Given this film’s rarity (it went unseen for 30 years), I guess even self-confessed film nuts could be excused for never having heard of it – that is, until its announcement as part of Warners’ fourth “Film Noir Collection” on DVD. While some of the pairings in that 10-Movie 5-Disc Set were done without rhyme or reason – and it had seemed to me to be so here as well! – the film actually had a connection to its companion piece, CRIME WAVE (1954; which I’ve just watched a couple of days ago), via the credit on both of blacklisted scriptwriter/actor Nedrick Young (he appeared in the latter but only wrote DECOY).
Being a Monogram production, the film wears its Poverty Row status on its sleeve – with a bizarre plot (involving the re-animation of the dead: this has to be the only vintage crime outing to take the genre into the realm of sci-fi!), gritty look and second-rate cast – but which it generally manages to turn in its favor. In my review for CRIME WAVE itself, I had written how surprised I was that the film proved to be so good – this, then, came as even more of a shock (joining the ranks of such ramshackle ‘B’ noir gems as DETOUR, DILLINGER {both 1945} and GUNMAN IN THE STREETS [1950])! The film was devised as a showcase for British actress Jean Gillie by her husband, director Bernhard – however, the couple would divorce soon after and (even more sadly) Gillie herself would be dead of pneumonia in just a couple of years’ time! Still, hers is one of the most unscrupulous femme fatales ever conceived – ensnaring practically the entire male cast in her obsessive pursuit of money – and which she plays in a slightly overstated (but, under the circumstances, entirely fitting) manner.
The rest of the cast includes Edward Norris as Gillie’ crooked associate, Robert Armstrong as her ageing gangster boyfriend currently on Death Row and the only one who knows the location of a stashed cache' containing $400,000, Herbert Rudley as the small-town doctor enticed by Gillie into her unholy revivification scheme, and Sheldon Leonard as the cagey and dogged cop on their trail. Norris is somewhat stiff, while Armstrong (the original Carl Denham of “King Kong” fame) brings his typical zest to the role of love-struck and over-the-hill duped mobster – but both Rudley (bemoaning his betrayal of the code governing his profession) and Leonard (secretly enamored of Gillie himself, he’s willing to answer her plea at the moment of death to “stoop to her level”…but she just laughs in his face!) match the lady’s display of cool elegance disguising an essentially hard-boiled nature. Incidentally, Gillie’s character anticipated such celebrated noir bad girls of the ‘deadly sweet’ variety as Jane Greer in OUT OF THE PAST (1947) and Peggy Cummins (coincidentally, another British actress) in GUN CRAZY (1950) – but also Gaby Rodgers in KISS ME DEADLY (1955) in view of her similar histrionic outburst when finally laying hands on the long sought-after object of contention.
Unfortunately, it’s been revealed that the print of DECOY utilized for the DVD is slightly censored: one of the main characters is trampled no less than three times by a car which has Gillie at the wheel – however, we only get to see this once in the current version! For the record, Bernhard (whose first directorial effort this was) had been an executive at Universal – responsible for such popular ‘B’ horror outings as HORROR ISLAND and MAN-MADE MONSTER (1941; which I still haven’t managed to check out!). Finally, I’m to follow DECOY with another noir of his – the evocatively-titled BLONDE ICE (1948), via the “Special Edition” released by VCI…
