Starring: Boris Karloff, Ralph Byrd
Director: John Rawlins
Writers: William H. Graffis, Robert E. Kent, Robertson White, Eric Taylor, Chester Gould (characters)
Genre: Crime/Thriller
Year: 1947
My rating:
In days of old, a B-movie did not arrive with high expectations. It had to not distract from the main feature and be decent enough that the audience not demand their money back. Pretty low goals.
Now that these films have remained around and available to buy, we still don't expect much. All I hope for is that they won't cost a lot (they don't), and that training my eyes on the television screen while they're playing ends up being more entertaining than if I had shifted my gaze a meter to the left and watched the wall for the ninety minutes instead.
By these admittedly low standards, DICK TRACY MEETS GRUESOME succeeds. But it gains as much value from its ineptitude as it does from its genuinely good points. This is not a problem if all you seek is bare entertainment.
As you may have guessed, given that this is a crime/thriller based on a pulp comic strip, there are a huge number of familiar clichés present. There's tough guys, see? And wise-guys, see? And classy broads, see? And heels who turn their sentences into questions by sticking the word "see" at the end of them, see?
This makes the movie fun on one level, though if you're not in the mood for this, each successive stereotypical touchstone makes the movie that much more tedious. However, you really should be in the mood for this -- or at least expecting this sort of thing -- just by looking at the title.
Let's keep talking about the title, because that allows us to discuss the main characters: Dick Tracy and Gruesome. Dick Tracy is ostensibly the star of the film, but Gruesome gets top billing in the cast list. Understandably, this is because Gruesome is played by Boris Karloff and Dick Tracy is not. I'm no great expert in Dick Tracy lore, but I was slightly disappointed by the character in this movie. Tracy is one of the blandest detectives I've ever seen. He's not a smooth talker; he's doesn't posses a formidable mind. In fact, he doesn't even have any cool gadgets (at least not in this movie).
That said, Gruesome isn't particularly interesting, either. If he wasn't played by Boris Karloff, I'm sure he wouldn't have appeared in the title. He's an ordinary thug, who's a bit more cruel than the other villains in this movie, but nothing compared to classic baddies in other films. (To be fair, there is one thing that distinguishes him. He accidentally dies and then comes back to life early in the movie. But that has nothing to do with his character, and everything to do with the mysterious chemical he ingests. You may think that dying and coming back to life would add a supernatural flavor to the film, but it doesn't. Gruesome dies horribly, is rescued from the afterlife, and then it's never ever mentioned again.)
The story involves Gruesome and a band of very generic bad guys. They use a factory called "Wood Plastics Inc." as their hideout. That name must be nicely inconspicuous, as it should blend in with all the other plastic companies that make their product out of wood. Gruesome and his gang obtain a chemical gas that induces paralysis. Naturally, they use this gas to rob a bank. As an aside, I must point out that this is a seriously powerful chemical. It paralyzes everything! It freezes a man who's about to sneeze, causing him to be stuck with his nose in the air and a pained expression on his face. It freezes gravity and stops the fabric on people's clothes from moving.
I'm joking, of course. What the gas actually does is to nip outside the film projector and hit the pause button. This allows the criminals to sneak around the paused footage and help themselves to the bank's contents.
Since it's up to Tracy to solve the crime, he turns to the police detective's secret weapon: SCIENCE! These scenes are the most entertaining moments in the film. The screenwriters were obviously aware of this thing we humans call "science", but were a bit confused as to how it actually works. For example, a physicist's job is to create experimental chemicals, presumably just to see what will happen (apparently chemists do not exist in the Dick Tracy universe). When a smart detective is confronted with a new, strange, unknown chemical compound, his initial method of determining its properties is to eat it.
Still, one gets the idea that scientific accuracy was not high on the priorities list. And the writers take the opportunity of inventing appropriately goofy names for the science folks. The physicist is named Dr. A. Tomic and is assisted by the able Professor Learned, who is -- shock -- a girl! (A broad that digs science, see?)
The plot moves in very expected motions. The only thing that makes this movie in any way unpredictable is the fact that pieces of it don't make any sense and therefore defy prediction. I think the best way to enjoy this film is to take it as a series of individual scenes. Don't worry how the current scene will affect the next one and don't worry about how the last scene affects this one. Broken into pieces this way, the movie hangs together fine.
I'm reviewing the Digiview Productions version and the picture/sound quality are surprisingly good. There are no extras, but since they only charge you a buck, the fact that you can use the movie side of the DVD disc as a shaving mirror is more bonus than you should expect.
Although this is the only Dick Tracy movie I've seen, I'm guessing there are better ones out there. That said, this movie will have you laughing at it as often as you laugh with it. And if all you're looking for is a laugh, then you should be at least satisfied with this.
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