|
"Rats in the basement" is the metaphor, and we shall see what Cecil B. DeMille makes of it. Boys' Week in high school means twentysomething seniors get to play D.A., judge and police chief and be disillusioned with a system that lets crooks go free thanks to inconveniences like due process. "The syndicate" bullies neighborhood businesses into paying protection money, the holdout is a Jewish tailor (Harry Green) shot by the gang leader (Charles Bickford) in an image milked in Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. The murderer is acquitted on a bogus alibi so the boys take it upon themselves to find evidence, the amateur sleuths stumbling in the dark dissolves to nightclub chorines writhing to "Three Blind Mice." One student (Michael Stuart) is killed and another (Oscar Rudolph) is framed, a third one (Richard Cromwell) cooks up a peewee vigilante scheme. "Say, Is this a free country or not?" "You tell me." America and the temptation of fascism, concurrent with La Cava's Gabriel Over the White House but realized in DeMille's distinctive blur of conservatism and prurience. The camera at the lad's funeral looks up from the grave and takes a shovelful of dirt, at the brickyard where the culprit is dragged to it peers down a pit swarming with hungry rodents. The underworld bodyguard (Bradley Page) has a yen for nymphets, he inspects a tray of food while the coed (Judith Allen) is brought in as bait, "I like my olives green." A parade delivers the villain to justice, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is the insistent motif for celebrating "no bail and no habeas corpus." Lang repays the compliment to M with Fury, naturally. With Edward J. Nugent, Ben Alexander, Lester Arnold, Mickey Daniels, Fuzzy Knight, George Barbier, Charles Middleton, Warner Richmond, Samuel S. Hinds, and John Carradine. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |