Decoy (1946)

Can you come down to my level? Decoy is directed by Jack Bernhard and adapted to screenplay by Nedrick Young from a story written by Stanley Rubin. It stars Jean Gillie, Robert Armstrong, Herbert Rudley, Sheldon Leonard and Edward Norris. Music is by Edward J. Kay and cinematography by L. William O’Connell. Margot Shelby (Gillie) is dying on the sofa, a “victim” of a gunshot wound. Sgt. Jo Portugal (Leonard) leans in to hear the story of how she came to be in this situation… Manic, delirious, bonkers, nasty, Decoy is all of those things, and more, wonderfully so. Running at under 80 minutes, this “B” noir out of Monogram spins a cruel tale of greed, fatalism and cold blooded homicide, all propelled by one of the coldest and wickedest femme fatales to have ever worn a pair of stilettos. Plot involves money of course, there’s a pot load of it buried somewhere and Margot Shelby wants it. The trouble is is that her criminal boyfriend, Frank Olins (Armstrong), is going to the gas chamber and he isn’t telling anyone where the loot is. No problem for Margot, she uses her cunning feminine wiles to ensnare a couple of male dupes into her web, and then the three of them resurrect Frank from the dead and put into action a plan that will reveal where the cash is. Easy Peasy! As the brilliant beginning has shown us, we know the fate of Margot, what you can’t be ready for is what she is prepared to do to achieve her aims, and her means and motives sock you right between the eyes. Even as death approaches she still has to have the last cruel laugh. The beautifully sensuous Gillie gives a thoroughly memorable performance, it’s a tragedy that she would die three years later of pneumonia, aged just 33. Elsewhere. Bernhard (who was married to Gillie at the time) is only competent in direction, but along with the performance he gets out of Gillie (which was a veer from the norm for her), he also gets a cracker turn out of Leonard. Kay’s music is inconsistent, even too breezy in the wrong areas, and O’Connell’s photography is standard stuff that doesn’t strive for any mood accentuation. Yes you have to kind of unscrew your brain and black out some of the more dafter elements here, and there’s some unintentionally cheese laden moments, but what an experience it is all told. 7.5/10