Customer Reviews

Dick Tracy Detective

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Someone's sending extortion letters and killing their recipients. The mayor himself has received an extortion letter. The city is in an uproar. This is a job for... Dick Tracy!
Morgan Conway plays the hatchet-jawed detective in this entertaining 1946 offering from RKO Studios. DICK TRACY, DETECTIVE is a cut above most B-movies, and the film plays it straight with the audience. Unlike Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy of 1990, DTD doesn't weigh the bad guy down in a latex mask and a zoot suit. The I've-seen-him-somewhere-before Mike Mazurki (who made a cameo appearance in Beatty's film) plays the surgeon's-knife wielding Splitface, and the only make-up he wears is a hideous scar down the middle of his face. The lovely blonde Ann Jeffreys plays Tracy's sweetheart Tess Trueheart. Jane Greer, who is probably best remembered as Robert Mitchum's love interest in the film noir classic OUT OF THE PAST, rounds out the lead cast as Judith Owens.
The cast is a touch above competent, although you get the feeling that Conway might have been better cast as Splitface. He has a whiskey and cigarette aura about him, something that doesn't quite jibe with the super-square Dick Tracy. Still, this is a B-movie, and you take what you can get when you aren't one of the big boys. At least he had the right profile for the part. On the other hand, Jeffreys' Tess is played with energy and humor and her performance belie DTD humble origins.
The photography and editing gives DTD a singular film noirish feel. The film opens with a high crane shot of a man leaning against a lamppost. It's evening and the shadows are long and the echoes are loud and lonesome. A woman gets off a bus and walks down the deserted street. We see the shadow of a man fill a doorway. We hear trailing footsteps while the camera dollies closer to the startled woman. Cut to a long shot of her walking. A closer shot of her worried face. Cut again to a behind the figure shot. She turns to scream and a knife wielding arm flashes above her head....
DTD is loaded with deep shadows and shadings. What it lacks to be noir is the moral ambiguity and corruption in the good guys. Dick Tracy is as square as they come, he doesn't smoke, drink, or unbutton one button of his suit during the entire movie. It would take an actor of some skill to make him interesting, and Conway simply isn't up to it.
I was surprised that I enjoyed DICK TRACY, DETECTIVE as much as I did. Ann Jeffreys adds a spark to every scene she's in, and Mazurki is menacing enough to keep us close to the edge of our seats. Conway's Tracy is closer to an anonymous G-man than the comic book crime fighter. This is a pleasant enough movie to merit a recommendation.

Dick Tracy, Detective is one hour and one minute long and was released in theaters on December 1, 1945. Morgan Conway is the second person to portray the famous detective. In this movie the killer goes by the name of Splitface; who is not an original Dick Tracy comic strip character. Splitface is killing the jurors who sent him prison. It is up to Dick Tracy to find and to rescue Junior and Tess Trueheart from Splitface. In this B movie, Pat Patton is portrayed as a smart and not helpless sidekick to Dick Tracy. The movie version stays true to the comic strip. Dick Tracy, Detective gets a B+.

Dick Tracy, Detective, 1946 film

A man stands by a street lamp at night. A bus drops off a woman. A man runs up to her, she falls to the ground. The body is discovered. They call Dick Tracy. A prisoner is being questioned. Tess Truehart is kept waiting. "Only a fiend could have slashed her like that." [Remember when a big city had many newspapers?] Who is "Splitface"? Junior tests the fingerprints from the icebox. The Mayor got an extortion note, and he is scared. Dick and Pat Patton go to see a friend of the first victim and find another body. Dick follows a man into the yard of Mrs. Owens but loses him. Can they protect the Mayor? Dick and Tess visit the Paradise Club for dinner. Dick talks to Judith Owens, the daughter of the club owner (who has gone into hiding).

There is drama in the darkened house! There is a car chase. [This chase was repeated in a sequel.] Can Professor Starling see the future? They visit the Deathridge Mortuary. Their surgical knives were stolen. Starling refuses to talk. Dick revisits Deathridge, but he won't answer questions. Starling is released, and we learn more about him. Dick Tracy arrives too late, but learns about the extortionist. He surmises how the victims are selected. The Mayor recalls the name. Will somebody kidnap Tess? Can he be tracked to an old houseboat? There is a fight to capture "Splitface". Now can Dick and Tess go out for dinner? But ther is another crime to be investigated. "Here we go again."

This is an interesting story even if it didn't use the "Dick Tracy" characters. This is more serious than the later movies. Did the customers want more comic relief? The villains in the cartoons all had some distinctive feature, a fantasy from some criminologist that is long out of date. The cartoon appealed to adults, like some cartoons on TV today. The background of these stories show life in the 1940s. Some claimed the character of "Dick Tracy" was based on Eliot Ness.

DICK TRACY(1945)---(RKO)Morgan Conway, Anne Jeffreys, Mike Mazurki, Jane Greer, Lyle Latell, Tommy Noonan.
The first of four DICK TRACY films produced by RKO in the mid to late 40's. Morgan Conway plays Tracy in two of the films and Ralph Byrd assumes the role in the other two. Of the two actors, Byrd is by far the "better Tracy". Conway aside, this initial entry features a better than average cast for a film of this type. Jeffreys plays Tracy's long-suffering, but ever faithful, girlfriend, Tess Trueheart. Mazurki plays a convicted criminal by the name of, "Splitface", who vowed to kill the 12 jurors and the judge who convicted/sentenced him when his prison sentence has been served. Greer plays the daughter of a nightclub owner who may or may not be involved with Splitface. When the jurors start turning up dead, Tracy must find the killer. As I noted, Conway doesn't make a very convincing Tracy, but this is not a bad little film when you're in the mood for something not too challenging---in fact, all four films in the series are decent, the best one being, DICK TRACY MEETS GRUESOME, which features Boris Karloff as Gruesome. All four films are available in an inexpensive two-disc set from Genius Entertainment.

I know I shouldn't have liked this film, but I did. It resembles the classic film noir in many respects: the night streets, the old black sedans, the fancy night club, etc. What it doesn't resemble is the Dick Tracy of the comics page. That Tracy had a bent nose, wrist radios with arrows that pointed to them, and a very serious demeanor. The Tracy in this film is too thin, too handsome, and is too attentive to Tess. He has no wrist radio with an arrow.

The villain, Splitface, never appeared in the comic strip--at least, I don't recall him. But he is of the sort that tormented Tracy on paper. Splitface has a terrible facial scar as a result of a fight in prison. He is out now and seeking vengeance against--well, that's central to the mystery and shouldn't be given away here, not that the mystery is filled with much intrigue.

People get murdered. The mayor demands action. Women scream as women did in movies. Tess is quite pretty as heroines are supposed to be in movies. The boy who plays Junior is irritating, as child actors tended to be in films of this era. The bad guy gets caught; surely you knew he would. And Dick Tracy prevails as always. But other than a couple of names, this has little to do with the hatchet-faced detective strip drawn by Chester Gould. Nonetheless, I liked it.