Bizarro fare. Mid-forties Monogram film noir that has all of the right touches one expected from that studio, but frankly where is the fear??? Well, there's at least some fear in this film, but for a moom to have a title like that it's gotta be jam packed into it, and sad to say that just ain't the case!
Peter Cookson plays this down-on-his-luck med student who's not only broke and behind in his rent, but he's just lost his scholarship to one of those typically staid colleges you see in these forties pictures which really adds up to bad luck on his part if you don't say! After hearing some of the guys at school talkin' about their professor who, besides running a pawn shop operation on the side and keeping his vast fortune on the premises is a real tough turd to crack, Cookson decides to do some cracking himself on the prof's skull. Cookson doesn't get the moolah but he gets in a whole load of inner gut twisting because the very next day the guy gets a thousand dollar check for a magazine article he wrote so it was like he didn't hafta go 'n do in the old jerk even if the world is a better place without him!
Of course the guilt trips build and build what with the police at first suspicious then acting rather pal-sy and Cookson seemingly digging himself in deeper and deeper but hey, this ain't DETOUR and frankly the ending is one of the sappiest I've seen since THE WIZARD OF OZ. Cookson's good enough as the hapless student though fails to ooze any sympathetic qualities while Anne Gwynne as the femme interest just falls flatter than Olive Oyl's bustline (must be that forties hairdo which really turns me off). Warren William as the detective playing the ol' good cop/bad cop on/off is also a lukewarmish character as is Nestor Paiva as the key-tossin' gumshoe who always seems to be tailing Cookson and perhaps a little too obviously at that.
Actually a good late-night wowzer that ebbs and flows enough to keep interest, but not the best to come outta the same studio that gave us the East Side Kids and those Bela Lugosi films with Vince Barnett all over the place. But oh, that gag-inducing ending!!!
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