his girlfriend Mary Kirk Logan, Jean Parker,to be executed that evening at 11:00 PM sharp the Sing Sing Prison executioner Dr. Brad Bradford, Douglas Fowley, is finding it more and more difficult to do his job in juicing her, by pulling the switch, in the prison's hot seat. It's then that the movie goes into back or forward mode, were not quite sure which one, with famed psychologist Charles Finch, Lionel Atwill, telling a group of friends about a letter he received from Mary just before she was to be executed. In it Mary explains how she's been framed in killing the person who was blackmailing her, in revealing her dad's criminal past to her boss, mobster Willy Mullin, Dick Curtis, by someone who did him in while she was locked up in another room in her apartment.The flashback scene comes across as if it were in the present making it more and more difficult to gage what time is taking place in the movie. We slowly get the message that it was Mary's kid sister the bug eyed and spaced out Suzy, Marcia Mea Jones, who knew who killed Millen and is covering it up at the expense of her older sister Mary's life. It's Finch who slowly uncovers the person, through a number of clues, who killed Millen but as usual in movies like this, working against the clock, time is running out for Mary to be saved from being zapped. With the only person who can save her Governor Harrison, Sam Flint, nowhere to be found and contacted before 11:00 PM the time for Bradford to pull the switch.****SPOILERS**** Lionel Atwill in one of his last appearances, he passed away two years later, is excellent as both psychologist and part time private eye Charles Finch who saves the day as well as Mary Kirk's life by getting the Governor, through a radio broadcast, to get the news that Mary is innocent and stop her execution. But it was Mary's boyfriend Brad Bradford that made that all possible by at the very last moment refusing to pull the switch and locking himself up in the power room that gave Finch the needed time to get the word out to Gov. Harrison about her being innocent. Thus stopping in the nick of time Mary's impending execution.

This low-budget but entertaining crime thriller about a dame scheduled to die in the electric chair for a murder that she didn't commit is a fine example of a movie that impugns the death penalty. Mary Kirk Logan (Jean Parker)has been shielding her younger sister Suzy and herself from the truth that her father was a criminal in the pin-ball racket. Nevertheless, one of her father's old accomplices, Willis Millen (Dick Curtis) has come back to blackmail her because he knows that she has some of her dad's dough. Moreover, Millen knows that her stiff, stuck-up, morally superior boss, Gregory (George Irving),will fire her if he catches a whiff of her shady past. Actually, Mary's boss at the bank, who hired her because he needed somebody who he could trust to handle confidential information, played a crucial role in a law and order crusade to put her father behind bars. As it turns out, Mary has been paying a high price to buy the silence of her the silence of her father's former associate. Ironically, the villain who is blackmailing Mary is considered a low-life even by his own kind. Mary has managed to fool Gregory about her checkered past for five years."Lady in the Death House" opens with Mary taking the final 39 steps of her life to the electric chair. She has been convicted of a murder that she didn't commit based on the testimony of two passersby who were staring up at the window in her apartment when the murder occurred. All these two spectators really saw was two dark shadows against a fully lighted window with the shade pulled down. Nevertheless, they swear under oath that they saw Mary kill Millen. It doesn't help matters that they rushed up to Mary's apartment after the murder and found the slain man in the floor with the murder weapon--a statue--nearby his body. Millen uttered Mary's name as his final words and the police detective (Cy Kendall)puts two and two together to convict Mary. Since Millen was trying to blackmail Mary, the detective argues that Mary killed Millen to thwart his scheme. Happily for Mary, she knows a tenacious criminologist Charles Finch (Lionel Atwill) who uses his skills to set her free."Revenge of the Zombies" director Steve Sekely tells the story in flashback for maximum suspense and doesn't have Mary exonerated until the last three minutes.