X MARKS THE SPOT (1942)

Eddie (Damien O’Flynn) is a private detective, son of an Irish cop, who is taking a post with Army Intelligence in a couple of days. His dad has the bad luck to run into gangster Marty (Jack La Rue) as he's hijacking two trucks filled with tires (in wartime, tires were in high demand for their rubber and became essentially a controlled substance). Marty shoots the cop dead and Eddie, naturally, gets himself involved, trying to track down the killer in the few days of freedom he has left. This B-mystery is rather messy in its details and cheap in its look, but it has a few points of interest. Local clubs and diners use what amounts to a human jukebox; the patron inserts money and talks to an operator at a central location, requesting a certain song which she then plays. I have no idea if this was ever a real thing, but it's crucial to the plot for two reasons: the operator (Helen Parrish) gets involved in the case, and at one point, she announces an air raid blackout which is called in—and which turns out to be a false alarm, rigged up so a character can be killed in the dark yet still in public. O’Flynn is a bland leading man, with Parrish only marginally better. Much better are La Rue (as the baddie), Dick Purcell (as a police lieutenant), and Neil Hamilton (as the owner of the tires). As far as the title, there is no "X," just a place run by Marty called the One Spot Café. Completely average of its type. Pictured are O'Flynn and Parrish. [YouTube]