RAILROADED! (1947)

Solid film noir from Poverty Row studio PRC, directed by Anthony Mann early in his career. In the first few minutes, the sparseness of the sets betrays the ultra-low budget, but once the movie gets going, it winds up looking and feeling as good as any RKO or Warners B-film of the era. The set-up: bad girl Jane Randolph manages a beauty shop which has gambling going in the back room. One night, she surreptitiously lets in a couple of masked robbers (one of them being her boyfriend John Ireland) to pull off a heist, but another beautician (Peggy Converse) screams loud enough to attract a cop; the cop shoots the other robber (Keefe Brasselle), wounding him seriously, and Ireland kills the cop. Ireland gets Brasselle, with his dying breath, to implicate young Ed Kelly, whose laundry truck they stole for the heist, as the other gunman. Kelly's sister (Sheila Ryan) insists that her brother is innocent; at first, straight-arrow cop Hugh Beaumont doesn't believe her, but as he investigates, Ireland looks more and more suspicious, and soon Ryan is pulling off her own undercover investigation, cozying up to Ireland and his gang. Feeling the heat, Ireland starts bumping off those who he thinks might rat on him, and the fact that they're women doesn't bother him in the least. Naturally, Ryan winds up in hot water; will Beaumont be able to save her and clear the kid? Well, of course he will, but the predictability of the plotline isn't a liability here. Beaumont and Ryan make an OK couple, if a bit stiff, but the acting honors belong to the vicious Ireland and to Randolph, a B-movie actress best known as the mistress who's menaced by the unseen leopard in CAT PEOPLE. She's good in every scene, including a memorable, furniture-tumbling "catfight" with Ryan. The print which aired on Turner Classic is in remarkable shape considering it never belonged the library of a major studio; if only other PRC films (like DETOUR) would show up in such good shape. [TCM]