Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Monday, January 14, 2019

THEY MADE ME A KILLER (1946)

Journeyman actor Robert Lowery thinks he’s showing off his speedy roadster to Lola Lane, her boyfriend & brother, but it's no test drive! This trio is conning him into acting as unwitting getaway driver in a daring daytime bank robbery. Yikes! And tack on a pair of murder charges when a cop & a bystander are killed during the escape. Double Yikes!! It makes a dandy opening story arc to this Poverty-Row/ Pine-Thomas indie production, directed by William Thomas and, more to the point, scripted by Daniel Mainwaring (aka Geoffrey Homes) who’d breakthru next year on the film noir classic OUT OF THE PAST/’47. Lowery, caught after he’s knocked-out in a car crash, soon escapes to go innocent-man-on-the-run, joining forces with skeptical Barbara Britton, eager to prove her brother (the dead bystander) was also innocent. Mainwaring keeps this up & running for about half the film’s short length (losing it after a neat surprise ‘reveal’ about the gang), as the second half gets by on lazy plot turns and a last act so dark & murky in all available prints, you can’t really see what’s going on. Too bad, a low-budget specialist like Edgar G. Ulmer or Joseph Lewis might have made a nasty little gem out of this. But Pine doesn’t know how to hide the cracks of his semi-precious stone with a clever setting.

LINK: Here’s a youtube link you can stream. Decent most of the way, but so dim in the last act, it might be a radio play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyh5slCCNDM

No comments: