Tip-Off Girls (1938)

Memorable, crazy movie

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There's plenty of sassy dialog in this standard racket film that focuses its subject in the booze department. Hiychiking women distract the lonely truck drivers who are then surprised by the appearance of the hijackers. Simple solution, the company just puts out an order assigning new routes and orders not to stop under any circumstances. Mary Carlisle steps in to be a new hitchhiker but is really working with federal agent Lloyd Nolan, getting into leader Anthony Quinn's good graces and helps to bring this racket to its knees. Predictable with a great set-up, some good action scenes, but not really all that fresh. Roscoe Karnes provides the comedy bits, but the script isn't really all that believable. As with most B films, the short length is most acceptable, not allowing the film to overstay its welcome.

Evelyn Brent is one of the TIP-OFF GIRLS that makes Buster Crabbe's and J. Carrol Nash's truck hijack ring so profitable. Will gypsy trucker Lloyd Nolan and cute secretary Mary Carlisle mess up the operation, or will both use the rackets to get rich quick?This is one of those flicks that promises Warner type crime thrills by its title and cast, and delivers predictable hokum from the pulps in the way the plot unwinds. The "surprises" littered through the film are as predictable as right-wing bias in a Fox News story, and Nolan, saddled with a risible Melvyn Douglas mustache (as befits his role as a gypsy truck-driver from the East), is atypically bland. Everything else is B- movie efficient -- it moves quickly enough after a slow start, but the plotting is so familiar that it is utterly forgettable.You know you have to see it once -- because the title does promise so much, and Nolan's 'stache is just so hilarious. But once is plenty, and you have permission to walk out early.

Paramount pictures gave us, in the late 30s and early 40s, such little flicks. Quick, short, brutal, rigorously done with actors such as Lloyd Nolan, J Caroll Naish, Akim Tamiroff and Anthony Quinn. And all directed by the likes of Louis King or Robert Florey.Those movies had nothing to be envious of the Warner ones with Bogie, Eddy Robinson or Jimmy Cagney. Car chases, gunfights, plenty of action all along.All these short features - no more than seventy minutes at the most - were gangster ones with almost the same topics, but never boring to watch. We can't find this kind of pretty good action films anymore.