Sat 23 Jun 2018
Mystery Movie Review: KID GLOVE KILLER (1942).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[8] Comments
KID GLOVE KILLER. MGM, 1942, Van Heflin, Marsha Hunt, Lee Bowman, Samuel S. Hinds, Cliff Clark, Eddie Quillan, John Litel, Cathy Lewis. Director: Fred Zinnemann.
An excellent cast and a future Oacar-winning director’s first feature length film — that’s all it takes for a movie to play out on the screen as if the studio (MGM) had loads of money poured into it when it hadn’t. It may also have the distinction of being the first film in which a police department’s crime lab had a major role in bringing a killer to justice.
A very young Van Heflin, himself later an Oscar-winner, plays the Gordon McKay, the crusty head of the lab, while Marsha Hunt is his curvaceous new assistant. While nominally trying to solve the murder of the mayor who died when his car exploded when he tried to start it one morning, the banter between the two is near non-stop. One would think they’re attracted to each other, but of course neither of them will admit it.
The audience knows very early on who the bad egg is, the suitably unctuous Lee Bowman (he was always good in such parts). The fun for the everyone watching, both then and now, is seeing how early forensics slowly narrows in on him, while quietly screaming out a warning to Marsha Hunt’s character when she acts as though she is falling for him, while McKay does his best to pretend to ignore her charms but not fooling anyone for a single minute
There is a lot of zip to this movie, and not a scene is wasted. There is a lot of smoking in this movie, too, as the two main characters also make an amusing habit of one mooching cigarettes and lights from each other. Given a bit of byplay that a pass as a sign of the times, this one’s a class act, from the director on down.
NOTE: Walter Albert also reviewed this movie on this blog almost eight years ago. Check out his comments here
June 23rd, 2018 at 8:03 pm
This was originally a short film in the MGM CRIME DOES NOT PAY series and played so well it was expanded to this feature. I’m not sure,but I think Zimmerman directed the short too.
June 23rd, 2018 at 8:25 pm
I remember reading something like this somewhere else about this film, but looking through a list on IMDb of all the shorts in the CRIME DOES NOT PAY series, along with synopses, the closest I could come to it was:
18. They’re Always Caught (1938) Shows the role the crime laboratory plays in the solving of cases, and how even the smallest detail can become a major clue.
Director: Harold S. Bucquet | Stars: Stanley Ridges, John Eldredge, Louis Jean Heydt, Charles Waldron
June 23rd, 2018 at 11:26 pm
MGM never had quite as much luck with mystery series films as the other studios did; the Thin Man films were the exception, but every time MGM came up with a possible “franchise” (not the term in use at the time, but that’s what we’re talking about here), they usually didn’t take it past two or three movies.
This picture looks an awful lot like someone wanted to do a series with Heflin & Hunt (catchy, no?), but for whatever reasons, the MGM brass decided against following up.
Them’s the breaks; there may have been corporate snobbery involved (detective series were for the lesser studios), but history shows that MGM was simply less oriented toward crime/detective shows than they were toward family series like Andy Hardy or Dr. Kildare.
… unless, of course, I’m wrong …
June 24th, 2018 at 1:46 pm
It’s a little too late for anyone to ask me, but I think this movie could have been a very good start to a long-running series. Or even a short-running series (but longer than just the one).
June 24th, 2018 at 6:50 am
I remember finding this in the ’80s after reading about it in Don Miller’s B MOVIES (I’m pretty sure) and enjoying it quite a bit.
June 24th, 2018 at 1:47 pm
Don Miller’s book on B movies was a long-time favorite of mine, even before there was any chance of ever seeing any of the movies he talked about.
June 24th, 2018 at 1:44 pm
Quite remarkably, Marsha Hunt is still with us at the age of 100.
Here’s her Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_Hunt_(actress,_born_1917)
June 24th, 2018 at 3:32 pm
THEY’RE ALWAYS CAUGHT is the episode in question.
The CRIME DOES NOT PAY series was a prestige production that garnered a few Oscars along the way. Robert Taylor, Stephen McNally,and Barry Nelson all got early career boosts in these shorts(twenty to thirty minutes) and several director’s cut their teeth on them as well. Most featured familiar faces from the MGM roster.
Many feature common rackets from selling babies to spiritualists and even black market milk while some were semi documentary episodes about police work and a few later tight little noirish dramas. A very young Robert Taylor plays a gangster who ends badly in the first one.