Postal Inspector (1936)

Before seeing this the only other film I ever saw dealing with the Post Office police was a very good Alan Ladd noir film called Appointment With Danger where Ladd like Ricardo Cortez here plays a Post Office cop. Postal Inspector does not have the really good plot the Ladd film has but it's good enough and it has some nice action sequences involving a flood that spoils plans for the good guys and bad guys alike.Bela Lugosi plays a nightclub owner who doubles as the boss of a gang and he's got a pretty good scheme involving the robbery of a shipment of old and soon to be retired currency being shipped by mail. He carries it off, but the flash flood interrupts his plans.Patricia Ellis plays a nightclub singer and Michael Loring, Cortez's brother who get innocently into a jackpot in the robbery as he's suspected of being an inside man.Postal Inspector has a nice action climax involving a chase with outboard motorboats through flooded. And in the role of the nightclub racketeer owner provided a nice change of pace for Bela Lugosi not playing a mad scientist or an inhuman fiend.

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 kept singing "You've never seen anything like it" from Doctor Dolittle as I watched this because I hadn't seen anything like it.Ricardo Cortez plays a postal inspector who meets up with a nightclub singer on a plane having trouble landing. The singer sings a song to help calm everyone. The plane lands and we find that the singers manager is Bela Lugosi a Mexican business man in deep with the mob. After several scenes of Cortez showing what a postal inspector does the singer takes a shower and sings. A friend of Cortez is actually wooing the singer and everyone ends up at a night club where we get another song. Lugosi finds out that the younger inspector is going to be moving some old currency so he plots to steal it so he can get out of debt. A flood happens as the robbery goes down. There's another song before Cortez springs into action.All that and more in an hour.As odd mixes of genre's go I'd be hard pressed to come up with one as loopy as this.I have no idea if I liked it, but I do know its a unique viewing experience. If you want to see how to put mutually exclusive genres together and make it kind of work this is the movie for you. See it and you too can sing that you've never seen anything like it...