GIRL ON THE RUN (1953)

This Poverty Row-level film noir, which plays out in essentially real time in a low-rent traveling carnival, begins with a number of vaguely nightmarish shots of people (like homely hoochy-koochy dancers and the sweaty men watching them) and things (a life-size mechanical clown, laughing maniacally). The somewhat halting exposition, which took me a while to piece together, involves a crusading newspaper editor named Marsh who was found dead. The chief suspect is reporter Bill Martin who had been working on a vice exposé involving the carnival but who was recently fired by Marsh. Bill and his girlfriend Janet turn up at the carnival, and on their trail are some cops and a local political bigshot named Clay Reeves. The cops are intimidated by Reeves but don't seem to like him. In hiding, Bill gets a job as a boxer in a fixed fight contest and Janet is hired as a dancer; though she looks a little more comely than the other girls, she can’t dance for shit. We meet the carnival owner, a dwarf named Blake, and the den mother of the dancing girls, a hard-nosed but good-hearted woman named Lil. Janet believes that Reeves is actually behind the murder as she saw him leave Marsh's office not long before he was found dead. After an ineptly staged fight scene (fists swing wildly, coming nowhere near jaws) and a couple of equally awkward gun battles, all is solved and Bill and Janet can live happily ever after.

I suspect that this passed for adults-only entertainment back in 1953. It's only an hour long, but easily half of the running time is taken up by the plot grinding to a halt so we can watch scantily-clad women dance and act like they're going to strip, though they don't get very far. The best-looking and most talented dancer is Renee De Milo, given an "introducing" credit in the film, though she never made another movie. The plot is serviceable if poorly developed. Richard Coogan, who was the original Captain Video on TV, is OK as Martin. He seems to be one of the few professionals in the movie, the other being Frank Albertson (Sam Wainwright in It's a Wonderful Life, the drunken rich guy in the beginning of Psycho) who plays Hank, the carny worker who runs the rigged boxing matches. It's not much of a role, but as far as acting, he outshines everyone else. Charles Bollender, the dwarf actor who plays Blake, is also quite good. He muffs a couple of line readings (as do a few other folks) but he seems to be making an effort to create a rounded character. Edith King, as Lil, is likable but has the unfortunate duty of getting shot in the shoulder and left to sit around grasping her wound for the last fifteen minutes of the movie while action goes on around her. I half-admire the attempt at a real-time crime story, but this just doesn’t work very well. Still, I liked that the irritating mechanical clown laugh is heard throughout the entire climax. Steve McQueen is visible briefly as an extra who plays the Strength Hammer game. Pictured are Coogan and Bollender. [DVD]