Pun Salad

From 1948, a police procedural set in Los Angeles, with film noir touches.

An unlucky policeman on his way home stops to question a guy who we've seen just try to break into a TV store. The guy unexpectedly pulls a gun and fills the poor cop full of lead. As you might expect, the full force of LA's finest is put behind the case. But it's frustrating, because the killer is pretty sharp; he's got a police radio, knows a lot about police procedures, and is careful not to leave any tracks. Fortunately, the cops are relentless.

This movie will remind you (if you're of a certain age) of good old Dragnet. (The IMDB explains why.) There's a know-it-all narrator, the names have been changed to protect the innocent, and Jack Webb has a part. (As a nerdy crime lab technician, though, not Sergeant Joe Friday.) And I'm not sure if Dragnet's claim that the "story you are about to see is true" was actually true, but this movie was based on an actual case.

Richard Basehart, Admiral Nelson himself, plays the bad guy. As noted above the movie tries to do the noir thing, but (at least to me) this was entirely a matter of lighting, or lack thereof; there's no moral ambiguity or cynicism, and no femme fatales. Hey, you might as well put the lights on, guys.