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Wednesday, March 29, 2023

THE LAST RIDE (1944)

‘Junk’ programmer from Warners, close to a Poverty Row production, but pretty good fun all the same; it's like a  throwback to their Early Talkie muckraking pics, hitting some topical issue before the news cycle had passed.  Typically covering racketeers taking advantage of Prohibition Rules, with cops either collaborating or chasing, a couple of molls in skimpy lingerie, speeding cars with rat-a-tat-tat ‘Tommy’ guns and brothers on opposing sides of the law.  But oh, how times have changed!  Now, the bootleg items aren’t alcohol-based but strictly rationed rubber tires in wartime.  1 - Steal tires off parked cars.  2 - Let victims know your ‘insurance company’ can cover the loss.  3 - Rush over with a team to install over-priced sub-standard retreads.   What else you gonna get?  Here, the marks are a couple of rich, entitled college-bound Prep School lads who crash and burn (or blow to Kingdom Come) along with steady girlfriends in Pre-Code levels of violence.  Only then does the main story get going as two brothers get involved (Richard Travis; Charles Lang) ), one a rising cop who’ll go undercover to take down the mob; the other a weakling whose ‘entry vice’ was pinball machine rentals.  (Once they get those pinball machine hooks in you . . . )  Eleanor Parker has third billing but little to do other than make dinner for her beau . . the ‘bad’ brother.  No prize for guessing who she ends up with.  Still, not bad as these things go.  And at a notch under an hour.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Warner Bros. codified the good brother/bad brother mob routine in THE PUBLIC ENEMY/’31 where originally miscast James Cagney and Donald Cook swapped roles to spectacular effect shortly after shooting began.

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