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
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