Exposed (1947)
IMDb meta-data is runtime 59 minutes, rated 6.1 by 63 cinematizens
Genre: Mystery
Verdict: Neato
When tall, distinguished-looking, baritone Colonel Hicks goes to hire a Private Dick he brooks no nonsense. Though he has no appointment he wants to ‘see Mr. B. Prentice right here! Right now!’ as he pushes past Iggy (on whom more below) in the anteroom and bursting into the inner office….to find that the ‘B’ is for Belinda! ‘Holy scriptwriting,’ he cried! ‘A dame!’ Giving himself a full-body shake he pressed on since Prentice came highly recommended by the police. [Psst, her father is captain of detectives. Is this insider trading?]
Hicks wants to know what his son is spending so much money on, but Hicks does not want to pry by asking the scion. He would rather hire a spy. Hicks is a lot of things but one of them is not smart.
Earlier we had seen Belinda dust off Canino, and that is no easy task, but she handled his gat with the ease of practice. The director sent Canino back to thug school to revise his act. On whom more below.
No sooner does Belinda hit the bricks than Hicks bites the dust alone in his study. It was a case of overkill, there was a heart attack, there was syringe, there was a very sharp letter opener, there was a television broadcast of Pox News. No one could survive a conjunction of events that lethal.
Now B turns her talents to figuring out who dun it. There is some to’ing and fro’ing and Iggy, the muscular ex-Marine offsider, is as quick on the update as B herself is. It is a good team and I am sorry to say this was a once-off pairing. Iggy is not played for laughs and comes through for her more than once and she he. This was one of the few times William Haade got to do anything but flex the pecs. He turned bad after this gig and was a villain in Key Largo (1948).
She starts with the obvious, the handsome, confident, wealthy young son who is as clueless as a Murdoch Bot Prime Minister.
There are many herrings: a sister who is secretive and pouty, a butler who looks shifty when the police are around, a shyster lawyer, an emeritus professor, and the family doctor who missed the syringe and the letter opener when he signed the death certificate as a heart attack. Then there is Canino. Is he an entrepreneurial, franchise, or a contract thug?
There are some nifty lines as when Canino invites himself to sit at Belinda’s table in a restaurant and put his snap-brim fedora carefully on the table. She tells him, she does not ask, to remove the hat because she is allergic to dandruff. He then gives her a glimpse of the gat among the dandruff under the hat. She is as cool as ice, and soon deals with him.
Here are a few other bon mots:
‘Trying to keep a stiff secret is like hiding the Statue of Liberty in a phone booth.’
‘Even lambs become lions is the stakes are high enough.’
‘Don’t get frisky or I’ll put this gun where he least expect it.’ [Still puzzling on that place.]
Waitress: ‘He’s a bad egg.’
Belinda: ‘I’ll scramble him good.’ [And she did.]
I never did figure out who did what and the explanation she gives at the end was no help, but they mostly lived happily ever after. The handsome male lead does nothing but posture in a neato switch with the duties usually assigned to the female lead.
‘Canino,’ you ask? He was the unforgettable villain in The Big Sleep (1946) played by Bob Steele. He went up against Bogey again in The Enforcer (1951). Bob racked up more than 244 credits on the IMDb. He could make the word ‘Please’ sound like a mortal threat. Whenever his name appears in the credits a good dose menace follows. Believe it or not, Ripley, he started out in comedy.
It was a studio mill production from Republic before its president bankrupted the company trying to make the statuesque but wooden Vera Ralston a star. This affair is discussed elsewhere on this blog. Get clickin’ for the goss. It is also the studio with which John Wayne started.