A lot of noirs have absurd plots. And then there’s DECOY, a tilt-a-whirl of absurdities. A full recounting of the ridiculousness of this film’s storyline is beyond my meager powers, but allow me to sketch the central conceit of the film, and that alone should paint the picture.
The film follows the short but distinguished career of a femme fatale named Margot Shelby. She’s the girlfriend of an armored-truck robber named Frankie. Recently, Frankie took a truck for $400,000, but he killed the driver in the process and now he’s sitting on death row. Since Margot wants the money he hid, she does what most of us would do: she devises a way to steal Frankie’s body after he’s been executed and bring him back from the dead so he can lead her to the money.
See what I mean? That’s the beginning of the film.
Margot enlists the help of an honest doctor named Lloyd Craig. I guess she seduces him, but the film rushes past that part. She walks into his office for the first time in one scene, and by the next scene he has agreed to help Margot administer a drug called Methylene Blue to Frankie’s corpse. It’s a pity we’re not privy to the conversation where she first brings up this plan. I’d like to hear how someone goes about broaching that particular subject.
After the execution, Margot has the body highjacked with the help of a gangster named Jim Vincent. They bring Frankie to the doctor’s office and there, in the back room, they bring him back to life. Strong stuff, that Methylene Blue.
In the face of this medical miracle, reacting with what can only be characterized as impressive single-mindedness, Margot and the boys set to work sweating down Frankie for the location of the missing cash. So much for the miracle of resurrection. Someone even offers him a cigarette. Now, if I’d just been executed in the gas chamber, I doubt I’d want to light up a smoke afterward, but Frankie seems to need one. Once he tells them where the money’s hidden, however, Margot decides she doesn’t really need Frankie anymore. The other guys in her little gang should take notes. Margot reaches this decision about men on a fairly frequent basis.
Our hero in the film, a cop with the unimprovable name of JoJo Portugal, is played by Sheldon Leonard, better known as Nick the bartender from IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. He’s looking for Frankie’s corpse. He and Margot spar a little bit, but he’s always a couple of steps behind her. Most people are.
While DECOY is a decidedly low budget affair—it was shot on Hollywood’s Poverty Row and released by the Monogram Pictures—it looks pretty good. It’s an example of a fairly undistinguished cast and crew putting together a solid entertainment. The brainchild of prolific writer/producer Stanley Rubin (THE NARROW MARGIN), it started out as a radio script and it was adapted to the screen by the actor Ned Young (as a noir reference point, he’s the gut-shot hood in CRIME WAVE). B-movie director Jack Bernhard formed a production company to make the film as a showcase for his new wife, the English actress Jean Gillie.
Bernhard was on to something, and the best reason to see the movie is the ferocious performance by Gillie. With her smooth British accent and almost regal bearing, she might seem like an odd choice for such a nasty character, but when she explains to Dr. Craig that she’s not going back to the crummy English mill town where she grew up you believe every word. Great femme fatales always work best when they have a believable reason for their actions. Margot Shelby would go on anyone’s shortlist of the most demented femmes in noir, but in her mind, she’s just doing what a girl’s got to do. It would have been interesting to see what Gillie could have done with better scripts, but, sadly, she died of pneumonia not long after the film was released. She’d already divorced Bernhard and moved back to England by that time, so there’s really nothing else to her noirography besides DECOY. So she joins the ranks of notable one-hit wonders like Ann Savage and Joan Dixon, women who made a single good film and then seemed to slip away. Not bad company.
2 comments:
This film is unbelievable and I love it - particularly Jean Gillie, who is GREAT to watch, and is utterly gorgeous to boot. As you note, it's a shame she didn't live to make more, better films; she's sensational on screen. One of the great femme fatales - thanks so much for your post.
Meth blue, of course, unless I remember incorrectly (always an easy bet), mostly has the effect of making one's urine blue when administered to a human. Not quite the same thing as raising the dead, but it certainly takes the piss...
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