Columbia Pictures was the most minor of the major studios, but it might have been the best one for noirs, if only because it churned out so many of them. While it rarely knocked any out of the park, their batting average for the genre was better than the larger studios.
Consider 1955’s The Crooked Web. It has a solid cast of minor actors, people who were mostly low on the food chain even for a “crime picture” as they were usually called back then. It spans both what was the present day at the time as well as wartime Germany, as WWII was still fresh in the collective consciousness. It has theft and crosses and double-crosses.
It opens with a drive-up hamburger joint owned by Frank Lovejoy, the best-known face here. He appears to be just a regular guy, trying to pursue the post-war American dream in the most common manner of the time that isn’t running a drive-in theatre or a bowling alley. His biggest vice seems to be making minor bets over the phone, earning him the nickname “Longshot Dan”. Working for him is Mari Blanchard, whom he intends to marry.
One day, a customer pulls up who proves to be trouble. This is Richard Denning, the guy from Creature from the Black Lagoon who isn’t Richard Carlson. Blanchard is not happy to see this man, whom she says is her brother who just stopped by on his way to Chicago. She is also adamant she won’t give him any money for the crazy scheme he has in mind.
That scheme will involve selling “some gold knickknacks” Denning supposedly “liberated” from Germany in the war. Denning estimates he can get more than $200,000 for these ill-gained items, and he hopes to get Lovejoy to invest three grand to make that happen.
Soon, we see the siblings alone in her apartment and the kiss between them in the kitchen would have been extremely icky had I not already suspected they are not truly brother and sister. Even less of a surprise is they are conning Lovejoy. What is less expected is Denning isn’t the bad guy here, but is actually a former military MP on the trail of Lovejoy, who was himself a looter during the war. He also shot a fellow solider in the back when he was being pursued by MPs.
I didn’t completely follow the logic, but the authorities need to get Lovejoy back into Germany in order for the authorities there to apprehend him. They also need him to incriminate himself in some way. I didn’t realize the U.S. apparently didn’t have an extradition treaty with Germany at the time nor how damn hard it must have been to prosecute somebody for a war crime back then.
The movie gets awfully wobbly once the trio of leads exits the U.S. There is some interesting suspense when somebody on the boat recognizes Denning. That same man will be waiting with some other vets who know him when they are disembarking, and how Denning dodges them is quite clever.
Alas, there is almost no tension in the back half of the runtime, all of which takes place in Germany. What transpires is neither interesting nor believable.
That is frustrating after an interesting first half, which is some solid noir. It has snappy dialogue such as this from Denning: “These baseball drinkers. Three drinks and they’re out.” There’s seen some of the symbolism one expects from such are, such as coffee percolating enthusiastically in the foreground while Denning and Blanchard passionately lock lips in her kitchen. The plan to smuggle out the gold involves melting it down, making it into monkey wrenches and plating those with lead, all of which reminded me of the brilliant scheme in Plunder Road. Also typical of the genre and budget, inferior rear projection undermines such scenes as the three leads supposedly on the deck of the ship.
The Crooked Web is interesting and has some surprises, until it runs out of gas and coasts to an ending that feels anticlimactic and arbitrary. It may not be top-shelf noir but, like so many of great quantity of these cranked out by Columbia, it is noir, regardless.
Dir: Nathan Juran
Starring Frank Lovejoy, Mari Blanchard, Richard Denning
Watched as part of the Mill Creek blu-ray set Noir Archive Volume 2: 1954-1956