Hoo boy is this bad. Not because it was shot in just six days, or because of the tiny budget. No, it's bad because the writing is terrible, and everyone in it except Regis Toomey is an ambulatory block of wood, which means nothing anyone says is convincing, and there are no emotional stakes. There's supposed to be this, like, The Postman Always Rings Twice level of irresistible sexual desire between the central couple, but since Don Castle (the producer's former roommate) and Bonita Granville (the producer's wife) have exactly zero chemistry, it feels like the whole thing is a big gag — Castle never looks or sounds anything but desperately bored and, at least here, Granville's come-ons and attempts to be sexy are just painfully awkward. To make it all worse, the story is RIDICULOUS. Putting aside that there are twins, and the good one gets murdered, and the bad one was sleeping with everyone and blah blah blah, all of the many solutions offered are nonsensical, and the twist is so arbitrary that it, too, feels like a gag. At one point, Castle explains in voiceover that "Linda was killed in place of Estelle." Um ... what? Why? By accident? On purpose? Who decided that one of them needed to die?! Needless to say, no answers are given, because apparently it's all so ~intense~ and ~sexy~ we're not supposed to notice the cavernous plot holes or the terrible acting.There is one good thing about this movie: the fact that oil man Jack Wrather literally started a production company to help his ex-roomie Castle make it in Hollywood — this is just the first of four films Wrather produced in 1947 and 1948, and they all starred Castle. We should all be lucky enough to have roommates ("roommates"?) as devoted as Wrather.
"Who'd want to look at his girl for the rest of his life and be reminded of murder?"It's impossible for me to rate The Guilty at this time since my mother and I spent the whole experience mocking how much it felt like a noir parody; just a few more tropes and it would have been another Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, although that suggests leading man Don Castle might have the charisma of Steve Martin, which couldn't be further from the truth. As Eddie Muller noted in his Noir Alley outro on TCM, Castle might as well have attended the Edgar Bergen school of acting, giving a wooden performance so tight-lipped that I wouldn't be surprised if his mustache-topped mouth had been painted on.Even in a Monogram production, where the budget is practically nonexistent, there should be more effort put in and reward for the audience than the result of this Cornell Woolrich adaptation. Bearing a bland title similar to a couple of other crime dramas from the same year, The Unfaithful and The Unsuspected, director John Reinhardt's B-movie is sunk by a tedious non-plot in which very little of substance ever seems to happen and by the artificiality/theatricality of the story's few sets (including roommates Castle and Wally Cassell's spacious apartment - I did genuinely enjoy seeing Cassell in a larger role than usual - and the lone bar where Castle always hangs out), with the whole thing flimsily strung together by Castle's clichéd voiceover.There was a spate of films about twin sisters in the mid-to-late 40s, like La Otra with Dolores del Río, A Double Life with Bette Davis and The Dark Mirror with Olivia de Havilland. The Guilty affords Bonita Granville an opportunity to do the same, but given that the siblings share only one scene, I'd say that the concept was squandered. It's sort of fun to see Granville reunited with her former Nancy Drew dad, John Litel, and it's interesting that the film was shot by Henry Sharp (his prestigious career in cinematography included The Crowd, Duck Soup and It's a Gift), but otherwise my current verdict is that The Guilty is one of Eddie Muller's decidedly lesser offerings.
“We all do foolish things sometimes, don’t we?”The Guilty is a good example of how a limited budget and so-so cast aren’t barriers to creating a nifty little noir. In an unnamed city, Linda Mitchell (Bonita Granville) is the good twin, Estelle (also Granville) the bad. Both are involved at various times with Johnny Dixon (Wally Cassell), a shellshocked veteran, and Mike Carr (Don Castle), Dixon’s army friend and roommate. Why either sister would see anything in Dixon is a puzzle since he’s a bit of a mess, but things aren’t always logical in the world of noir. There’s a murder, and the story is told in flashbacks six months after the killing. The limitations director John Reinhardt deals with in this Monogram production include having only a few sets to maneuver his cast through. There’s a bar, three apartments, one middle-class, one sparsely furnished, and one seedy, and the street outside. Each setting reflects something about the characters’ psychological state, with the rain-soaked street suggesting the most danger. One of the film’s many ironies is that while Dixon is the most obviously troubled character, each of the others have clear problems. Even Detective Heller (Regis Toomey) doesn’t seem all that trustworthy. We are meant to be especially suspicious of Alex Tremholt (John Litel), who has lived “for years” with the sisters and their ma (Netta Packer). Nothing is said about Tremholt’s being a tenant, so what exactly is his relation with the Mitchells? The Guilty is based on a story by Cornell Woolrich, whose characters always reside in a world without the usual clarities.Reinhardt, a b-movie veteran whose wife, Elizabeth Reinhardt, cowrote Laura, doesn’t do much flashy, being content to emphasize how claustrophobic and hopeless the characters’ lives are. He keeps matters moving smoothly and economically. The one stylistic flourish comes when Heller confronts the killer and appears in shadows except for a band of light across his accusatory eyes.Castle is rather inexpressive, but Cassell, who went on to appear in several more noirs (White Heat, Highway 301, City That Never Sleeps), ably conveys Dixon’s struggles to keep a grip on his sanity. He gives such lines as “These guys never believe you when you’re telling the truth” considerable poignance. Granville, who married producer Jack Wrather soon after making the film, is an unlikely femme fatale, but her costumes help her make Estelle’s flooziness credible. Litel, one of those anonymous character actors we’ve seen dozens of times, gives the best performance, displaying Tremholt’s conflicted emotions. The always reliable Toomey gets to say, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen a killer return to the scene of the crime. Pretty corny.”The Guilty may have been overpraised by some, and while it’s no neglected minor masterpiece, it’s well made and always engrossing. Reinhardt does a lot with a $150,000 budget.“I’m all mixed up myself. Maybe I’m going nuts.”Random thought: Litel plays Granville’s pa in the Nancy Drew films, creating a level of creepiness given what occurs in The Guity. Watched on Blu-ray.Favorite Films of 1947
