Pun Salad

This 1947 movie is in the too-rare tradition of Airplane!, Help!, and Tora! Tora! Tora!; it's got an honest-to-goodness exclamation mark in its title. (There are web pages devoted to this: for example here, here, here, and here.) But seldom was a punctuation symbol less warranted.

Based on a true story. The movie opens with the cold-blooded murder of a beloved Episcopal priest on the main street of a small Connecticut city. (It was filmed in Stamford, but the real-world murder happened in Bridgeport.) The cops are stumped. As a result, the local paper muckrakes shamelessly against the city's government, and the pressure on the police investigators grows. Eventually they find a plausible perp, and browbeat him into a confession.

Enter Dana Andrews, playing the incorruptible fair-minded State's Attorney. He has his doubts about the guilt of the accused. Eventually it all comes down to courtroom dramatics. (So dramatic that I fell asleep, and needed to rewatch the next day.)

Jane Wyatt, Spock's mom, plays Mrs. State's Attorney. She's always great. Ed Begley's first movie. Directed by Elia Kazan, but he went on to do better movies.