THE HOUSTON STORY (1956)

William Castle offers up his final noir about an ambitious oil driller who discovers a way to steal oil and then sell it to distributors or foreign interests for huge profits. The film's first half is the stronger section, as one is not sure of the main character's intent, played by Gene Barry. The opening morgue scene involving a female's body gets the intrigue award. Barry purposely misidentifies her. The script can be complicated in laying out the benefits of underworld “investing” and whose pipes are being gleaned. It starts to disintegrate during the last third of the film, however, offering a commonplace resolve. There is enough backstabbing in this film to be another Castle horror movie.

Barry puts the con in conniving. A greedy, unscrupulous businessman who romances a nightclub singer to infiltrate a Houston mobster's organization. He is a decent fit for this role as a womanizer. More believable than the original choice, Lee J. Cobb. Barbara Hale—the aforementioned (in name only) morgue lady—is now a nightclub singer with a different name. Her single vocal number is quite mesmerizing and convincing. No dubbing. Her bleached hair and facial features are also stunningly perfect.

Mob boss Edward Arnold, in his next-to-last movie, could play corrupt like few others. Barry needs his financial backing. Arnold goes along with Barry's scheme, vouching for their newest board member, chaired by “Mr. Big,” John Zaremba. But Arnold never wavers from his plan to dispose of Barry once the funds start rolling in. Apart from Houston's temperatures, Barry begins taking heat from investigators. He sets up nightclub owner Paul Richards, another Arnold associate, to take the fall for an oil well sabotage to get them off his back. But Richards shifts the blame to Arnold, putting him on a slippery slope. For the first time in his career, he is a hunted man with no place to go. Out of nowhere, instantly, Arnold spits out his startling confession to Barry, “Now I gotta run! I never had to run before! I don't even know how to run!” At his weight and age, he was accurate. Zaremba wants Barry removed “peacefully” from the “board of elders” and sends a gangster, Chris Alcaide, to...uh...find him. 

Barry's passed sweetheart, Jeanne Cooper, runs a cafe in oil derrick territory. She expects a future with him. Now in big trouble, he tells her to go to his house and get the 100 grand from the safe, then they will meet up later. Cooper arrives to find Hale already removing the money, which she does not plan to share. A lightbulb turns on for Cooper. With all his shrewd and detailed planning, Barry would have made an excellent professional organizer some fifty years later. Organized for him will be a trial. Sentencing for graft, corruption, and an itty-bitty murder. Digging himself out of prison might be his next drilling adventure.