Girl in the Case
                                                                                                                 
Director: William Berke
Year: 1944
Rating: 5.0
A mildly enjoyable attempt to do a faux Nick and Nora Charles - some ten years after the original Thin Man. Hammett should have gotten royalties for all the films that imitated his couple. It would have kept him in alcohol and prostitutes much longer. Coming in at 64 minutes, this B film is a comedy caper with the emphasis on the comedy. Some of the comedy is painfully obvious while there were a few moments that were laugh out loud for me. Edmund Lowe and Janis Carter do their best William Powell and Myrna Loy being zany, sophisticated and amused with one another but let's face it, there are no substitutes. Myrna could walk into a cocktail party and make the swivel sticks stand to attention. Carter over does the manic looniness and Lowe has the charisma of an old cushion. Lowe was very popular at one point in the early 1930s but I have no idea why. I have liked Carter is some other low-budget films but here, I just wanted someone to lock her in a closet and throw away the key. It's like she is running on caffeine and cocaine. And those gleaming white teeth would scare a shark.

 

William Warner (Lowe) in an attorney but his true love is locks - ancient ones, new ones - he can pick anything. When his wife gets accidentally (or not) locked into a store's vault, he has to get her out. But it's part of a plan to get him out to a house to open a chest with an unbreakable lock. Some crooks show up and then the cops. Later he sneaks back into the house and opens it and finds a formula in there for an explosive device.  His wife Myra (Janis) meanwhile keeps getting underfoot. It's 1944 so don't be surprised if Nazis are involved. Also, I would guess there was a ration on women's stockings. Warner has to give a woman who comes to his apartment his wife's black stockings. Later on, Myra does a diving tackle to get them back that a linebacker would be proud of.

 

There were three lovely bit part actresses in this - all brunettes and I am not sure which was which. None of them became famous but one (Dusty Anderson) married director Jean Negulesco for forty years, Kate Dowd was only in ten films; nine of them uncredited and then got married for the next 76 years with tons of kids and Carole Mathews who I think was the stocking stealer and femme fatale was Miss Chicago in 1938 and kept working in B films and TV shows till the late 1970's. She was in the running for the lead role in To Have and Have not but lost out to some skinny blonde. The actresses who never made it, fascinate me as much as the ones who did.  It was directed by William Berke but apparently, he was fired at some point and Budd Boetticher had to finish it up.