20,000 EYES (1961)

This tolerable film—only sixty-one minutes—opens with a driving, big band score by Albert Glasser, the king of B-movie composers. Against automobile headlights cutting through night streets, interesting title designs give one the feeling of a cutting-edge crime drama. Even so, the poster might have you believe by the "Vertigo-inspired" graphic and "horror" eyes, that this is a William Castle horror film. I was relieved, however, that “The Beast With...” is absent from the title. 20,000 was a popular round number during this or the Jules Verne era. The dialogue is well memorized, always on cue, and disappointing.

Singer and hoofer, Gene Nelson, tries again to step out of his musical background with another crime movie. There is little that sets him apart from others, arriving very late to the noir party. Nelson is in the spotlight right from the first scene. Though a legit diamond mine investor, he needs capital to cover a failing mine in Brazil. He swindles rotund John Banner’s investment money to do it. Banner feeds Nelson a knuckle sandwich as his introduction to the movie. Nelson intends to pay him back but he needs time. Much more than the five days Banner gives him. The poor sound quality, Banner’s thick German accent and fading volume make it difficult to understand all of his dialogue. I could have used subtitles.

Merry Anders plays Nelson’s secretary and girlfriend. To help with Nelson’s predicament, they contact Nelson’s old Army buddy and mining partner—Anders’s old flame—James Brown. Brown brings some diamond samples at Nelson’s request as promotional investments. His plan involves stealing valuable diamonds from a museum and returning them after an appropriate appraisal. With a lot of persuading they both help make the theft a success. Nelson (his stunt double) sneaking across rooftops and into the museum before dawn is a nice touch. It has the momentary feeling of a high-quality caper. It continues so dark one cannot see Nelson’s time-consuming detail work he goes through to steal the diamonds from the museum case. Unless one has stolen jewels before from a case with alarms, you will have no idea what he is doing. I think he may have done a super professional job (for his first time) but one will never know for sure. But the director sure devoted a lot of film to it.

It is easy to lose track of which diamonds were samples, switched, stolen, stolen again or returned in Nelson’s shell game. His meeting with diamond appraisers is interrupted by Brown disguised as a robber. In the planned struggle with Brown’s gun, Nelson is supposed to take a bullet in the arm. Also part of the plan is a prior injection of Novocain into Nelson’s forearm so he does not feel the bullet as much. I have never tried that. I assume it stops the bleeding as well.

In the director’s attempt to explain away the logic behind the theft, Robert Shayne is given a useless part as the police lieutenant who tries to piece together Brown’s presence at the bank. The whole scene, filmed with the echo of an area microphone, lasts less than two minutes. Everyone gives contradicting remarks about the bandit’s identity and reasons for him arriving at that precise moment. Shayne is stumped, gives up, and is the last we see of him.

The phony theft of the diamonds means Nelson’s insurance policy will pay off. But it will take six weeks to get the money returned to Banner. Nelson pays Banner a visit poolside with his twenty-two-inch television console nearby. After Nelson’s attempt to explain, Banner threatens Nelson, who pushes Banner backward into the pool, tipping over the console on the way down. Never mix electricity and chlorine.

Note: This B-movie has the qualifying attributes. Dark filters for night scenes. Abrupt editing. Many interior scenes were filmed with an area microphone. Showing Nelson in his 1961 Chrysler pulling curbside a few times at the same location supplements the film’s location action and cements a low budget. The music score, so promising at the beginning, inserts itself in some scenes as if the composer never saw the rushes. Except for the poor lighting, questionable script and directing, it may satisfy an hour, however.

MISSING WOMAN (1951)

This is a fun way to spend sixty minutes with one of the most abrupt endings in B-moviedom. The story moves along in tidy fashion, leaving much of the 35mm film on the cutting room floor, yet it will task your suspended disbelief sensibilities. Standard night scenes of the era were created with filters along with limited use of studio backdrop driving scenery. There is a fair share of location filming however and one brief chase scene for the auto and highway patrol motorcycle enthusiast.

Penny Edwards plays this title character. We have no background on the character other than she and her husband are on their honeymoon. Their auto is hijacked by two car thieves, James Millican and John Alvin with the former putting a slug in the gallant husband and with a blow to the head, she falls forward on the steering wheel. The depressed horn continues, signaling local officers patrolling the area. Her character then becomes implausibly polished to pull off the potentially deadly scheme she has in mind. Maybe she was a former FBI agent.

While being questioned by the local authorities, Edwards gets the idea to go undercover to locate the killer of her husband and report his location to the police. She is very savvy about this sort of thing and certainly knows how to bamboozle everyone. All we know is she has experience utilizing a fake persona. Five years on Broadway, perhaps. Her assumed photographic memory comes into play as she only briefly reads a prisoner’s rap sheet but has all the details down pat. Apparently, women come in handy as a distraction during a car heist, so she goes from brunette to Edward’s natural blonde hair, nearly a complete reversal of television’s Richard Kimball. She rolls with every conversation like a pro. One is unsure at what point she will feel in over her head with this charade, but you know it is coming.

She gets the honor of meeting Robert Shayne, the boss of the chopshop. In an awkward scene, after she is driven to the shop location to look around and meet all the nice fellows, Alvin bids her goodbye, until later. She walks out the side door and I wonder where she is going. She has no car. She has no place of her own. I imagine her suddenly stopping in the alley and telling herself, "Dumb, dumb, dumb, now I've done it!" The director must have dozed off during the dailies.

As usual, there are more bits of unintentionally funny scenes for twenty-first-century replays. Bureau of Missing Persons officer, James Brown, gets a tip on Edward’s whereabouts but it is so screwy, her being undercover and all, he tells his superior he might as well file it in the trash can. The superior, in a serious reply, “Never file anything in the trash can.” Oh...right chief. And another: Edwards knew one thief by the name of Hans and with that to go on the superior officer writes down “Hands” on the backboard. He spends countless hours trying to make sense of the nickname and make a connection with it. James Brown enters the room and erases the “D” and suddenly the mystery is solved.

Police locate Edwards and she begs to go back and help round up Shayne and Gang. They seem to think it is quite dangerous to return but tell her to try and stay alive. Bolstered with that encouragement, her missing person’s reward poster is spotted by Alvin and her undercover work appears to be coming to an end. What we learn is that everyone in a chop shop carries a gun. The ending shootout with police includes the trademark Republic Pictures gun sound from their many westerns. And then the film ends abruptly. The director looked at his watch and announced we are done here, people. Edwards transitions to television in the 1960s and retires. Abruptly.