Well, not exactly a "Chiller-Diller" as the
film's tagline had it but an ok B crime-comedy film from Universal. It teams
up Ralph Bellamy and Margaret Lindsay in this one and I guess their chemistry
was good enough for Columbia to team them up in a few of the Ellery Queen
films beginning right after this one. Both of them are appealing low-key
actors and favorites of mine. Bellamy was never the leading man in A films
till much later - often cast as the guy who didn't get the girl because he
is too nice - but in B films he was the hero. Lindsay just takes up nice
space - attractive but not so much that she doesn't feel real and can spit
out the dialogue as well as anyone. She never moved much beyond B films and
this may have had to do with her sexual orientation - an out of the closet
lesbian, not exactly common in those days and gutsy on her part. This also
has the talents of two other character actors that I run into all the time
- Allen Jenkins and Jerome Cowan.
They set this in Mexico City for some reason - all of it is clearly shot
a long ways from Mexico - and so get ready for a lot of fake Spanish accents.
Not from our foursome though. They are Americans. Bellamy just seems to be
a tourist, Lindsay is on assignment as a photographer, Cowan is a newspaper
editor and Jenkins is of course a cab driver who once took a fare from NYC
to Mexico and never went back to his wife and kids. Someone who calls himself
the Wildcat is stealing pictures from museums and Lindsay is pretty sure
she saw Bellamy steal one. So she starts digging into his past and almost
gets killed for the trouble. As much a light comedy though as a crime film
with both Cowan and Jenkins doing the honors as the comedy relief. Nice to
see Cowan as a nice guy for a change. An easy going mystery. Up on YouTube
I believe and runs about 60 minutes.
