Rogues’ Gallery (1944)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour, rated 5.2 by 112 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery.
Verdict: Fluff.
Emeritus Professor invents a Big Ear that can eavesdrop on a conversation anywhere in the world once he has the co-ordinates. No wires, no transmitter, no credibility are required. All EP needs is the shortwave signature of the spot, and every spot has a unique shortwave signature. Is that what Google Maps is doing? Uh huh. Maybe the President in Thief can explain this.
This is Big News! Hat and Snap are dispatched by the Daily Rag to get the scoopola. Sure. Hat is a no nonsense dame that stomps as she walks and Snap carries a really big iCamera. Turns out Prof’s KPIs do not require him to talk to idiots so they get nothing. For a scandal hound ‘No!’ is just the beginning and they barge around, first at the foundation headquarters and then the laboratory. Sure.
They take possession of the Top Secret plans for the gizmo. How this possession happens has to be seen to be disbelieved. They use the plans to extort interviews. [Media ethics have changed so little.] During one interview a board member is shot dead. The flour is in the oil now, thickening the plot. Hat is well known to Plod and in between praising her perspicacity he derides her intelligence. Consistency takes a holiday.
Snap makes clever use of his flashbulb camera to foil a heist of the plans. Hat gets some good lines, like this exchange.
Plod: ‘Just because a man is cold to the touch doesn’t mean he’s dead.
Hat: ‘When I touch a man and he stays cold, then he is dead.’
In contrast to the dialogue there is an attenuated scene about trying to whistle that, well, where is The Whistler when he is need. The efforts to whistle go on too long and are repeated to no purpose but to get that the magic hour for theatrical release. Don’t blame the players, they did as directed, and the director can blame the screenplay, if there was one. The buck stops there.
Regrettably there are few Rouges and no Gallery. The singular villain — Smiley — was there all along, bumping into Hat and Snap wherever they went. It took these two Mensas an hour to connect the dots to the ever present Smiley who for reasons unknown to the scriptwriter persisted in hiding the stiff.
It was released on 6 December 1944 when the US was fighting a two-front war with nearly a million men under arms. B-29s began bombing Iwo Jima for the blood bath that would take place there in a month. Meanwhile an all-out Japanese offensive had begun on Leyte to expel the invading Americans, and in Europe the Nazis were preparing for the offensive that in ten days would be called The Battle of the Bulge. The Pentagon dispatched the dreaded yellow and black telegrams everyday with many more to come. In this context some inane light relief was certainly in order.