DANGER SIGNAL (director: Robert Florey; screenwriters: from a book by Phyllis Bottome "Murder in the Bud"/C. Graham Baker/Adele Comandini; cinematographer: James Wong Howe; editor: Frank Magee; cast: Zachary Scott (Ronnie Mason/Marsh), Mary Servoss (Mrs. Fenchurch), Bruce Bennett (Dr. Andrew Lang), Rosemary de Camp (Dr. Silla), Faye Emerson (Hilda Fenchurch), Mona Freeman (Anne Fenchurch), Richard Erdman (Bunkie Taylor), John Ridgely (Thomas Turner), Virginia Sale (Landlady), 1945)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This routine noir feature just doesn't cut it -- it's story is too implausible and it lacks proper tension. Zachary Scott plays a charming scoundrel who uses the name Ronnie Mason back East, but in Los Angeles he is Ronnie Marsh. He lives off vulnerable women by sweetly wooing them and then becoming dishonest and ruthless when he goes after their money. We first see him in the hotel apartment of his dead girlfriend, Mrs. Turner, whereby he steals her wedding ring and lifts some money from her purse, and when the landlady knocks on the door, he climbs out the window and flees. When the police investigate, they find a suicide note next to her.
Mr. Turner (Ridgely) tells the police his wife ran off with a man named Mason who said he was a writer, and he is positive that she would not commit suicide, as the police tell him that all they can do is keep the case open, as the newspapers reported it as a suicide because of the suicide note found. What gives this opening scene its noir look, is the shadowy photography James Wong Howe provides in Scott's escape through the window.
Scott gets on a bus for Los Angeles and steals a service pin from a sleeping passenger. When he looks for a vacant room to let in Los Angeles, he has the service pin on his suit lapel and poses as a wounded veteran. He talks Hilda Fenchurch (Faye Emerson), who is a stenographer for a college, into letting him rent the place. When she sees his service pin and is impressed by his good manners and handsome looks, she changes her mind about not renting the room. She was at first opposed to her mother's idea of renting the room because it would mean additional work. But she now rationalizes that she rented the room for patriotic reasons since there is a housing shortage due to the war.
Scott has already charmed Hilda's mother and he soon courts Hilda, and he wins her over with his earnestness and smooth gift of gab. He gives her the ring he stole from Mrs. Turner and tells her it's his grandmother's, and that they should keep their engagement a secret until he can sell a story and afford to marry her.
Meanwhile Hilda's impressionable teen-age sister, Anne (Mona Freeman), returns from being treated in the hospital for a sickness. The young boy who wants to date her, Bunky (Erdman), finds that he is being rejected. It seems that the 28-year-old Scott secretly takes Anne out dancing evenings and plies her with liquor, and actively turns her against Hilda. This whole scene was really unconvincing, but, nonetheless, he manages to continue to charm the mother (Servoss). But he arouses Hilda's suspicion when Bunky phones and tells Hilda that Anne is not with his group of friends at night but with Scott, and that he saw Scott at the bank cash several checks for stories he already sold. Hilda reacts angrily, going into his room to snoop and discovers a revolver in his suitcase. She confronts him and demands he leaves, but as hard as it is for me to believe, he has Hilda's mother and sister on his side and, thereby, he remains.
When Anne tells the family that they are engaged, this is too much for Hilda, who can't reason anymore with her naive sister. She realizes that he asked her sister to marry him when he found out that she will inherit a considerable amount of money when she marries. She then goes to the college psychoanalyst, Dr. Silla (De Camp), to tell of her plight. Dr. Silla analyses the situation and decides to visit the Fenchurch home for dinner. There she gets into a conversation with Scott and comes to the conclusion he is an egotist, someone who is love with himself, who spent his adult life luring women but he doesn't respect them. She makes a plan with Hilda that they will get Scott to come to her beach house and there she will break him down and expose him for the scoundrel he is.
But things happen very fast and Hilda can't wait for that meeting. Her opportunity for revenge comes when a shy and absent-minded science professor, Dr. Lang (Bennett), someone who admires her but can't get up the nerve to ask her out, comes by her house and asks her to do inventory in his lab. She discovers a tube of poison while there and sneaks it out of the lab, planning to poison Scott by inviting him to dinner with her at the beach house.
When Dr. Lang tells Dr. Silla he can't understand why Hilda stole the test tube of poison, she tells him she understands. She gets him to bring along an antidote for the poison and the two rush to the beach house, losing a police car tailing them for speeding. At the beach house they find that Hilda couldn't go through with poisoning the scoundrel. Anxious to leave the beach house, Scott rushes out and when he does, there is Mr. Turner waiting for him. While running away from Turner, Scott slips and falls to his death down a cliff. Why and how Turner was there, was never explained, except he seemed to be tailing Scott on his own.
The story simply didn't add up, but its quick pace helped move things along, and Faye Emerson and Zachary Scott can always be counted on to give competent performances. But nothing can save this film from mediocrity, as the film made a febrile attempt to study a psychopath, but was restrained by the film's weak script and lacklustre directing effort.
REVIEWED ON 5/20/2000 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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