Destination Murder (1950)
Directed by Edward L. Cahn

Film Review

Edward L. Cahn may be best remembered today for the Our Gang series of film comedies he made for Hal Roach in the early 1940s, but it is worth knowing that he also put in some sterling work in the B-movie line, Destination Murder being perhaps his most memorable foray into film noir territory.  With a plot so convoluted and so riddled with holes it makes even Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946) look like a model of narrative clarity, and no big name actors to help disguise this unpleasant fact, it is hard to account for the enduring appeal of such a formulaic, low grade crime drama as Destination Murder.  The film is unlikely ever to rate as a classic but it is, improbably, an enjoyable romp, deliriously daft in places and yet somehow sustained by some odd moments of sporadic brilliance.

It's probably best not to pay too much attention to the plot - if you do, you'll only give yourself a skull-shattering migraine and end up missing the film's main selling point, which is the mind-blowing absurdity of what the screenwriters have concocted for us, presumably after several liquid lunches.  Do we think it credible that a sophisticated society girl will start dating an uncouth good-for-nothing mail boy, knowing that he is the man who shot dead her father?  It is remotely believable that the central villain's moll will switch allegiance half way through the film and go into partnership with the aforementioned mail boy?

And what exactly is the relationship between the two principal villains, the suggestively named Stretch Norton and his boss/henchman Armitage?  Norton perhaps says more than he ought when he screams "I don't like women!", which he proves by arranging a nasty demise for Myrna Dell, the only member of the cast with something approximating to star quality. Add to all this a police chief who knows far more than he admits but is still incapable of acting (in both senses of the term) and you soon realise that Destination Murder was never intended to be taken too seriously.  It's ludicrous, drunkenly convoluted and wildly unconvincing from start to finish but that doesn't prevent it from being fun.  This is B-movie as it should be - respectably silly.

Film Synopsis

When her father is shot dead on his own doorstep by an unknown assassin, Laura Mansfield resolves to find the killer and bring him to justice.  At an identity parade, she correctly identifies her father's murderer as mail boy Jackie Wales, but police lieutenant Brewster has insufficient grounds to make an arrest.  Laura takes the law into her own hands and starts dating Jackie, hoping that she can obtain the evidence to prove his guilt.  To finance this burgeoning love affair, Jackie attempts to extort more money from the man who hired him to kill Laura's father, nightclub owner Armitage, but ends up being beaten up and sent away empty handed.  Armitage's girlfriend Alice sees an opportunity to make some easy money and persuades Jackie to blackmail his criminal employer, threatening to send a signed confession to the police unless Armitage pays up.  Meanwhile, suspecting that Armitage holds the key to the mystery, Laura gets herself hired as a cigarette girl in his nightclub, not realising that her real enemy is Amitage's apparent second-in-command, Stretch Norton...