THE DEVIL’S SLEEP

US, 1949, 74 minutes, Black-and-white.
Lita Grey Chaplin, Will Charles, William Thomason, Timothy Farrell, Stan Freed, Tracy Lynne, Muriel Gardner.
Directed by W.Merle Connell.

This is not a major film by any means. At times, it has to be seen to be believed.

The director made a number of exploitation films in the 1940s into the 1950s. Part of the exploitation was to have a high moral tone behind the film.

21st-century audiences will find a lot of the dialogue rather familiar, the judge making pronouncements about how teenagers were behaving, the language of juvenile delinquency, the pressures, upbringing, culture, hedonism, the use of drugs, drug dealers… This is one of those warning films.

Charles Chaplin’s wife, Lita Grey, plays a judge who is concerned about delinquency. William Thomason plays a detective that she employs to find out what is going on amongst young people. He is engaged to a young woman whose brother mixes with the teenagers and his girlfriend is the daughter of the judge.

It has to be said that the acting is below basic with many of the cast. It is as if they are simply reciting lines without the ability to communicate their characters in performance. This is true of some of the young people as well as some of the thugs.

The villain of the piece, Timothy Farrell, rather swarthy-looking, suggestions of the Italian Mafia, a moustache, though not twirling, who deals in drugs, getting young agents to infiltrate with their friends, but also running a health spa, utilising a group of what might be called bathing beauties to work with the less beautiful middle-aged women, especially a rather large lady who provides moments of basic comedy with her name, Tessie Tesse. The women are also given drugs to enhance their exercise, but one of them dies.

The central piece is a youth party which has been set up by one of the young agents to capture the daughter of the judge in compromising photos – which happens. The girl is ashamed and attempts to kill herself. The judge makes sensible decisions. The detective and his girlfriend as well as her brother try to infiltrate the gangs and the health spa but are discovered – basic confrontations and everyone rounded up at the police station.

A historical footnote, this is the type of films that Americans felt they ought to make in the 1940s given social problems – but also with some sexual provocation, not particularly noticeable in later decades, but which some at the time might have thought a bit “hot�.