Destination Big House (1950) User Reviews

Nice, Low-Key Crime Drama

[boblipton · 6/10 · 28 November 2023]

School teacher Dorothy Patrick is staying at the mountain cabin of her fiance, Dr. Robert Rockwell, when wounded Richard Benedict stumbles in. He's running out on his gang, with $80,000 in cash. Miss Patrick tends his wounds and asks no questions, which confuses him. When she sends him on his way, it's with the money hidden. He makes it to the hospital, writes a will in her favor, and dies. When the news gets out, all the gossips and her prospective mother-in-law think the worst of her. So do various gangsters, who want the money.

It's directed by George Blair. After a decade as an assistant director, he started directing some of Republic's numerous B movies, often four or five a year. In the early 1950s, he switched to directing television. He's best remembered for directing most of the Superman TV show starring George Reeves. Lookng at this movie, I was struck by the similarity of compositions and camera set-ups to that show. I guess his attitude was that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. With Robert Armstrong, Jimmy Lydon, Larry J. Blake, and Claire DuBrey.

a sleep-over, scandal, gossip, gangsters, fund raising and ostracizing in just 60 minutes

[horn-5 · 23 November 2005]

School teacher Janet Brooks (Dorothy Patrick) innocently involves herself in a scandal while spending the week-end alone in the mountain cabin of her fiancée, Dr. Walter Phillips (Robert Rockwell). She gives first aid to a wounded racketeer, Joe Bruno (Richard Benedict), who is running out on his mob with eighty thousand dollars in cash.

Unknown to Janet, Bruno hides the money in the cabin. She goes on an errand and two mobsters, Ed Somers (Robert Armstrong) and "Stubby" Moore (John Harmon), make a call on Bruno and then depart after delivering a couple of soon-to-be-fatal gunshot wounds. Bruno manages to get to the highway and hitches a ride from a passing motorist who drives him to the Coniston hospital. In front of a number of doctors as witnesses, Bruno draws up a will leaving the eighty-thousand bucks to Janet, but dies before he can reveal where the money is located.

The story hits the local headlines the next day and Janet's denials of any previous acquaintance with Bruno or knowledge of the money are disbelieved. Janet, her mother, Celia (Claire DuBrey), and her brother, Fred (James Lydon), are ostracized by the town. Only Walter, who is having trouble of his own trying to raise money to complete a polio wing for the hospital, stands by Janet.

Janet publicly announces that if the money ever comes into her possession, she will turn it over to the hospital fund. Somers and Moore intensify their search. But Fred, under pressure from Pete Weiss (Larry J. Blake), local racketeer to whom he owes a large gambling debt, finally succeeds in finding the money, but his conscience forces him to hide it again rather than turning it over to Weiss.

Then the rival gangster groups come face-to-face in a winner-take-all gun battle over the money, and the prospects of the hospital getting a new wing appear to be dim.