BANK ALARM (MARKED MONEY)

(director: Louis J. Gasnier; screenwriters: story by Cynthia and Lawrence Meade/Phil Dunham/Griffin Jay/David S. Levy; cinematographer: Mack Stengler ; editor: Dan Milner; cast: Conrad Nagel (Alan O’Connor), Eleanor Hunt (Bobbie Reynolds), Vince Barnett (Clarence ‘Bulb’ Callahan), William Thorne (Inspector J. C. Macy), Frank Milan ( Jerry Turner), Wilma Francis (Kay), Wheeler Oakman (Joe Karlotti), Nat Carr (Yoritz), Pat Gleason (Barney), Charles Delaney (Duke), Phil Dunham (Leon Curtis. Chief Teller), Wilson Benge (Overman, the head bookkeeper), Syd D’Albrook (Grimes, farmer), Henry Roquemore (Sheriff); Runtime: 64; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: George A. Hirliman; Condor Films (Grand National Pictures); 1937)

“Though no great shakes of a crime drama, it still makes for passable entertainment.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A B film crime drama, that’s the fourth in the series with the miscast Conrad Nagel as the investigator Arthur O’Connor and the solid Eleanor Hunt as his partner. It’s unassumingly directed by Louis J. Gasnier(“The Gold Racket”/”Fedora”) and written by Phil Dunham, Griffin Jay and David S. Levy. The married team of Cynthia and Lawrence Meade are the story authors. Though no great shakes of a crime drama, it still makes for passable entertainment. LA has a crime wave of bank robberies. There’s also the jailhouse murder of Bug O’Hern, one of the uncaptured gang of bank robbers. Alan O’Connor (Conrad Nagel), an investigator for the Department of Justice, and his assistant, Bobbie Reynolds (Eleanor Hunt), pick up his sister Kay (Wilma Francis) at the main train station. Her new lover is screenwriter Jerry Turner (Frank Milan). When they all go to the Club Karlotti, they are joined by the socially awkward newspaper photographer Bulb (Vince Barnett). He’s an old friend of both Alan and Boobie, and injects some needed comic relief. We soon learn that the club owner Joe Karlotti (Wheeler Oakman) is the leader of the bank robber gang, and that Jerry ventured here from back east to rob with another (Pat Gleason) a Nevada government payroll of $40,000. The G men hunt down the dangerous bank robbers, who are traced to the counterfeit money being spread and all the new corpses littering the streets of Tinseltown.

REVIEWED ON 6/19/2016 GRADE: C+