Fog Over Frisco Flm Review

If this film moved along any faster, it would have won the Preakness. Crammed into its 68-minutes it has enough for a mini-series. Bette Davis still wasn't thrilled with the roles she was getting at Warners. She hated her role in Fashions of 1934, was so unhappy on the set of Jimmy the Gent with Cagney that he said it effected the shooting. He didn't know that she was having issues in her marriage and was pregnant and was soon getting an abortion. Now this film with director William Dieterle, who had helmed Fashions and was to direct her a few more times in the future. This must have been a strange one for Davis - she is the headliner which must have made her happy, but she disappears halfway through the film. Never to reappear. Later she said, she enjoyed being in the film.

She has a great role playing the bad seed to a wealthy financier. She is a party girl who doesn't think twice about manipulating men and getting involved in crime. "You'll take it and like it", she spits out to one man in her life. Her father says to her, "You have your mother's qualities, unstable, violent, a rotten heritage". To which she rolls her eyes and gives him a screw you look. We first come across Davis in a nightclub, popping balloons which everyone takes for shots and ducks. She is with her fiancé played by Lyle Talbot and her half-sister played by Margaret Lindsay. Three reporters are at the bar playing games - one of which is blowing an egg in a shot glass and turning it over. Later they play a game of slapping one of them on the bottom and he has to guess who it was. That must have been fun in 1934. But it is a nice group of Donald Woods, Hugh Herbert and William Demarest. Talbot is a sourpuss and wants to leave while the rest of the people in the club are thrilled to see her after an absence. The half-sister says, she has turned a new leaf over. Well, not exactly.

She takes custody of some stolen bonds from the nightclub owner (Irving Pichel- who was becoming a fine director - The Most Dangerous Game, She, Destination Moon) and later in her room when she counts up to $250,000 she is nearly orgasmic. This is how she gets her thrills. She is using Talbot to launder them and has him under control - but then she meets her real lover. Douglass Dumbrille. What the hell. I was believing this film, but Bette Davis in love with Dumbrille? That is like a purring cat falling for a porcupine. And he tells her that he is no longer in love with her. "You have been using me?". "Just like you are using your fiancé." Stuffed into this is murder, a kidnapping, unethical newsmen, a romance, a suicide, an undercover cop and a big chase through the streets of San Francisco. It flies by.