DEATH IN SMALL DOSES (1957)

From a Saturday Evening Post exposé by Arthur L. Davis this film is based on factual accounts. The film was directed by Joseph M. Newman who had several notable B-movies already under his clapboard. A jazz-inspired score by Emil Newman and Robert Wiley Miller is used effectively over opening credits, all in modern, lowercase letters. This low-budget Allied Artists production is a well-cast “call to action” about the excessive use of addictive, mood-altering drugs. The viewer is locked in from the opening scene with headlights glaring down a dark highway. The theme is established as the driver, to stay awake, downs a handful of amphetamines, known as “bennies” (Benzedrine) or “co-pilots” to truck drivers. His subsequent hallucination drives him over a cliff.  As is often the case with any old movie, regardless of budget, there are a couple of unintentionally funny scenes of note.

Handsome, likable Peter Graves plays one of the numerous FDA agents sent undercover to find out who is supplying drivers the illegal pills. This may be the best B-movie production of his career as a man with undercover experience. His “off the top of his head” suggestion for a phony alias and routine cover for this sort of thing is pretty funny. And not even questioned by his supervisor. He decides to be a widower from...um... Indianapolis...um...who has been drifting for...um...five years working at various...um...jobs. Perfect!

You will not forget Chuck Conners' standout performance. One might think he is over-acting, but on the contrary, he sells the harmful effects of drug addiction vividly. Connors hams it up as a hopped-up-hepcat big-rig driver. He and “Bennie” can go the distance on the highway or the dance floor. His flirtations with the diner waitress, Merry Anders, is a favorite pastime. Sleeping is for losers, in his altered mind. When Graves becomes a border in the same house as Connors, the automobile buff will wonder who owns the Thunderbird convertible curbside. Once Connors “blows the cameraman off his feet” with his first appearance, the owner is revealed. His climatic, hallucinogenic ride, almost drives him insane, and nearly kills Graves in the process before getting him the medical help needed.

Mala Powers, who runs the trucker's boarding house, looks sheepishly uncomfortable when Graves checks in. Like she killed her dog a couple of hours before after he peed on the carpet. Graves' phony backstory plays to her emotions and they soon become attached at the lips. She will be quite surprised to learn he is just a professional doing his job. So there is little surprise for the moviegoer that they have no future together. Typically, Harry Lauter is just too nice as Power's thoughtful “brother-in-law.”

Routine stops at a service station introduce us to the owner, Robert B. Williams, as “Dunc.” The amiable character is the driver's primary pill physician, but he is not the kingpin. When the pill-pusher gang finds out the identity of Graves he is abducted and taken to a remote location. Against his will, Williams is also “taken for a ride” and then commanded to dig a grave for Graves. Sensing a chance to sway Williams' actions, Graves tells him he is also dispensable. “Dunc, you better make that two graves.” After that unintended pun, Williams places the shovel upside of the head of the drug kingpin. After a few stray and deadly bullets, Graves returns to town to wrap up his assignment. Powers' hysteria at the end is a bit much.

WHEN GANGLAND STRIKES (1956)

CARUSO STRIKES MAYBERRY

This is not two television episodes edited into a movie. Its premise, from a story and screenplay by John K. Butler and Frederick Louis Fox, centers around a big city mobster who wants his trial moved to a small community, Rosedale, where he will likely go free by a jury of no peers. The moviegoer knows he committed murder in an alley. The bowling type. The mobster plans to blackmail the town's elder prosecutor because he knows the secret he has kept hidden for years. The not-so-horrible secret is kept for a while, but out of fear, the prosecutor throws the trial in the mobster's favor. The Republic Pictures release is planted firmly on the mediocre side of town. Perhaps an explanation of the awkward and misleading title is in order. A gangland mobster shoots a key witness in a bowling alley right after the guy rolls another one of his strikes. You can believe that if you want.

Thanks to the ubiquitous criminal, Anthony “Duke” Caruso, the opening would suggest a hard-hitting crime drama. Script “bookends of excitement” are used at the beginning and end to keep the slow middle section from collapsing. Dramatic scene transition music sometimes would fit a sitcom of the era with a downtown studio set. It is as clean and stainless as the people who live there. Every automobile is newly washed and waxed. With its clichéd dialogue and characters, this film could have been made ten to fifteen years earlier. By golly, Andy Hardy would feel right at home here.

Directed by R.G. Springsteen, everyone rolls through the film competently, however. Playing the seasoned and genial pivotal character is Raymond “Pops” Greenleaf, the lovable and infamous prosecuting attorney. The Ben Matlock of Rosedale. The courtroom scenes are, thankfully, brief, but are not anchored in any reality. The cast is a “gang load” of B-movie or television performers. Caruso's ex-con airhead girl is played by Marian Carr. She thinks the world of him...calls him “Dukie.” He does not reciprocate her sentiments. Young John Hudson plays an up-and-coming prosecutor and fiancé to the cute and wholesome, Marjie Millar. She seems lifted straight from a Roy Rogers serial. More embarrassing is watching Slim Pickens do his one-dimensional, rural bumpkin character. He is so one-dimensional his character's name is actually “Slim Pickett.” His elementary-level humor hardly ever satisfies. Again playing a sheriff, is Paul Birch. Uncredited roles go to Mayberry alums from The Andy Griffith Show, James Best, and Dick Elliot.

Caruso is eventually subpoenaed by the court for a second murder. His memorized “attendance” at a piano concert is his alibi. But Greenleaf knows more about the pianist than Caruso and his detailed questions destroy him on the witness stand. Out of nowhere comes a startling solo piano score underlying the scene. Caruso loses his temper and attempts to shoot his chauffeur because he thinks he betrayed him on the shady conjecture from Greenleaf. How he got into the courthouse with a handgun, no one cares. It is the final bookend of excitement in the film. Ditsy Carr hopes that “Dukie” will not be put away long. Caruso's legal adviser sardonically replies it will be just a couple of days, then they will turn on the electricity. As expected, she does not get it.

Note: To accurately categorize this film is puzzling. A studio laugh track would not be out of place. The script is idealistic with abrupt scene changes and characters popping up without any permission to do so. In spite of these things, this forgotten, historical slice of Americana, is generally pleasing. At seventy minutes, it may be the perfect movie to watch on a smartphone, simply because one can.