Postal Inspector (1936)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Simply Perfect

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Bela Lugosi made many unusual movies during his career. Otto Brower's "Postal Inspector" was the last film that Lugosi made on contract with Universal Pictures. Clocking in at a mere 58 minutes, this contrived but entertaining cinematic tribute to the U.S. Postal Service looks rather nondescript. Indeed, "Postal Inspector" could serve as a prototype for everything that "Dragnet" creator Jack Webb ever created. For the record, Lugosi doesn't take top billing. Suave Ricardo Cortez has that distinction. He played the original Samuel Spade in the 1931 version of "The Maltese Falcon" before Humphrey Bogart recreated Spade in his own image. Lugosi took fourth billing after Patricia Ellis and Michael Loring. Brower and "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye" scenarist Horace McCoy have forged themselves a genuine hybrid with an array of characters. "Postal Inspector" consists of one third crime thriller, one third musical, and one third disaster epic. At every opportunity, our hero reminds us that the best insurance in the world is a postage stamp. Moreover, the message that citizens must be protected from fraudulent practices drives the Postal Service. The comic relief consists of episodes about fraudulent gadgets sold via the mail to naïve citizens. "There's one born every minute, " laments our hero. Cortez looks like he would be the wrong man with which to tangle. Sadly, Lugosi languished in a lackluster role as a shifty nightclub owner in trouble with the mob. During the first scene, our hero and his fellow postal inspectors receive praise from none other than President Franklin D. Roosevelt over a speaker phone for their "fine work" moving the gold reserves of the United States to the inland cities. Clearly, the producers must have approved of FDR's policies. You should have no trouble spotting African-American actress Hattie McDaniel in a supporting role as the heroine's maid.Richard Cortez is Inspector Bill Davis. Not only does Davis take everything seriously but he is also the epitome of efficiency. Davis is pretty unflappable, and he always has a reassuring line for anybody who has a problem with the postal service. Davis manages to sort out all the problems that citizens have without losing his cool. Patrick Ellis plays vocalist Connie Larrimore. She meets Davis aboard a flight from Washington, D.C. to Milltown, during stormy weather. The pilots are trying to land, but they cannot see anything because they are surrounded by the equivalent of pea soup. Ground Control struggles to talk the pilots safely down. Our heroine uses her vocal chords to soothe some frightened passengers, with a youngster providing accompaniment on his harmonica. The press plasters Connie's commendable singing exploits across the front page story. She warbled to calm the nerves of the passengers. Bela Lugosi makes his first appearance as Gregory Benez, a natty nightclub owner who has Connie under contract to sing in his nightclub The Golden Eagle, at the airport. Later, we learn Benez has shady dealings with the mob. He owes Alfred Carter, 'known to have financed many nightclubs, $50-thousand and he is two weeks tardy on his payment. At the airport, Connie gets reacquainted with an old friend from her past in Milltown. The friend turns out to be Bill's younger brother Charlie (Michael Loring) and Charlie wants to rekindle the flame. Seven years have elapsed since they went their separate ways. Our hero's introduction to Connie has a memorable moment. Charlie points out his brother works for the post office. Slyly, Connie reminds Charlie that it has been a long time since they played post office. Brower and McCoy exploit this moment again later in the action for dramatic emphasis. Connie learns that Charlie works for the Federal Reserve Bank. He is in charge of all the money that the Federal Reserve wants to take out of circulation. He tells Connie about a shipment of used bills, approximately $3-million worth of bills . Later, Benez and his accomplices knock over the armored car, kill a postal employee, and steal the millions. Of course, Davis is not happy.Initially, Charlie assures his brother Bill that he had nothing to do with the robbery. It looks like Charlie and Connie are to be implicated until Connie agrees to flush out Benez. Lugosi plays Benez with considerable restraint. About 31 minutes into the action, our handsome hero catches a plane to Yarborough where heavy rains have washed out a bridge and cut off the town. The stock footage of the flood scenes is impressive. One desperate African-American scrambles to seize a chicken. Meantime, Davis relocates the post office to higher ground.Altogether, "Postal Inspector" is a routine potboiler about the Postal Inspectors and their jobs. The joke about the elderly woman who solicits proposals of marriage through the mail with a photography of a young, beautiful woman is hilarious. The villains use a boat to elude the authorities, but they don't lose them entirely. Newspaper headline state that the mail robbers are scheduled to serve 10 years to life.

While this is more a lesson in what the postal inspectors actually do and a warning to those who use the mail to defraud, at less than an hour, this is a fun little "B" film with some familiar faces in different types of roles than normal. For one, it is interesting to see "Dracula" (Bela Lugosi) as a nightclub owner who is the head of a payroll robbery, while Hattie McDaniel rolls her eyes back and forth in delight as heroine Patricia Ellis sings the Frank Loesser song "There'll Be Bluebirds on Our Wall Paper" to divert passengers on a plane who fear a crash in a thunderstorm. While this will never be a "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" or "Brotherhood of Man", it shows where the future legend of Broadway was going at this point in his career. Ricardo Cortez has the best role, meeting with various people defrauded through the mail and the odd devices they bought which don't work, such as a gadget that is supposed to make you taller and another which makes socks. Michael Loring is Ellis's boring love interest, while poor McDaniel is unbilled in what is essentially a major supporting role. Her actions are stereotypical for what black actors were having to do in Hollywood at the time, but she is very funny with what she does. Lugosi draws out every line he says, indicating that if he had spoke any faster, the running time of the film would have been 5 minutes less. The film springs into action with a flood sequence (obviously stock footage that Universal used over and over) and reactions from victims of the flood that those who experienced recent events such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy can really relate to.

I saw this movie for one reason--Bela Lugosi. He was not the star of the film, but Ricardo Cortez--a man, who like Lugosi, was in a very lean time in his career--being forced to appear in lesser and lesser films. Both of the men were a long way from their glory days but both dealt with it in a very, very different way. Cortez would soon quit Hollywood and establish a very successful career on Wall Street. Lugosi, conversely, left Universal after this film and began appearing in even crappier films for smaller studios--the so-called "Poverty Row" studios such as Monogram.This film is an oddity because it's both a crime movie AND musical! Cortez investigates various scams that go through the mail. Eventually his path took him to Lugosi and a pretty young singer that works for him (Patricia Ellis). None of it was particularly great--and I found myself dozing off again and again.If you are looking for a horror film or a movie that is going to offer some thrills, try another movie. The film isn't terrible...just not all that great, either.

***SPOILERS*** Strange movie, even for one with Bela Lugosi in it,thats a combination of a crime/drama & musical/comedy with a bit of a disaster movie thrown in for good measures. Ricardo Cortez plays Gung-Ho Postal Inspector Bill Davis who's so off-the-wall that in one of the scenes that he's in he jumps from something like a 100 foot plank, minus his well-pressed suit, into the flooded streets below. In doing that Davis risks a broken neck in order to save a postal crook who was no more then a few yards away from a police speed-boat that was just about to rescue and arrest him anyway, without Inspector Davis foolishly risking his life. There's a number of songs sung in the movie by nightclub singer Connie Larrimore, Patricia Ellis, and a duet at the end of the film with Connie and her fiancé and brother of Postal Inspector Davis Charlie, Michael Loring, who's also a Federal Treasury Agent. The "Golden Eagle" nightclub owner Greg Benez, Bela Lugosi, is in big trouble with the local mob loan shark when he gets a telegram that another nightclub owner, Fred Commings owner of the Jack-O'-Lantern, was gunned down for not paying back his load from the mob. Benez is out $50,000.00 to the mob and is two weeks behind in his payments. "Golden Eagle" singer Connie Larrimore talking to both Postal Inspector and Federal Agent Bill & Charlie Davis get some inside information from big-mouth Charlie that he's going to send through the US mail $3,000,000.00 of used ten dollar bills to the Washington D.C Treasuary Dept. The bills are to be put out of circulation by having them incinerated. Later Connie talking to her boss Mr.Benez unwittingly tells him about the cash transaction through the local mail and Benez sees an out in getting the money that he owes the mob as well as pocketing the rest, $2.950 Million, for himself. The Benez gang steals Charlies car and uses it to corrals and rob the mail truck with the 3 million dollars in cash going back to the Treasuary Department and also shoots and kills the driver. This all happens as the town of Yarborough, where the movie takes place, is being flooded by a heavy downpour with the local river overflowing its banks. When the police and Postal Inspector Davis find the car belonging to Charlie at the crime scene they feel that he committed the crime but his brother Bill gives him two hours to come up with who really did it feeling that he's innocent. Later Benez and his gang kidnap both Charlie and his girlfriend Connie who went to Benez's place in order to find out who in the club took Charlie's car. This later leads to the exciting final speed-boat chase scene through the flooded streets of Yarborough with Charlie & Connie ramming a platform from where Benez and his hoods are trying to escape from the police knocking them all down and into the floodwater's below. Bela Lugosi is very subdued and, uncharacteristically, dull as the nightclub owner and mobster Greg Benez and has a supporting, but not his usual leading, role in the film. Which didn't give him that much screen time to really do "His Thing".Both Patricia Ellis and Michael Loring were adequate as the singer and Fed Agent, as well as lovers, in the movie but Ricardo Cortez was really over-the-top as Postal Inspector Bill Davis. Davis spouting platitudes about the wonderful US Post Office in almost every scene he's in that you for a moment thought you were watching a commercial for the USPS. Even though he tried to play his part as seriously as possible Inspector Davis did have a very strange sense of humor in the film. Postal Inspector Davis almost hanged and electrocuted, this was supposed to be his idea of comedy relief, a fellow postal worker in his office with gadgets that were illegally sent through the US Mail.Inspector Davis also seemed to be more worried about the mail of the Yarborough Post Office getting soaked by the raging floodwater's engulfing the town then he was worried about the lives and safety of the postal workers working there.