Watched: 01/26/2026
Format: TCM Noir Alley
Viewing: First
Directors: Edmond O'Brien and Howard W. Koch
This movie has some really interesting stuff, and maybe exploits some of the actual issues cops deal with for entertainment and shock value. It's not the best movie - it drags in some places and feels like it's stretching to reach feature length once you kind of see where all of this is going. But thematically, it's right there in the mix with the darker noir films.
Police detective Barney Nolan (Edmond O'Brien) kills a man in an alley and takes a stack of money off of him - $25,000 (roughly $300K in 2025 dollars). He tells his pal and fellow cop Mark (John Agar - the ex Mr. Shirley Temple) that he was trying to bring in the bookmaker, but things got messy and shots were fired.
Soon after, Barney is picking up his young girlfriend, Patty (Marla English) and showing her a model home he says he'll buy. Meanwhile, he hides the money beneath the house.
A pair of Private Eyes, thugs from the gangster who the money belonged to, start snooping around. And a witness comes forward who saw everything, and Barney can't have that.
The movie has a scene with a platinum blonde Carolyn Jones as a bar fly.
The basic gist of the film is a character study of a cop who has always been a good guy, but he's worn down by everything he's seen, and the knowledge he'll never get ahead while the crooks run around with $25,000. How far will he go for his slice of the pie? And how crazy will it make him?
As Eddie Muller hinted at during the intro, it just doesn't seem like Edmond O'Brien is anyone's favorite - and I'm probably in agreement. He's not a bad actor, he's just not a favorite, but he's in enough noir films, he starred in two of three I watched this weekend. Clearly this movie meant a lot to him, and he directs himself just fine here. But never has it been more clear that a star was twice the age of the woman he's paired with and with so little chemistry. It's just hard to buy.
There are some dynamite sequences, like a brutal sequence where we realize how far gone O'Brien is when he's cornered by the detectives in an Italian restaurant. And a shoot-out at an indoor pool.
Anyhoo, I've seen that poster above for years and never came across the movie itself, so it's a delight to finally watch the thing.
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