Guilty Bystander

by Bruce R Sun Dec 30, 2018 4:48 pm

For some reason I thought the 1950 film noir GUILTY BYSTANDER was an above average noir--it's not.

I don't think it's ever been commercially released so I have a 16mm dub which was a challenge to view and might have caused me to think less of the film.

It stars Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, Mary Borland, Sam Levene and J. Edward Bromberg.

Zachary Scott is Max Thursday, an alcoholic ex-police detective working as a "house detective" at a sleazy rooming house owned by Smitty (Mary Boland), a likeable (but not completely honest) old lady. Thursday's former wife, Georgia (Faye Emerson), shows up one night, while Scott is in an alcoholic stupor, to tell him that their three-year-old son Jeff is missing, taken by her brother, Fred, on some errand from which he did not return. Thursday goes after his ex-brother-in-law's employer, Doc Elder (Jed Prouty), a broken-down physician with a shady past, who manages to get the former cop drunk before knocking him cold. Awakening in a police cell, Thursday is questioned by his former boss, Capt. Mark Tonetti (Sam Levene), about where he was last night, and who might've murdered Doc Elder. Thursday has no choice but to stay sober as he tries to trace the leads he has left. And so it goes...

Keaney gave it a middle-of-the-road 2.0 and it's 6.1 on IMDb. If you can get a decent copy it's probably worth a view.

Bruce R