by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2012 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
The
film I picked last night was a recent archive.org download called Special
Agent K-7, an intriguing
1936 indie from C. C. Burr Productions, directed by old Western hand Bernard B.
Ray and a movie of such low repute that one archive.org reviewer posted a
comment that Special Agent K-9
would have been a better title. (The joke is actually somewhat appropriate
since Ray did direct
several of the movies starring one of the later Rin Tin Tins.) It’s actually a
much better movie than that jibe would indicate, though it’s also one of those
1930’s thrillers that takes an audacious plot premise and moves it along at
such a stately pace that despite a relatively short running time (imdb.com
lists 71 minutes and the print we watched was 64) it gets surprisingly dull.
It’s yet another movie from the classic era that would have been vastly improved
if it had been made at Warner Bros., with James Cagney as star and one of their
speed-demon directors, but as it stands it’s still an engaging if somewhat
slow-moving thriller. FBI agent “Lanny” Landers (Walter McGrail), code-numbered
K-7, wants to retire but is told by his superior, John Adams (Richard Tucker),
that now that he’s traveled around the world busting crime syndicates, his
services are needed at home to attack organized crime in the U.S. He’s
particularly needed to bring down crooked nightclub/casino owner Eddie Geller
(Willy Castello), who as the film opens is on trial for murder but isn’t
convicted because the jury is hopelessly deadlocked.
The reason the jury is
hopelessly deadlocked is because Geller’s attorney, Lester Owens (Irving Pichel),
has bribed two of its members to hold out for acquittal no matter what.
District attorney Ames (George Eldredge) announces his intention to hold Geller
for a retrial, and the judge in the case — who’s already read the jury members
new assholes, stating from the bench that there was ample evidence to convict
and he’s ashamed of them (a gimmick used in several movies of this period even
though today it seems awfully far out of line for a judge to say that from the
bench!) — says that Geller will remain in custody until then. Owens promises to
have him out on bail and indeed wins his release. The trial is being covered by
woman reporter Ollie O’Dea (Queenie Smith), whom Landers used to date but who
is now engaged to Billy Westrop (Donald Reed), a rich man’s son who ran up
$2,000 in gambling debts at Geller’s casino and whose promissory note has been
altered to read $5,000. The principals meet at the casino — Landers wants a
chance to get to know the man who’s engaged to marry his ex — and Westrop is
summoned to Geller’s office, shown the (altered) note and told to come up with
the $5,000 immediately … or else. Westrop and Geller get into an argument, the
door of the office closes, a shot is heard, Tony Blank (Duncan Renaldo) is seen
in the corridor, and when the door opens again Landers finds Geller dead,
killed with a gunshot. Westrop is immediately suspect number one, but he
insists that he and Geller merely struggled over the gun (Maurine Watkins, your
plagiarism attorney thanks you for keeping him in business!), it went off and
he left Geller still alive.
Landers figures out that if Geller and Westrop had
actually been struggling the way Westrop said they were, the shot would have
gone wild and the bullet would have gone into the office wall — and, sure enough,
he finds a bullet hole in the wall at precisely the trajectory he predicted.
Only that doesn’t let Westrop off the hook because, even though only one
gunshot was heard, the slug recovered from the wall and the one in Geller’s
body were fired from the same gun. (Ballistics tests were a relative novelty in
1936 — as was the scientific investigation of crime scenes in general — and the
FBI were widely credited as pioneers in forensic science.) Tony offers to meet
Landers and turn state’s evidence, but (in a quite creative scene that stands
out in an otherwise pretty plainly photographed and staged film) Landers sees a
commotion on the street below from his apartment window and realizes that Tony
has been shot dead just in front of his building — and it turns out the killer
used the same gun as the one that killed Geller. Suspicion falls on Westrop
again — Ollie arranges for Lester Owens to represent him but Owens is clearly
throwing the case — and when Westrop is proven not to be the killer Owens tries
to frame another character, small-time gangster “Silky” Samuels (Malcolm
McGregor), but not surprisingly it turns out that Owens himself committed both
murders, that he was the secret “Mr. Big” bankrolling Geller and all of
organized crime in the city, and at the end Landers arrests Owens and says a
bittersweet farewell to Ollie (with whom he’s still in love) and her new
husband Westrop.
According to a long note from an imdb.com reviewer, Special
Agent K-7 was based on a
hit radio show and was intended as the first in a series — though only this one
was made; producer C. C. Burr promised exhibitors not only a whole series of
K-7 movies but also musical Westerns starring George Eldredge, none of which
materialized. As it stands, it’s a good though not great movie: the script by
Phil Dunham and Lester Spillet is a serviceable assemblage of thriller clichés
with just enough fresh spins that we don’t get the feeling (as one sometimes
does with 1930’s “B”’s) that we’ve seen this movie before even if we haven’t. Ray’s
direction is serviceable — there are a few shots that anticipate film noir but mostly the framing and lighting are
straightforward and plain — and so is the acting, with Irving Pichel taking the
honors as the villain and a quite appealing performance by Joy Hodges as Peppy,
Tony’s girlfriend and a singer at Geller’s casino (she does a song called
“Actions Speak Louder Than Words” and is shot playing a piano — whether it’s
her on the soundtrack, either vocally or instrumentally, the number is
appealing and it looks like Hodges actually knew how to play). Walter McGrail
is a bit too much like Walter Huston for comfort — their voices are almost
indistinguishable and one gets the impression McGrail would have been the sort
of actor sent out in the road companies of Huston’s big Broadway hits — and he
seems oddly avuncular for an action hero, but like most of the rest of this
film, his performance “works” even though it seems quite a bit less inspired
than it could have been.
