|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
College drop-out Julie (Jean Parker) suspects her father (Emmett Lynn),
who runs a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere, to have his hands in a
little bit of smuggling on the side, but when she tries to make pop talk,
he only slaps her - so she pays a visit to pop's business partner the
Ghost (Ricardo Cortez) - called so because he evaded certain death twice
-, who turns out to be an incredibly charming man who takes this
opportunity to sweettalk Julie, and before long her worries are gone ...
until she turns down an invitation by him and he, not used to not getting
what he demands, gets himself into a fit of rage ...
Later, Julie's sweetheart Bob (William Marshall), who has just joined
the army, pays her a visit, and they visit the Ghost's nightclub - not a
good idea, because the Ghost thinks of Julie as his, and he and Bob almost
get into a fight. Later that evening, Julie and Bob decide to marry before
Bob has to go to war (remember, this is 1942), but yet later the Ghost
shows Julie the power he has over her father - he knows he is an escaped
convict who once murdered someone - and forces her to drop Bob and instead
agree to marry him. The whole situation culminates when the Ghost and his
men are caught in a gunfight with two rival gangsters, and once again pops
is forced to shoot one of the rival gangsters in self-defense.
When Bob learns that Julie will no longer marry himhe soon puts two and
two together, visits the Ghost and gives him a good talk, comparing him to
Hitler and foretelling his downfall - and really, soon enough more rival
gangsters come out of the woodworks, crash his office and his nightclub
and try to kill him - but once again, he escapes death and pays Julie and
pops another visit, which soon culminates in a fight during which the
Ghost shoots pops dead (the first man he has actually killed himself,
usually used to ordering others to do the dirty work) - but with his
dieing breath, pops takes a shot at the Ghost and gravely injures him, and
suddenly Julie threatens him with a gun ... a situation that's too much
for him to handle, and he breaks down and dies ...
This mix of melodrama and gangster flick is possibly one of the lesser
works of Edgar G.Ulmer, it resembles a soap opera for way too long, but
still, Ulmer is able to make the most of the rather weak and cheesy script
and budgetary limitations and thanks to cleverly set-up shots, fine
editing and better than usual (for a PRC-production) lead actors
makes this look like a bigger production than it was.
|