You would think that this has all the makings of a film noir to end film noirs, what with the teaming up of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake and a script by mystery impresario Raymond Chandler. Instead, the thing shoots craps at the end and sort of leaves you feeling cheated. I will have to say though that it took no less than the United States Navy to ruin this movie.
Ladd plays a soldier named Johnny who is coming back from the Pacific theater after a successful tour as a Navy flier. Getting off the bus with him are his Navy buddies Buzz and George. William Bendix delivers a fine performance as Buzz, depicting the toll war can take on a man both physically and mentally, while George is played by Hugh Beaumont, depicting what Ward Cleaver did way back when his career was going somewhere.
The noir themes of alienation and assimilation run throughout the film and are illustrated from the very beginning. Buzz has a plate in his head and it has messed up his hearing. This is supposed to explain why he runs around holding his head in anguish whenever music is played and why he constantly screams “I can’t stand that monkey music!”
Buzz is also very quick to anger and frequently gets himself into fights. This is one soldier that’s going to have a little trouble readjusting to civilian life. George and Johnny try to play peacemaker and George eventually lives with Buzz and tries to keep him out of trouble.
Buzz though merely reflects openly the isolation and confusion that Johnny feels inwardly. When Johnny left to go fight for his country, he had a wife and a kid, but when Johnny came marching home again, things weren’t the same. His wife had written him to tell him his son had died of diphtheria, but at least he still had the little woman to go home to, right?
Well, he comes home and surprises her, but the surprise is on him because she’s having quite the shindig with all these louts and everyone’s drinking and having a good time and Johnny sees a local mobster named Eddie kissing his wife goodnight!
Johnny, showing the great discipline he learned in the military waits until everyone leaves to backhand her. Then he tries to talk to her, but all she wants to do is drink. She later tells him that his son died when she got into a car wreck while she was drunker than a skunk!
Johnny gets his gun and kind of points it at her, but tells her she ain’t worth the lead and drops it next to her, packs his stuff (hell, he hadn’t been there more than 15 minutes, how much packing did he need to do?) and takes off into the rainy night.
Johnny is picked up by a beautiful blonde stranger who Johnny probably remembers from their previous films together like This Gun For Hire and The Glass Key. This time Veronica Lake’s name is Joyce. They exchange some witty banter and Johnny cleverly says his name is Jimmy and they eventually part ways.
The next day Johnny is ready to take on the world, to get a fresh start, forget and forgive and let love rule and all that, but before he can do anything, he notices that his wife has turned up with some bullet holes in her that weren’t there when he left her! And guess whose gun was found at the scene?
Johnny’s on the lam now and even though he didn’t part with his wife on good terms, he still would like the real killer brought to justice. Immediately Johnny suspects Eddie, the mobster-owner of a nightclub called The Blue Dahlia. A good chunk of the movie is devoted to Johnny confronting Eddie and the police harassing George and Buzz.
The movie concludes at the police station where everyone assembles and Johnny shows up to reveal the real killer. One of the highlights is when Johnny has Buzz perform some kind of Annie Oakley trick by shooting a match that Johnny is holding and causing the match to ignite into flame. What this is supposed to demonstrate beyond the fact that Johnny is a complete idiot was lost on me.
The conclusion of the movie is a complete travesty. The entire film is built around the screwed up Buzz and his mounting craziness, yet the killer is revealed to be someone else. As such, the killer has virtually no presence in the film other than to appear once in awhile to squeeze some money out of somebody.
Originally, Buzz was supposed to be the killer, but the Navy didn’t like one of their own portrayed like that so it was rewritten and bastardized into the version you have to choke down today. Apparently the Navy didn’t mind that Buzz was portrayed as a shell shocked lunatic, it just didn’t want him to take the rap for a murder. The end result renders most of what went on in the movie pointless and leaves you clutching your throbbing skull Buzz-like and screaming “I can’t stand these monkey endings!”
© 2011 MonsterHunter
