Decoy (1946)

***SPOILERS*** Staggering to Margot Shelby's, Jean Gillie, high rise apartment barley clinging to life Dr. Craig, Herbert Rudley, has a last present to give her for all the trouble that she caused him: A blast from his .38 to remember him by. Coming on the scene is tough Sgt. JoJo Portugal, Sheldon Leonard, wearing a hat at least three times the size of his head-To prevent him from getting sunstroke-to clean up things as well as get a confession from the dying Margot in what put her into the position, Of dying from a gunshot wound, that she finds herself in.As Margot is slowing fading away we get the story of her boyfriend Frankie Olins, Robert Armstrong, who after knocking off an armored car of $400,000.00 and killing the driver was sentenced to be executed in San Quentin's gas chamber. It was Margot with the help of the prison doctor Craig who revived his body with a secret drug that brought him back to life and then had Frankie tell her and her partner Jim Vincent, Edward Norris, just where he had the stolen money is:hidden in a safe box under the base of an eucalyptus tree in the middle of the California Desert!***SPOILERS*** What all those involved-Dr. Craig Frankie Olins & Jim Vincent-don't realize is that Margot is planning to keep all the loot all to herself and have all three knocked off to keep her from splitting it with them. It's after using her last victim Dr. Craig to get through a number of police road blocks Margot blast him away only for Dr. Craig to survive and track her down,while bleeding to death, to her pad in the city to finally do her in. As Sgt.JoJo Portugal was later to find out the late Frankie Oline was on to the double-crossing Margot right from the start and left almost the entire $400,000.00 to cancer research minus for one measly dollar bill that he left, in the box, for her to treat herself to a hot dog fries and soda pop!

"Decoy" features the most heartless woman in film noir history. Jean Gillie is a horrible person--the best femme fatale you can find. The film begins with her dying--and she tells the police what led her to this fate. What follows is a story of one betrayal after another after another, as Gillie's loyalty, it seems, is to her self alone.Her story begins with Gillie's boyfriend (Robert Armstrong) on death row. The problem isn't that she cares about him, but he knows where a huge pile of loot is hidden--and she is determined to somehow save him because he won't just tell her where it is. The plan is medically impossible, but she finds a very gullible doctor (Herbert Rudley) and gets him to agree to give him an injection of some weird drug that will supposedly revive him. Naturally, along the way, Gillie kills off everyone--even her revived boyfriend. But, sadly for her, he plans don't work out--but I don't want to say more as it would spoil the film.The film has some exceptional moments--most of which are Gillie's. For instance, the scene where she shoots the doctor as she laughs is reminiscent of Richard Widmark in "Kiss of Death". There also is the that that after one of men is killed, she makes out over the lifeless corpse below her! What a horrid person! The only negatives are the silliness of the revival of the executed man AND the complete lack of blood when the doctor is not only shot but drags himself to a final confrontation. I know in the 1940s they tended to avoid using blood--but NONE! Also, this is not a problem with the film per se, but it was odd and tough to see Sheldon Leonard playing a cop--and a non-crooked one to boot! He was almost the quintessential mobster and accepting him as a detective was tough. Still, it's well worth seeing and exciting for any fan of the genre.

Decoy (1946)This kind of death row movie makes you appreciate how hard it is to pull off a great movie. Here, all the flaws show, almost textbook perfect. The acting struggles between pretty good (the lead female, the femme fatale one, Jean Gillie) to pretty awful (including, unfortunately, the lead male, a doctor, Herbert Rudley). The detective who shows up now and then (Sheldon Leonard), is actually pretty strong, a coldhearted, no-nonsense type, charmless, perhaps, but with some acting subtlety. (Leonard was a smart guy, actor and director for a lot of classic entertainment television years later.)But in "Decoy," notice how the archetypal elements are all there. The plot is as interesting as many melodramas, if a bit far-fetched in the one detail that is its hook. But there is no Joan Crawford to raise the whole thing up. Cinematographer Bill O'Connell did do the astonishing original 1932 "Scarface" and he makes this movie excellent in the night scenes, but much of the rest of it is merely functional. The director, Jack Bernhard in his first film (in a five year career), could have made more of all of this. When an actor flinches in reaction, it's obviously an overreaction a better director would have reshot. The music swells and soars. The prison priest is sombre. The nurse calls the doctor "darling" even though he's in love with someone else. But still, there are moments, and it has a great period feel to it whatever its flaws. And a line now and then pops up, crude and noirish. "Come here baby, I want to look at ya." Or the Frankenstein-like, "I'm alive, I'm alive!" Headlights signal across a lonely highway, men struggle with their unexplained passions, good women give bad women the eye, and innocent people die needlessly. The key brief moment that rises above is a man's grappling with being alive at all. And there is that box of money out there which everyone wants, and he's the only one who knows where it is, while he's actually alive and kicking.It's all in a day's work. Don't expect a cult marvel--it's no "Detour," not at all "Gun Crazy," to name two B-movie classics. It's a creaker with some involving moments, getting better in the second half, and with a campy last three minutes (the woman's laugh is worth the whole thing). But by the end, you might have to remind yourself about the beginning, before the big flashback.

We open on a man who seems disoriented and who is walking on the side of a country road and moving slowly and deliberately like a zombie. Who is this strange man? And, what is he up to? We see him hitchhiking, getting a ride, and getting into town. He arrives at an apartment building, and as he goes up the elevator and on his desired floor, we see he is armed.Newcomer Jean Gillie narrates this story by flashback. She tells of how her man was in stir. She wants him out so that she can get her hands on his stolen loot that he had hidden and only he can find. The hitch is that he is about to get the chair, and she with an accomplice are planning on stealing a corpse and bringing him back to life.This definitely is a curiosity piece and perhaps the weakest of the lot in the Classic Film Noir Set #4. But still worth a look for its relatively fast pace and unique plot that, while it feels ahead of its time, it bites off more than it can chew. With its outlandish elements, the viewer may feel somewhat disappointed and/or dissatisfied. But overall for 70 minutes, it does entertain.