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They back of the box from Madacy says that this is a "breathtaking story " and
is a "thrilling fast paced drama full of action, mystery and suspense". The
"hero" has been poisoned and has to solve his own murder before dying. 1950, 83 minutes, VHS
Okay, I know that I may have gotten myself a bit of a rep for not always being
the most studious of movie watchers. Aside from the fact that it is illegal
for you to hold this against me under the Americans With Disabilities Act since
I blame, I mean attribute, my inability to focus on some undiagnosed bit of
ADHD, you can't really blame me for my mind running off to its "safe place"
during
viewings of stuff like The Beast Of Yucca Flats, Horror Planet , most of Lucio Fulci's stuff from about 1981 up until the late nineties when
we were all put out of misery with his very timely demise (that's not being
cruel considering how many lives it undoubtedly saved and if not
lives, then how much money on DVDs him not being around to make cruddy movies
has saved me), and of course that behemoth of self-important tedium, The Trial Of Billy Jack (though why am I able to still remember vividly the stuff from that film like
the big drill team competition called "1984 Is Closer Than You Think" and that
stirring song that one chick sang about Running Deer?). Obviously the point
I'm trying to make here is that my lack of recall during some of the films is
basically a defense mechanism, kind of like when porcupines shoot their quills
at people dumb enough to pick them up in their desert homes. I never
intentionally ignore some celluloid anthrax letter that's playing out across
the screen, but it invariably happens. Now, when I like a movie, I still may
get distracted by this and that because as I'm sure you are aware, I am merely
going through the motions anymore and just watch these things because this
MonsterHunter machine has gotten too big to halt. Too many people depend on
its guidance on vital issues such as whether you need to pick up Men Behind The Sun 2: Laboratory Of The Devil if you really didn't care for part one (sure, go ahead, it ain't my food
stamps) or which Rondo Hatton movie should be the cornerstone of any serious
circus freak fan's collection (uh, that's a toughie, but I gots to go with The Brute Man, at least until something like House Of Horrors is available on DVD). Sometimes, though I do hunker down and make every
effort to pay attention and watch a movie in less than four different sittings,
because it's just that damn good. D.O.A. is just such a film. Course I still never quite figured out what the hell was
going on.  D.O.A. is one of those classic film noirs that more than lives up to its billing as
a dark and tough thriller, uncompromising in its oppressive gloom that mirrors
the sullen emptiness that permeates the soul of post-war men in America. I
assume that women have souls with problems as well, but I haven't actually run
across any movies that tackle that topic, so we'll have to just accept the fact
that women are only dyed blonde types that are either needy, clingy whiners or
dark haired vixens looking to step over as many male corpses as they can on
their way to Easy Street. D.O.A. takes on its subject matter with a stark straightforwardness that literally
shows the "hero" as a walking dead man. Frank Bigelow is an accountant or
something and he ends up getting poisoned by some slow acting stuff that allows
him to run around California for a week before croaking, all in an effort to
find out who was behind his impending death. Is there a gimmick in the
movies (well, short of 3-D or anything William Castle dreamed up) better than
this? Shoot, is there a better metaphor for the futility of life than this?
Even if the hero triumphs by solving the case, he still loses by ending up
dead. All life is pain and suffering and this movie crystalizes the fact that
even if you figure out why, it still doesn't matter! You're just as screwed! I suppose the case
can be made that this movie shows us that its the struggle to understand things
that is really the important thing, but I always got the impression that Frank
was aggressively pursuing this case (instead of just loading up on chalupas,
ice cream and Vanilla Coke until dying like I would have done) because he was
pissed that someone messed up his San Francisco vacation.  Those of you who are, like me, a bit disillusioned with the flavor of sandwich
life has served up for you are no doubt curious as to how you might go about
getting someone to poison you, so that you no longer have to confront the sheer
torture that waking up every morning has become. You're thinking, that heck,
if this Frank character, who is just something as mundane as a CPA, can
get his card punched, then why not you too, right? It pains me to report to you
suicide by proxy types out there that Frank's case is so convoluted that you
probably will never have it happen to you. Things begin hopelessly enough with
that most dreaded of cinema tricks, the framing device. I loathe the framing
device about as much as I do living, mainly because it is almost always
superfluous to the story. I am already listening to your story, therefore I
don't need to waste my time by having your main character stand around at the
beginning of the movie saying, "here's my sad little tale, why don't you take a
listen". This is necessary in the real world because it's only polite to warn
the prospective listener that some self-absorbed anecdote twice as long and
half as interesting as the storyteller believes it to be, is about to told.
This
courtesy allows the would be listener the chance to either make up a
lame excuse to avoid hearing about some dumb dream the guy had or some stupid
injury he suffered at the hands of his girlfriend's dog over the weekend (Why do
they always have to rub it in that their girlfriend didn't dump them on their
dimwitted skull?) or to just walk away like the wannabe bard had Jehovah's
Witness breath
or something. However, when I start a movie, I am implicitly giving you
permission to bore me with your story about a cop who plays by his own rules or
about some girls' school stalked by some sex slasher, so you don't have to go
the framing device route. Now that that's settled, let's take a look at
Frank's framing device. He goes to the cops and says he wants to report a
murder - his own! Gasp! Memo to Frank: Next time you pull that gag, you'd be
better served having Rod Serling do the opening. Anyway, this leads us into
the story of Frank and his unfortunate encounter with a little something
something the bad guys like to call "luminous poisoning".  Frank is just your everyday jerky guy, mistreating his suffocating sometimes
girlfriend/secretary Paula, by doing stuff like planning a week long vacation in
San Fran without telling her. Uh, let's see, your boyfriend has scheduled a
secret trip to San Francisco and refuses to let you go along. You know, it may
be time to seriously consider whether he's really watching all those musicals
because you want to. Anyway, Frank is bound and determined to go and when he
gets there the movie makes its only missteps when every time Frank sees a sexy
broad in the hotel, this cheesy circus whistle goes off, giving the movie this
eighties frat-party movie vibe that is completely out of place with everything
else that is going on. Thankfully it all ends rather quickly when he gets
invited out by some visiting salesmen to chill with them down at the local jazz
club, The Fisherman. It's here that he tries to ditch one woman, tries to pick
up another and ends up drinking a nice tall glass of poison. The next day he's
feeling a little blah and goes to the doctor for a check up. I guess that's
another fake thing about this movie. No guy would ever go to the hospital the
first morning he felt sick. Oh sure, he'd lie around for a week moaning and
groaning about how much pain he was in, but under no circumstances would he
wuss out and go see a doctor (they might try to juggle your jewels or
something). They tell him he's got this thing called luminous poisoning which
the movie admits it made up at the end of things, but assures us is based on
fact. So to all you kids out there, I know the movie wasn't specific about
this, but do not drink a shot glass full of either uranium or radium. You
probably better steer clear of Zima as well, but consult your physician to be
sure. Frank finds out that he's only got a week or so to live and is pretty
bummed out by that, but decides while he's got all this free time before
croaking (nice that he won't die until it's time for the vacation to end) he may
as well look into the case that I like to call "The Case Of The Accountant Who
Took It Up The Poop Shoot In San Francisco When He Went And Drank Some Atomic
Powered Hooch". Okay, okay, I may have cribbed that title from an old Encyclopedia Brown mystery, but those were some fine stories, huh? The movie follows Frank as he charges from lead to lead in his quest to find
out who poisoned him and why. I'll give it to him, he was investigating up a
storm, all with the bad attitude that you would expect from someone terminally
ill. In fact, he's about the most unpleasant hero you're likely to see in a
film, though some of his surliness could probably be excused what with him
dying and all. I tried like hell to follow Frank through all his discoveries
and
nodded my head knowingly whenever he figured out that someone had
double-crossed him or that George was really Raymond and that Raymond had
really been dead for five months, but he never had nothing to do with anything
anyway
and that it was all on account of the sneaky widow, but not really because it
was her shady and secret boyfriend who was played by the guy that played
Katherine Hepburn's loutish fiancee in Pat And Mike . I may have nodded my head, but it was the same way I nod my head whenever my
boss rolls into my office when I'm trying to write up a review and starts
babbling about some fifty page health code regulation he wants me to examine
for any flaws. Heck the only flaw I could see was that it hadn't hit the
circular file yet. There you go, you little devil! Now where was I? Oh yes.
So this movie's plot ranked somewhere slightly below The Big Sleep as far as making any sense, but I didn't really mind it, because the point of
the movie wasn't really in the details of how things actually happened to
Frank. In fact, the very helter skelter nature of what was happening
illustrates the way life for these doomed noir heroes bounces them from one
dirty trick to another, the seeming randomness and impersonality of what
happens to them, showcasing the pessimism of being alive. This movie uses its gimmick to tell us that even when you think you're alive,
that's merely an illusion and when you get smartened up to the truth, you'll
see that you're just in another state of death. D.O.A. is a movie closer to something like Kiss Me Deadly than it is to older ones like Double Indemnity or Criss Cross. As the atomic age begins to dawn, woman is replaced as the ultimate
destroyer of men lead astray by a general sense of paranoia related to science
and technology's inevitable march forward. Death by slow-acting radioactivity
supersedes Barbara Stanwyck's machinations and the result is a more impersonal
and therefore bleaker outlook on our fate. You're no longer threatened just by
those closest to you. Now, you have the entire, faceless, cold world snapping
at your heels, with all sorts of scary futuristic ways of sealing your fate.
The biggest difference is that finally you have in Frank Bigelow, a guy who
knows right from the beginning he's already dead and there's nothing to do, but
play out the string until the end. D.O.A. isn't so much a story about a guy pursuing his own killers, but a requiem.
It's an extended suicide note written by this new world on behalf of everyone
in it. It isn't just Frank Bigelow's file that they stamp "D.O.A." in large
block letters at the end of this film, it's all of ours.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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