Sat 1 Jun 2024
ACCOMPLICE. Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), 1946. Richard Arlen (Simon Lash), Veda Ann Borg, Tom Dugan, Michael Brandon, Marjorie Manners, Earle Hodgins, Francis Ford. Based on the novel Simon Lash, Private Detective, by Frank Gruber. Director: Walter Colmes.
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get what you’ve been wishing for, even if you’ve been looking for it for a long time. Case in point: This movie, based on a private eye yarn by a long time master of pulp fiction, Frank Gruber.
Gruber also had a hand in on the screenplay, but I have to be honest. This is one of the worst assembled detective movies I’ve had the occasion to watch in a long time. It’s a jumbled up mess, one put together by a gang of ham-fisted amateurs, or so it seems.
Luckily it’s only 68 minutes long, and at that it felt a whole lot longer. PRC didn’t have a lot of money to splurge on their productions, and even so you get the feeling that they cut the budget on Accomplice by thirty percent about halfway through to save it for the next film out of their hopper.
Another problem, perhaps, is that they tried to film the book fairly closely, but that’s only a guess, not having read the book in over 50 years, but that’s what it feels like. There’s simply too much story, which goes hither and yon and there, and in 68 minutes, there’s not nearly enough time to stitch the pieces of a nicely complicated plot together so the seams don’t show, and badly.
But as for the story, since you are asking, it starts out in fine fashion. Simon Lash (a mid-career but still dashing Richard Arlen) is a private eye, and not only that, one of my favorite kinds of private eyes, a book collecting PI, mostly non-fiction about the West and how it was Won. He also has an assistant named Eddie (Tom Dugan) who seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting around the office.
He’s hired in Accomplice by brash blonde Joyce Bonniwell (played to perfection by brash blonde Veda Ann Borg) to find her husband, a bank manager who suffers from periodic bouts of amnesia. (We’ve heard that before, and so has Simon Lash.) What makes things hinky here is that Joyce once dumped Simon at the altar.
So far, so good. What comes next is fast and furious. There is a mistress on the side (red-headed, as if you could tell in a black and white movie), a mink ranch, a missing bank president who’s been seen with a mysterious brunette, a body found with its head blown off, and — skipping a whole lot — a Castle in the desert being used for nefarious purposes, lorded over by Francis Ford (brother of John Ford, a fact which is of course totally irrelevant to the rest of this paragraph).
There things come to a flashy and violent end. I had stopped caring about 30 minutes earlier, but the ending, I’d have to admit, is nearly worth waiting for. Almost, but not quite.
March 24th, 2011 at 10:02 pm
Lash was my least favorite Gruber sleuth — I’m much more of a Johnny Fletcher fan — but damnit, I still want to see this bad review and all.
Arlen had been a big star for about ten minutes — WINGS, BEAU GESTE, THE FOUR FEATHERS (note, not the famous versions of those last two) — often teamed with his buddy Mr. Mary Pickford, Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, but this is actually pretty late in his leading man career even though he continued as a character actor for much longer.
He’s not exactly my idea of Simon Lash, but not terrible casting.
Gruber had much better luck with his westerns on screen than his mysteries. Maybe they were just too plot heavy. In any case I prefered him in his Eric Ambler mode in books like BRIDGE OF SAND, THE SPANISH PRISONER, or BROTHERHOOD OF SILENCE.
He did write a damn good police procedural, THE LAST DOORBELL as John K. Vedder and good none series private eye novel TWENTY PLUS TWO which was made into an intriguing but cheap little film with David Janssen and Jeanne Crain.
March 25th, 2011 at 4:49 am
My reaction to “Simon Lash, Private Detective” was the same as David’s: didn’t like it as much as Johnny Fletcher, or Gruber’s non-series books.
Richard Arlen’s many films are rarely seen today, and I’ve seen very few. A good one: THUNDERBOLT.
Had never heard of this film. This is an interesting review!
September 4th, 2018 at 4:03 am
[…] people online who’ve seen it with phrases like “one of the worst assembled detective movies I’ve had the occasion to watch in a long timeâ€, Accomplice graces my eyeballs before many no doubt […]
June 1st, 2024 at 11:44 pm
To help eliminate some very likely confusion I’ve just caused, this review is a rerun. It was first posted on this blog on March 24, 2011.
As it so happened, I’ve just finished watching it — without realizing I’d seen it before until maybe the halfway point — which perhaps not coincidentally is the point at which the story line stopped making any sense.
When I starting watching it today, it was with the intent that it was going to be the first review (alphabetically speaking) I was going to do based on the list of movies Arthur Lyons put together as the main portion of his book DEATH ON THE CHEAP: The Lost B Movies of FILM NOIR! (Da Capo Press, 2000).
Rather than write a new review, though, I found this old one and once read, I quickly realized you can’t improve on perfection. Hence, the rerun, complete with the previous comments.
In the meantime, between then and now, David Vineyard wrote his own review of the film, and you can find it here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=55995
Note that he didn’t like it any more than I did. Maybe even less.
June 2nd, 2024 at 12:07 am
Next up, ACCUSED OF MURDER, with David Brian and Vera Ralston, based on W.R. Burnett’s novel, “Vanity Row.”
It’s currently available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, in case you get the urge to watch it before I do.
June 2nd, 2024 at 12:18 am
And available somewhat more cheaply here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJh33Fyt5e0
June 2nd, 2024 at 6:35 pm
Arlen was much better in many films including a pretty good spy film with Zorina, Von Stroheim, Ciannelli, and Bob Livingston, but here he is just flat, the same for Borg, who could play smart and brassy but doesn’t bother.
Great material, decent screenplay despite the condensing of the plot, but someone let the air out with all the snap in the patter falling flat, the actors seemingly missing this is a fast moving comedy mystery, and the direction dull even for a high school play.
Everything is here for it to be an entertaining even superior B except any sense the director or the cast had any idea what they were supposed to be doing. Even then the finale almost works.
June 2nd, 2024 at 8:16 pm
My sense is, having now seen it a second time, is that it *almost* clicks, and it isn’t just one thing that misfires, it’s just about everything. especially after about halfway through.
June 2nd, 2024 at 8:41 pm
Since casting seems to be an issue, a hypothetical change, Dick Arlen is paid off, and replaced by Clark Gable, everything else remains as above.
Does this single change make the film entertaining? I bet it does, and all they need to do is give Gable the studio, and he gives them three hours one afternoon.
June 2nd, 2024 at 10:33 pm
I thought Arlen was OK in the role, but Barry, you’re right. Replace him with Clark Gable, and the the whole affair gets a 100 volt jolt. Guaranteed.