ROSES ARE RED. 20th Century Fox, 1947. Don Castle, Peggy Knudsen, Patricia Knight, Joe Sawyer, Edward Keane, Jeff Chandler, Charles McGraw, Charles Lane, Paul Guilfoyle, Doug Fowley), James Arness (as James Aurness). Director: James Tinling.

   With a title such as this one, you could be excused for thinking that this particular film would be a romantic comedy/musical starring Doris Day or Betty Hutton. But no. “Ha!” on you. What this is instead is a snappy 60-minute crime mystery with a cast that’s totally in sync with the story all the way through. (Just take a look at the names. Fans of B-movie mysteries from the 40s will recognize them all.)

   Not only is the cast picture perfect for this sort of thing, the plot has a twist added to a twist that I don’t remember seeing before. Finding a career criminal who looks exactly like the newly elected district attorney and arranging it so the former is ready to step in to impersonate the latter, that’s twist number one. What was new to me was to carry the twist one step further (trying to be clear as I can without revealing all).

   I’m not exactly sure why they came up with the title they did. The movie does open with police lieutenant Joe Sawyer on the scene of a murder of a girl in whose hand is found a red rose, but there’s no real reason for the rose nor, in fact, does the killing have much to do with rest of the story. (See above.)

   One other thing that I found amusing, in a trivia-of-the-day sense, was seeing both Jeff Chandler and James Arness in the same movie, both in important but rather minor roles, both in the early stages of their respective careers. Fun facts such as this make movies such as this all the more fun.