The Man with My Face (1951)

Taking part in a Film Noir challenge on ICM,I started trying to decide which two US Noir's I could watch as a double bill. Checking up titles on IMDb,I remembered a Noir fellow IMDber XhcNoirX had told me about,which led to me meeting a guy,whose face looked oddly similar.The plot:Arriving home, Charles "Chick" Graham is faced with his wife Cora Cox Graham saying she has never seen him before,and a lookalike of Chick's called Albert "Bert" Rand,who is pretending to be him. Failing to get the police on his side,Chick goes undercover,when he finds out that Bert has linked him to a bank robbery. Surviving an attempt on his life,Chick sets his sights on unmasking his fake self.View on the film:Shot on location in Puerto Rico, director Edward Montagne & cinematographer Fred Jackman Jr. give the Noir face off a sun-kiss elegance against rugged rocks and dusty tunnels underneath the welcoming sights of Puerto Rico. Made on a low budget,Montagne does give the place the feeling of being a small village,with the leads easily crossing paths with each other,and it looking like the island only has one cop.Slowly sinking the realisation into Chick that he has been played, the writers give their adaptation of Samuel W. Taylor's book a Noir playfulness that covers some of the sketchy marks over how Bert was able to make everything perfectly fall into place,thanks to a murderous dog keeping the exchanges between Bert and Chick clouded in a mood of danger. Playing not one,but two roles, Barry Nelson gives terrific performances as Charles 'Chick' Graham / Albert 'Bert' Rand,thanks to Nelson balancing Chick being at his Noir wits end with Bert's abrupt wise-guy asides to the man whose face he's stolen.

Barry Nelson and his bother-in-law John Harvey co-own a small company on Puerto Rico. Nelson's wife Lynn Ainley is supposed to pick him up from work one day, but she doesn't show up. When he calls her up, she does not know who he is. And when he takes a cab home, he finds the spitting image of himself there, and everybody thinks he's not the real husband, including their dog! Quickly he finds out his doppelganger staged a heist years before and came up with an elaborate plan with switched identities to frame him for it, and everybody's in on it. He turns to ex-flame Carole Mathews for help, who he left for Ainley, and they try to figure out a way to clear his name and expose the real doppelganger.The plot, based on a 1948 pulp novel, makes little sense and is void of any logic. But if you stop to think about it and just sit back, it's enjoyable enough. It also includes a trained doberman, providing some exciting moments, but whose presence also telegraphs the ending early on in the movie.The acting is mediocre across the board unfortunately. Whoever cast Nelson ('Johnny Eager') probably didn't read the full script, as Nelson is completely unsuited to play a 'bad' person. Ainley did exactly 2 movies according to IMDb, the other one 'Undercover Girl', and she lacks charisma as the femme fatale here. Mathews ('Chicago Deadline') does a better job, but has very little to do.Director Edward Montagne ('The Tattooed Stranger') and DoP Frank Jackman Jr. ('Chicago Syndicate') are the redeeming factors, breathing some life and excitement into this movie. But don't expect miracles, this movie feels like a cheap B-feature from start to finish. A decent time-waster, if you can switch off your brain. 6/10

Barry Nelson finds out that two faces are not better than one in this film noir set in Puerto Rico and featuring a chilling climax in the famed Fort El Morro. It's unfortunate, however, that the plot that surrounds the intriguing beginning and riveting conclusion is as iffy as Caribbean weather. Nelson narrates a brief history of the island (including Columbus's landing in 1493, it was already discovered) and his arrival there in 1942. He's married to the pretty Lynn Ainley, but when he returns home one day, he finds his brother-in-law there as well as a look-alike who insists that he is Chick Graham, not an impostor, and the framed Nelson must find his way out of police custody to prove who he really is. He visits an old flame (the sweet Carole Mathews) who agrees to help him, and in the process, finds more intrigue than he ever intended to find in this American territory.While the premise is intriguing, the execution of the plot is another matter, and what goes on for the next hour can at times be downright confusing and more often than not frustrating. Chinita Marin has an excellent small role as the former girlfriend of the impostor who is as confused by the look-alike's presence as the audience is with the plot, and the presence of a nasty doberman doesn't make the love of this sometimes vicious dog any easier. The dog is trained to kill at the will of the impostor, and when the film finally does become interesting, it involves the famous mission where Nelson is being chased in the seemingly never-ending source of tunnels. But there's a twist of course at the end, unfortunately not giving me a real conclusion as to why everything was going on the way it did. Still, it makes good use of the Puerto Rican location shots. Jack Warden and Henry Lascoe have memorable supporting roles. It's just too bad I can't say that about the script.

****SPOILERS****This film noir really pushes the envelope to the limit here in wanting us to believe that a plot was hatched back during WWII by the then Cora Cox,Lynn Ainley, and her brother Buster, John Harvey, to get the clueless in what is planned for him Chick Graham, Barry Nelson, involved in a $1,000,000.00 bond robbery and end up taking the rap for it! What's even more ridicules is that the two conspirators in this bazaar scheme just happen to have someone, without the help of plastic surgery, Chick's exalt look-alike the on the lamb bank robber Albert Rand, not surprisingly also played by Barry Nelson, step into Graham's shoes and take over his identity to pull, in having Graham take the blame for it, this whole crazy scheme off!The victim in all this Chick Graham finds out that something is wrong when coming home after a hard days work at the office at his and Buster's accounting firm and finds his double the on the run bank robber Burt Rand replacing him as Cora's husband! And even worse his cute and lovable pet dog Jiggs ends up attacking him as if he's an intruder! Kicked out of his own home and now, in thinking that he's bank robber Burt Rand, wanted by the police all Chick can do is get his head together and track down the clues to prove that he's really Chick Graham not Burt Rand! Meanwhile electronic salesman Al Grant, John Kane, who found out what Rand, the real one, and Buater were all about ends up, in trying to blackmail them, mauled to death by dog trainer and also a member of the Rand/Buster/Cora conspiracy Meadows,Jim Boles, trained vicious attack dog King.****SPOILERS**** Everything finally works out for Chick in the end with him reunited with his former flame Mary Davies, Carole Mathews, who could positively identify him as Chick Graham not Burt Rand. And as for Burt Rand he in the end is mistaken by Meadows in, by discarding his business suite and mussing up his hair, trying to make himself look like Chick to fool the police that he sets attack dog King on him! Where the two, in a life and death struggle, end up falling to their death off a 150 foot cliff into the Caribbean Sea! Really hard to take in just how unbelievable, even for a Hollywood movie, it is but still entertaining if you throw logic and common sense straight out of the window and just sit back enjoy the show.