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.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

BLIND SPOT (1947)

Micro-budgeted film noir really knows what’s it’s about. And why not? The sharp-eyed script is from Martin Goldsmith who did DETOUR/’45 and NARROW MARGIN/’52.* Penny-ante actor Robert Gordon makes a smooth transition to directing here, with plenty of help from vet lenser George Meehan in one of his last credits. Plus a considerable cast to carry it off, starting with Chester Morris as a soused novelist, acclaimed but uncommercial, trying to get an advance on a murder mystery he’s just cooked up, a sure bestseller. The old chestnut about a dead man in a room locked from the inside? Solved it. But his hard-ass publisher ain’t buying. Worse, Morris can’t remember the solution when sober. And he needs to, since his publisher has just been found murdered in his office, exactly as Morris described in his book proposal. Maybe he did it and was too drunk to remember. Yikes! But wait; two people were at the office and may have heard his solution to the ‘locked-room’ scenario. Successful mystery author Steven Geray and secretary/ receptionist Constance Dowling. Meanwhile, Detective James Bell figures he’s got an easy case to make on Morris. Neat stuff, with Morris serving up running commentary (sub-Raymond Chandler, but that’s okay) and a bit of zippy action at the inevitable showdown. Morris plays drunk for the first half of the pic, usually a pain, but he manages a neat trick when he gets all tongue-tied, clearing confusion by puckering up and giving off with a whistle to reset his head. He’s adorable.


DOUBLE-BILL: *Scripter Goldsmith hit the Grade-Z auteur jackpot when Edgar G. Ulmer came on to direct DETOUR. Who knew that masterful nihilistic nightmare started out as a novel?

No comments: