dennis o’keefe

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We are halfway through November and I’ve only written about two film noirs. Truth be told I’ve only watched nine film noirs this month. Work has been physically exhausting these last few weeks and when I come home I’m often too tired to watch much of anything, and certainly too tired to write about what I watch. Then we had those plumbing issues that kept me away from the house last weekend, and I’ve had some things to watch and review for Cinema Sentries.

Things should lighten up now on all fronts so hopefully I’ll be able to get some good noir viewing in and do a little writing too.

For tonight’s horror movie, I wanted to watch something…if not an actual noir at least noir adjacent. Something that emerged in the 1940s when film noir was at its peak. Something with some great noir-ish lighting and camera work.

The Leopard Man fits those bills perfectly. It was directed by Jaques Tourneur who also directed Out of the Past, one of the great film noirs, and Berlin Express which I watched the other day and hopefully will write about soon.

There is a lot to love about The Leopard Man but it also feels disjointed – like a series of vignettes instead of a cohesive story. With a runtime of just 66 minutes, I wish they’d added another twenty minutes of story or so and fleshed it out a bit more.

Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks) is a nightclub singer in a small New Mexico border town. One night her manager Jerry Mannin (Dennis O’Keefe) concocts a foolish bit of promotion and has Kiki drag a leopard out on the stage while her rival Gabriella (Margo) is performing. Wise to the shenanigans Gabriella uses her castanets to frighten the leopard causing Kiki to let go of its leash and send the leopard fleeing into the night.

Later that night a young woman is out shopping and is attacked and killed by the leopard. A night or two later another young woman is killed while visiting her father’s grave. And then even later yet another woman is killed. All of the deaths seem to be caused by the leopard, but Jerry begins to suspect a human killer. He and Kiki investigate.

The film looks great. Tourneur and cinematographer Robert De Grasse created these wonderful images bound in deep shadows and creeping light. The film creates a wonderfully suspenseful atmosphere with some excellent local color. Tourneur always seems to be sensitive to his characters of color and minorities, and here he makes his Mexican characters real people and not just caricatures. Unusual for its time he also casts Latino actors for the roles instead of white people in brownface.

The story he’s telling is quite good too. I enjoyed the mystery and the various vignettes. But like I say I wish the film had an additional half hour to tell them. All too often a character will be introduced only to be forgotten about in the next scene.

For example, the first woman who is killed has a mother and a brother. We get a nice little scene with them. The mother is fussing at the girl to go to the shop for her, and the brother teases her that she’s scared of the dark and the leopard. The girl is killed on her doorstep, banging on the door while her mother desperately tries to save her. But then we get nothing. We see the mother at the official inquest but she has no lines. Then we don’t see her again at all.

This type of thing happens a lot. There just isn’t enough time to flesh out any character stories save the leads.

But what we do get is quite good.

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In my review of the 1935 adaptation of The Glass Key, I mentioned a scene in the 1942 remake that starred William Bendix. In that scene, Bendix plays a thug who gets to slap around Alan Ladd’s character. He does so with such gusto that he nearly steals the movie. It made me an instant fan.

I’ve since watched 11 films starring the actor where he’s mostly played tough guys, loveable lugs, and the like. He was a bigger man physically, and not exactly handsome so he fits the role of the heavy, but there is a goofy warmth to him, which makes him interesting.

In Cover Up he plays Larry Best the sheriff of a small, Midwestern town investigating a murder. Except he doesn’t seem all that interested in investigating it at all.

It is actually an insurance investigator, Sam Donovan (Dennis O’Keefe) who does most of the investigating. The dead man was shot and the sheriff ruled it a suicide. The trouble is the gun is nowhere to be found, and there are no powder burns on the body which would indicate being shot at close range. When Sam pushes Larry for answers he just shrugs it off. In fact, no one in the town seems all that interested.

Turns out the dead man was good and hated by pretty much everyone. Clearly, he was murdered and clearly, it is being covered up. Almost everyone in town is helping with the cover-up because whoever killed him is well-liked and the dead man deserves to be dead. To a normal investigator, this would be enough. Suicide prevents an insurance pay out and that’s that.

But Sam is no normal investigator. He pursues the matter strongly even if murder means a double indemnity payout. The film owes a clear debt to Double Indemnity but it is nowhere near as good.

Naturally, there is a girl. Anita Weatherby (Barbara Britton) becomes the love interest. She’s also the daughter of one of the prime suspects. But there is little heat between her and Sam and almost no cleverness to their dialogue. Even my beloved William Bendix doesn’t add much. He’s fine, but rather more reserved than usual.

The mystery is serviceable and it is set at Christmastime which adds a nice holiday theme to what is really a rather cozy film noir. That’s the thing, it isn’t a bad film, it is exactly the kind of movie you might throw on during the holidays while you are at your in-laws, full of ham and good cheer.