Streaming This Side of the Law (1950) Online

This Side of the Law (1950)iMDB Rating: 6.2
Date Released : 17 June 1950
Genre : Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery
Stars : Viveca Lindfors, Kent Smith, Janis Paige, Robert Douglas. David Cummings, a vagrant, is bailed out of jail by Philip Cagle, an attorney, who hires him to impersonate a missing millionaire, whose presence is necessary in order to distribute a $3,000,000 estate. Cummings' masquerade involves fooling the missing man's wife, his brother and the brother's wife. Cagle, desiring to be rid of Cummings, sets actions in play which ends in murder, attempted murder..." />
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Size : 700 MB

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David Cummings, a vagrant, is bailed out of jail by Philip Cagle, an attorney, who hires him to impersonate a missing millionaire, whose presence is necessary in order to distribute a $3,000,000 estate. Cummings' masquerade involves fooling the missing man's wife, his brother and the brother's wife. Cagle, desiring to be rid of Cummings, sets actions in play which ends in murder, attempted murder and the entombment of Cummings. Can he dig his way out and set things right?

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Review :

Solid Little Noir

A vagrant is bribed into impersonating a millionaire as part of an inheritance scheme. The trouble is he gets more than he bargained for.

I'm not sure why this little noir-- and it is a noir (hand of fate, a web of intrigue, a spider woman, & dark atmosphere)-- remains so obscure. This Warner Bros. entry may not be top-flight, but it is respectable. That opening scene with the pin-light on Cummins' (Smith) ravaged face is a grabber. Several other moody scenes emerge along the way, plus a neat plot twist, that makes this thriller an entertaining 70-minutes.

I'm guessing one reason for the film's obscurity is the cast, especially the lead, Kent Smith. He performs well enough. The trouble is he lacks screen presence, almost fading into the background at times. On the other hand, Lindfors and Paige split the women's time, such that neither is able to establish much presence of her own. John Alvin, however, comes across vividly in the thankless role of the weakling brother. Also, I'm surprised director Bare manages the dark material as well as he does, given that his previous career was exclusively with comedy shorts. (Note, for example, how Cummins has to work at getting a name off the ID bracelet—a good realistic touch.)

Nothing memorable here, just a solid little noir.

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Outside the Wall (1950)iMDB Rating: 6.9
Date Released : 8 February 1950
Genre : Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Romance, Thriller
Stars : Richard Basehart, Marilyn Maxwell, Signe Hasso, Dorothy Hart. Larry Nelson, paroled from prison after serving nearly half of his thirty-year sentence, is determined to not fall into the clutches of the law again, and takes a quiet job at a country sanitarium. Thete, he meets and falls for a nurse, Charlotte Maynard, and he knows the only way to enter her web is to have a lot of money, for Miss Maynard is somewhat of a gold-digger. There is a $1,000,000 ..." />
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Size : 870 MB

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Larry Nelson, paroled from prison after serving nearly half of his thirty-year sentence, is determined to not fall into the clutches of the law again, and takes a quiet job at a country sanitarium. Thete, he meets and falls for a nurse, Charlotte Maynard, and he knows the only way to enter her web is to have a lot of money, for Miss Maynard is somewhat of a gold-digger. There is a $1,000,000 robbery of an armored car, and one of the robbery gang turns up at the sanitarium. So Nelson works a money-making, shady deal with an inmate, but soon finds himself a clay pigeon for other members of the gang. Meanwhile,sweet-and-wholesome nurse, Ann Taylor, is doing her best to make Larry see he needs to take another direction.

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Review :

Basehart at best as callow jailbird who finds freeside a mixed blessing

In the Hollywood of late '40s and early '50s, Richard Basehart found plenty of work in the noir cycle but never made a major mark, the mark of a Robert Mitchum or Glenn Ford or even a Dick Powell. His good looks were all-American bland - lackluster - and his acting rarely leapt to dangerous voltages. Probably more at home on stage than on the pitiless screen, he leaves one of his fullest performances in a shunted-aside noir, Outside The Wall.

Just 30 but with 15 years in stir behind him (he'd caused the death of an abusive guard when he was just a kid in reform school), he secures an unexpected release from prison. An old lifer grumbles about life outside: `Everybody's got the jitters. A buck ain't worth a buck anymore.' But mo st of all he warns about the `dames,' of whom Basehart knows absolutely nothing. He'll soon find out.

In his first night in Philadelphia, a B-girl feeds him his first taste of liquor and tries to filch his wallet; later, washing dishes, he foils a stickup and, fed up with Brotherly Love, heads for the clean country of Jewel Lake, landing a job as a lab technician at a TB sanitarium. His first patient (John Hoyt) turns out to be an ex-con he knows who's just pulled a fatal armored-car robbery. When Basehart fails to blow the whistle, the dying Hoyt trusts him enough to mule payoff money to his avaricious wife (Signe Hasso).

The straight-arrow Basehart normally wouldn't dirty his hands, but the blonde and mercenary charms of nurse Marilyn Maxwell lead him to rethink his monkish life (`I just found out what money can buy,' he tells her, forking over a platinum bracelet in his new roadster). Still, his stirring conscience beckons him to fess up about his past to good-gal Dorothy Hart. But Hoyt has the means to hold him to his bargain, while his wife and her ruthless accomplices have their own plans for him....

Crane Wilbur, who started way back in the silent era, wrote several noirs and directed a few of them, mostly about prison life (Canon City, The Story of Molly X). Here, he directs his story with some nicely observed vignettes about the dislocation awaiting released felons but, as it advances, less than persuasive plotting. But, in addition to the convincing work he coaxes from Basehart, he assembles a solid cast, with Maxwell and Hasso rivaling one another in duplicity and Hart more appealing than the saintly simp she might have been.

Harry Morgan also appears, as a thug who elicits information by sliding scalpels under fingernails. Interestingly a veteran of even more noirs than Basehart, Morgan played the heavy the year before, too, in Red Light, but couldn't hold a candle to his partner in crime, Raymond Burr. Here, he takes his place amid a balanced cast with intersecting motives that result in a movie that, while satisfying, falls well short of spectacular. Still, it merits more viewers.