EXPERIMENT ALCATRAZ (1950)

The best news about this film is that it makes use of only fifty-seven minutes. Distributed by RKO Pictures, it was directed by Edward “B-movie” Cahn who turns out a good one with a small budget and a low-tier cast. Orville Hampton wrote the screenplay with Irving Gertz's score used appropriately. Voice-over narration gives a sense of an exposé documentary, of course, but the medical research in this film is merely hypothetical. Hopeful thinking of the era to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. In keeping with an RKO trend, location titles are superimposed over the given background footage so no viewer gets lost. 

John Howard, doing a respectable job here, plays the doctor who discovers a serum that may cure a fatal blood disease. Death is an alternate outcome. Leading and supporting actor, Robert Shayne, had an unmistakable vocal tone as if talking through a hollow plastic box. A wound-tight mellow sound. His perpetual smirk here will immediately suggest he is up to no good. He is one of several Alcatraz prisoners to be set free if they volunteer to take part in the Navy's experimental research. A notorious racketeer, Shayne appears to go insane after his injection of a radioactive isotope, stabbing and killing his prison pal lying in the nearby bed with a pair of scissors lifted from a Navy Lieutenant, the equally-billed Joan Dixon. It reflects badly on her assumed negligence and the Navy removes her immediately and cancels the experimental program.

Dixon’s untrained vocal delivery sounds periodical like she is pretending to be a bad actress in a classic movie spoof. Her occasional “heavy” eyelids appear to be lacking a proper night’s rest. Dixon's short B-movie career was in the hands of Howard Hughes at RKO who had hoped to mold her into a star. She was attractive enough, with a face that blends Gene Tierney and Elizabeth Taylor, according to my current eyeglass prescription. Her most famous role came a year later in the famous, Roadblock.

Howard knows from repeated tests, that the reaction of the serum with the isotope actually dulls the person’s emotions, not excite them to violence. He sets out to prove Shayne, who has since returned to his racketeering, is a murderer. Back in his formal wear, Shayne is quite smug about his chances of being booked for murder. To deter his investigations, Howard is pummeled repeatedly by Shayne’s muscle. The balance of the film reveals why Shayne would kill his prison pal. Not exactly an original idea, it involves the pal’s wife. Though Howard never witnesses “The End” by the end, his research is reinstated by the Navy and I assume Dixon gets her job back.

Note: Real-life Navy veteran, John Howard, became one of the first screen actors committing to the new field of television. He formed a friendship with Fred MacMurray and was a frequent guest star on his Sixties television show, playing his boss. Howard transitioned into the field of specialized education, teaching English for more than twenty years.