CRUD Challenge: Too Many Winners

Too Many Winners (1947) dir. William Beaudine

Private eye Michael Shayne (Hugh Beaumont) and his secretary Phyllis Hamilton (Trudy Marshall) have been invited for a duck hunting vacation with one of her relatives. Phyllis is looking forward to this, so is irritated when Gil Madden (Ben Welden) enters, looking like a client. She quickly informs him the office is closed, only for Mr. Madden to say that he'd planned to offer $2000 for Mike not to take a case. Oops! Then Michael gets a call from Mayme Martin (Claire Carlton), a vampish blackmailer offering a hot tip. Naturally, he's off to investigate, promising he'll be right back.

The meeting is inconclusive, as Mayme wants cash up front, and the hints she's giving are for a case Shayne isn't involved with. A thousand dollars is a lot of money for information that might be useless. Outside the apartment building, Mike is abducted by two thugs who want to know what he learned from Mayme, and don't believe him when he truthfully admits he didn't learn anything. They beat him up and toss the detective into the City Dump.

When Shayne finally makes it back to the office a few hours later, the rightfully steamed Phyllis has left on her own, leaving a message about a persistent caller. This turns out to be the owner of the Santa Rosita racetrack, who needs a private eye, and asks him to meet with track manager John Hardeman (Grandon Rhodes) in the Santa Rosita Hotel. Now that he's on the case, Mike asks reporter pal Tim Rourke (Charles Mitchell) to visit Mayme and pay her for the information.

Tim arrives just in time to meet police detective Peter Rafferty (Ralph Dunn) who's investigating Mayme's murder. Tim's presence and peanut shells in an ashtray leads Rafferty to suspect his old enemy Michael Shayne is mixed up in this somehow.

At Santa Rosita, Mike meets with Hardeman and finds out what the case is about. The racetrack has had too many winning tickets recently, consistently more than the number they actually sold. Therefore, someone must be counterfeiting betting slips wholesale--but how? The local police resent Shayne being called in, but they haven't been able to figure the case out, and the track's been losing enough money to not be profitable.

Can Michael Shayne crack the case and win back Phyllis, and how many people will need to die to do this?

This is the last of the Hugh Beaumont Shayne movies (though not the last I will review), and the cast switches up a bit again. The dialogue is still snappy, and the comedy bits hit often. Special callout to George Meader as put-upon hotel clerk Clarence.

This version of Phyllis has a quicker temper than her predecessors, and Mike treats her pretty badly. Because the movie is meant as light-hearted, no one seems very broken up about the multiple corpses, with one exception who's given a sympathetic family so Shayne tries not to make things worse for them.

This is a middle of the road low-budget series film, and perhaps it's best that the studio pulled the plug at this point before the movies really declined. It's short, so I'd recommend it as a double feature with a more gritty mystery. Recommended for lighter mystery fans.

CRUD Challenge: Hand of Death

Hand of Death (1962) dir. Gene Nelson

Alex Marsh (John Agar) is a biochemist who was supposed to be working on an aerosol anesthesia that patients could absorb through the skin. This research got derailed when Alex stumbled across a formula that instead caused temporary paralysis of the entire body, effectively a nerve gas. It's also apparently very compatible for mixture with other chemical compounds. So his current project is combining the nerve gas with a will-deadening hypnotic so that even when the paralysis wears off, the victims will be suggestible and easily controlled. The military will certainly want this!

The people he's explaining this to aren't so sure. His wheelchair-bound mentor Dr. Frederick Ramsey (Roy Gordon), girlfriend Carol Wilson (Paula Raymond) and friendly rival Tom Holland (Stephen Dunne) are all concerned about the safety and possibly the morality of such research. Alex dismisses their concerns and returns to his desert laboratory. Carlos (John A. Alonzo), his laboratory assistant, is also concerned with the possible dangers, but his paycheck depends on Alex, so agrees to help.

A combination of overwork and being exposed to trace amounts of the nerve gas causes Alex to become less rational and more careless. One night, he accidentally knocks over his latest combination serum and tries to wipe up the mess with his bare hand. This causes great pain and he rips his shirt open, falling into his bed with severe hallucinations.

When he wakes up, Alex is feeling somewhat better, but his skin has darkened. And when Carlos tries to get him medical attention, Alex grabs his arm to stop him...which causes Carlos to drop dead with the affected skin turning black. To cover up the accidental death, Alex sets the lab on fire and flees to seek a cure. Things only go downhill for him from there.

This low budget horror flick seems more Fifties than Sixties, and may have been written much earlier. It's less than an hour long, suitable for a quick drive-in feature before the main movie of the night. The love triangle subplot feels stuffed in to bring the story up to even that length.

The makeup for Alex's monster form is admittedly crude, but in black and white it works decently well. The acting is adequate.

One scene reminded me this takes place before the Americans with Disability Act. Dr. Ramsey has been in a wheelchair for decades due to an accident with live polio virus. The entrance to the institute where he works has a staircase. And in all the years he's worked there, no one has thought to put in a ramp or handicapped entrance. This isn't said out loud, but simply shown.

There's a couple of interesting cameos. Joe Besser, one of the substitute Stooges, plays an over-eager gas station attendant. And The Munsters' Butch Patrick is a little boy who finds Alex lying on the beach and almost touches him. Oh, and then there's the taxi driver (Fred Korne) who sees a man with a blackened, crackled face in his cab and doesn't get scared or concerned, just angry. Perhaps bigotry is overcoming his ability to perceive beyond skin color?

Content note: Several deaths, including two mice. Deformity. Alex is a little too into the idea of turning enemy soldiers into medical zombies.

This movie was apparently lost media for a few decades, so those of you interested in the history of horror films might want to check it out to fill in your knowledge. Viewers with little patience may want to fast forward to when Alex is contaminated and the scary parts begin.