User Reviews

Poor old John Payne. It must have been hard working in Golden Age Hollywood with that last name, so close to that of a genuine A-list star. Of course, Payne came by his nom de screen honestly, whereas his counterpart was born Marion Morrison — so chances are JP believed he had every right to use his birth-name, damn the consequences. And, indeed, he managed to parlay his talents into a reasonably solid if unspectacular 30 year career, including the male lead in holiday favorite Miracle on 34th Street. Still, one wonders if he could have gone further with a different moniker — which brings us to The Crooked Way, a film made only two years after the aforementioned Christmas classic but already a step down from A to B-list for Payne. Directed by Robert Florey for indie La Brea Productions, the film stars Payne as Eddie Rice, a veteran suffering from amnesia. Unfortunately, Eddie's forgotten that, prior to his war service, he'd been the wise guy responsible for sending gangster Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts) up the river — and Vince is still eager for revenge. Co-starring Rhys Williams as a friendly cop and squeaky-voiced Percy Helton (who I ALWAYS get confused with John Fiedler) as a cat-loving criminal, The Crooked Way is a better than average pseudo-noir featuring astonishing cinematography by genre specialist John Alton. Even if you don't find the story engaging, you won't soon forget Alton's work.

If you believe that noir is a style more than a genre and that you'll recognize the style as soon as you see it, you'll have The Crooked Way pegged ten minutes in. That's when Eddie Rice (John Payne), a war vet who won the Silver Star and has a hunk of shrapnel in his brain, hits the streets of Los Angeles to find out who he is. Eddie has spent five years in an Army hospital in San Francisco while doctors worked to help him recover his memory. He has complete amnesia. But as his doctors point out, there's amnesia and there's amnesia. Eddie has the kind that's organic. His brain has been damaged and nothing will bring back his past. He can start anew. All Eddie knows is that his papers say he enlisted in Los Angeles. That's where he goes to see if he can find someone who knows who he was. And that's when John Alton's great noirsh cinematography kicks in. We know we're going to find ourselves walking right next to Eddie Rice in a grandly-lit crime caper of violence and betrayal, of wet streets and dark warehouses, of shadows cast by no sun or moon we've ever seen before, and of harsh, blinding whites and deep, deep blacks. The movie looks great. Please note that elements of the plot are discussed.

As soon as Eddie walks down the steps of the L.A. train station, however, he meets police lieutenant Joe Williams, just by accident. Williams tells Eddie he'd be wise to turn around and leave L.A. for good. It turns out Eddie Rice is really Eddie Riccardi, a crook and an informer who helped put away his friend and partner, crime boss Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts). If Eddie doesn't get out of down, Williams almost chortles, just think of what Vince will do to you. Eddie, again just by accident, then happens to come across Nina Martin (Ellen Drew), who also tells him to get lost. It seems Eddie did her wrong and she now works for Vince...even though she's still Eddie Riccardi's wife. Then Vince learns Eddie's back. Vince is a tough guy who gets mad easily and believes in permanently disposing of people who cross him. He's in the rackets and runs a big gambling operation. By the time Vince and his goons get through with Eddie, Eddie looks worn around the edges. By the time Eddie gets through with Vince, Vince is air-conditioned. But Eddie stays Eddie Rice. All those memories are gone. It seems that he and Nina will, as Eddie says, have a chance at a decent life.

Coincidence plays such a big role in this movie it's apparent the writers didn't seem to have the time to do a better job. Too bad, because elements of the movie are good. The old amnesia device still works. The plot, powered by the uneasy, threatening style Alton creates, moves briskly. And for those who really enjoy the worn-down look of Los Angeles in the late Forties, the movie is a treat. Much of the movie was filmed in some grubby parts of down- town Los Angeles. When Eddie stops to get a glass of orange juice, he's at what looks like an Orange Julius stand. Later, at night, we see streets filled with open-window shops selling ten-cent red hots, tamales and "Western Farms Fresh Churned Buttermilk." A set of narrow stairs leads to a grubby hot-sheet second floor hotel next to a flashy dance hall. A worn-out movie house is showing Pitfall with Dick Powell.

As for the acting, it's a mixed bag. John Payne has always seemed to me to be stiff and empty as an actor. He has two expressions here, puzzled and sad or as if someone is stepping on his big toe. Sonny Tufts was a big, blond guy with a light voice and a meaty face. He started to hit the big time in the mid-Forties, usually as a big, lovable lug. Then booze hit him hard. It didn't help when two women filed separate charges against him for biting their thighs. Neither he not his career ever recovered. He became a punch-line for comedians. Tufts tries to make Vince menacing by often speaking in a kind of whisper. With his light voice, he sounds like a cross between Clint Eastwood and Alice Faye. But then we have Rhys Williams as Lt. Joe Williams. He does a fine job as an energetic, confident cop who likes to bait the bad guys. Most of all, we have that wonderful, odd character actor, Percy Helton. He was a small, round-headed, balding man with an unforgettable high, squeaky voice. If you've seen him, you won't forget him. He almost always played unreliable or slimy or cowardly characters. In The Crooked Way, he's a two-bit crook who cares greatly for his sick cat, Samson.

With all the past notoriety in the Los Angeles papers and the officials couldn't figure out who amnesiac John Payne (Eddie Rice- Riccardi) was? That I found to be somewhat hard to digest.

Nonetheless, this is a nicely paced action thriller where an amnesiac returns to where he had originally enlisted only to find that he has some criminal past and that a guy who was guilty when he was freed is out to get him.

Ellen Drew does a nice job as Eddie's wife, now working for the ruthless Sonny Tufts. To add more to this, the Tufts character frames Eddie for the murder of a police officer and therefore the majority of the film becomes centered around Eddie trying to prove his innocence while eluding the police.

"Johnny One-Eye" director Robert Florey's crime thriller "The Crooked Way," starring John Payne and Sonny Tufts, qualifies as an above-average example of film noir, distinguished in part by "He Walked by Night" lenser John Alton and his atmospheric black & white cinematography. Alton endows this tense, but derivative law and order saga with an ominous sense of foreboding. Ostensibly based on Robert Monroe's radio play "No Blade Too Sharp," "Back to Bataan" scenarist Richard H. Landau has taken the narrative convention about a protagonist that suffers from amnesia to the next level. Most films about amnesiacs allow them to recover their memory long before fade-out. For example, co-writer & director Joseph L. Mankiewicz earlier made "Somewhere in the Night," about a GI with amnesia who comes home and finds himself tangled up in a plot to recover Nazi gold. To my knowledge, I don't think Hollywood has made another movie roughly like Florey's "The Crooked Way." The biggest problem with this movie is that the hero remains passive for far too long. Meanwhile, his chief nemesis is well played by Sonny Turfs. The action transpires in bars, night clubs, the back rooms of gambling joints, and occasionally in a warehouse. The cops believe the worst about our hero and he finds himself predictably up to his neck in trouble. One thing different about the hero is his ability to shoot at and generally hit and kill his adversaries. As one thug observes after Eddie Rice has plugged a henchman: "He shot him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

The character that heroic John Payne portrays differs from the usual amnesiac. Most amnesiacs struggle with psychological amnesia. Meaning, they will eventually recover their memories. Eddie Rice (John Payne of "Kansas City Confidential"), a.k.a. Eddie Riccardi, marched off to join the ranks for the Army in World War II and then spent five years in a psychiatric hospital because he had been wounded and had forgotten just about everything about himself. During combat, Eddie survived a devastating shrapnel wound. Army doctors removed most of the fragments, but they left one behind. Per the doctors, an operation to eliminate the last piece of shrapnel might place Eddie's life in jeopardy. You see, that piece of shrapnel in Eddie's head had generated thick scar tissue around it. Reluctantly, they allowed Eddie to leave the hospital and go back to his hometown of Los Angeles. The problem is that Eddie knows very little about himself, and Army Intelligence has not been able to dig up much more beyond what they know. No sooner has Eddie arrived in his old stomping ground of Los Angeles than a tenacious cop, Police Lieutenant Joe Williams (Rhys Williams of "The Sons of Katie Elder"), hauls our hero into headquarters and gives him the third degree. Eddie looks at a rap sheet and sees that his real name is Eddie Riccardi, but this knowledge doesn't change anything for him. Indeed, he is incredulous that he was a criminal. Williams is dubious about Eddie's claim that he received a Silver Star and has been hospitalized for war wounds. Lieutenant Williams recommends that Eddie leave town. Our hero, however, doesn't have a chance to get out of town before a homicidal mobster, Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts of "The Seven Year Itch"), learns about his presence and pays him an unpleasant visit. It seems that Vince and Eddie had once been partners, and Eddie blew town and Vince wound up taking the rap and spend some time behind bars.

Detective Williams visits Vince after one of the lieutenant's stooge pigeons, Kelly (John Harmon), turns up murdered. Williams grilles Vince, and Vince shoots him. When the villains locate Eddie, they slug him unconscious and put his fingerprints all over the pistol that Vince used to kill Eddie. Eddie has just enough time to get out of the car parked on the side of the road and contains Detective Williams. He hitches a ride in an undertaker's van, and the police track him down to a warehouse where Eddie has knocked off two of Vince's henchmen and is facing down Vince. The police arrive and riddle Vince with a wave of gunfire.

John Payne delivers an appropriately tight-lipped performance as the sympathetic but strong protagonist. The problem is that he is a passive rather than an active hero. The authorities and criminals keep pushing him around until he takes charge in the last quarter hour of the action. One thing that is done extremely well is Eddie Rice's superb marksmanship. He doesn't miss his targets. Williams is perfect as a driven police detective who thinks everything about Eddie stinks. Sonny Tufts is good as Eddie's chief nemesis. One of Vince's flaws is that he uses a drug to control nervousness that gives him away as the real dastard. Although the premise is good, the plot is straight-forward and predictable, but director Florey handles the action with competence.

It's another one of those inexpensive mystery/gangster movies about an amnesic veteran who returns from the war and tries to recover his identity or, if he still has his memory, tries to figure out what's been happening in his absence. It's all pretty veiled. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Here, it's just unexceptional.

John Payne discovers in Los Angeles that he has a shady past. But what else can you expect? (He turns out to have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine?) It's really another B feature with a careless plot and performances that are in no way interesting. Want an example of an unimaginable coincidence? He's just been released from an Army hospital. The psychiatrist has advised him to go to Los Angeles where he enlisted. That's the only thing they know about him. He steps off the train in beautiful Union Station. Two men are standing around and one turns to him and says, "Hey, Eddy!" A few minutes later he leaves them to make a phone call. He's spotted from across the street by his wife, who just happens to be at that particular point in space and time.

Sonny Tufts is the most interesting performer in the picture. He usually is. He wears his debauchery on his face as if flying a flag. "Wow, have I been a bad boy!" I didn't find it worth sitting through. If I wanted a decent amnesia movie, I'd watch "The Bourne Identity" again. Someone else might enjoy it more. Judging from the user ratings, someone has.

. . . slicing through the brain of sociopath\killer Eddie Riccardi to turn him into altruistic Silver Star-winning Boy Scout Eddie Rice, eager to work as an unpaid operative for the LAPD. Though we never find out HOW a mob hit man made it into the U.S. military during WWII, who better to go after the likes of Hitler and Hirohito? Many viewers had trouble believing that actor John Payne--who plays the two Eddies in THE CROOKED WAY--actually would settle down with Pouty sad sack Susan (Natalie Wood) for a stepdaughter at the close of MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET. Sure enough, Payne quickly ditched his law books as soon as he realized that the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy would not need his rather specialized legal services, and began looking for a flashier lifestyle--one with a spunkier mate, to boot. He attains both objectives in THE CROOKED WAY, with plenty of man-style fighting and a ready-made wife in Ellen Drew. If Payne needs a touch of melancholia at the close to substitute for not having Susan, he can always adopt the late Petey's feeble feline, Sampson.