Another low budget undercover story from Eagle Lion –Micheal O’Shea plays an agent who goes undercover as a parole violator in order to battle parole corruption. That’s not a bad idea for a film – parole boards always appear in crime movies but are rarely the focus of them.
I’d never seen O’Shea in something before this - he was a comic who enjoyed a brief vogue as a leading man in the 40s (even co-starring with Sonya Henie). It took a while to get used to him at first, his jaunty nature very different from the buttoned down sort of actors who normally play these roles, but I got used to it and enjoyed the energy – he’s like a Grade C James Cagney, but there’s worse things for actors to be.
Although it’s O’Shea’s film, he is billed beneath some old Universal stars, Evelyn Ankers, who plays the owner of a nightclub, and Turhan Bey (who doesn’t appear until 30 minutes in and has a small role), as her boyfriend. Ankers looks a little bit old here - maybe she was missing the quality of the Universal camera dept.
There’s none of the semi-documentary flavour of Trapped or T-Men (eg no montage about how hard parole depts work) and the whole film has clearly been made by people who aren’t as talented as Anthony Mann or Richard Fleischer. It’s also weird the whole story is narrated by O’Shea in a hospital bed after having been beaten up. This passes the time well enough but it a long way from “hidden gem” status.
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