DOUBLE DEAL

US, 1950, 66 minutes, Black-and-white.
Marie Windsor, Richard Denning, Taylor Holmes, Fay Baker, James Griffith, Carleton Young, Thomas Browne Henry.
Directed by Abby Berlin.

If you were wanting to choose a brief supporting feature of the American cinema, 1950, this would be a reasonable candidate. The subject is life in a small town, exploration of oil fields, brother-sister clashes, American heroics.

Richard Denning stars as an engineer who arrives almost penniless in the town, looking for a job. He encounters the owner of a well and his partner (Carleton Young and Marie Windsor). Buzz Doyle, the stranger, agrees to work with them. However, the owner’s sister, Lily (Fay Baker in a role that Marie Windsor might have played, tough and seductive) is determined to have her brother’s well.

The group have the law on their side, owning land through which the sister’s oil is piped and so able to stop her. Soon, the brother is killed and Buzz Doyle arrested for the murder. The sheriff is suspicious but, after learning that the man had been dead for some time, releases Buzz. There is a suspicious henchmen that Lily employs and so audiences fix on him. Then Lily is killed after a visit from Marie Windsor and she is arrested by the sheriff.

The couple get help from an alcoholic lawyer played effectively by Taylor Holmes.

There is a buildup to a climax and quite a twist to who did the killing, someone the audience would not be expecting at all – though very good reasons for his murderous behaviour are actually explained.

Another death, Lily’s henchmen, Marie Windsor in peril, Bars to the rescue, the sheriff and his police helping.

The style is efficient. The basic plot is interesting in the oil development themes. And the twist is quite a surprise. Direction is by Abby Berlin who between 1945 and 1948 made nine Blondie features.