Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

dougdoepke Newspaper editor Chapman (Crawford) is caught in a web. Trouble is it's of his own making. True, he didn't mean to kill his destitute wife (DeCamp), who confronts him after years of separation. But he did mean to excise poor old alky Barnes (O'Neill) who's unknowingly put the cops on his trail. Worse, the bloodhound really on his trail is his protégé McCleary (Derek) now the paper's chief investigative reporter. So Chapman's got to keep up appearances as a successful editor even while the web closes in.The movie presents a number of ironies. Chapman's hard-driving manner is not very likable, but he's not really a killer. He's a guy who can't bear giving up his premier position as the city's leading editor because of a vengeful wife. But now a series of happenings have caught him up and the snowball keeps rolling ever closer, thanks ironically to protégé McCleary.There's a lot of good material here, but I can't help thinking the impact's undercut by key casting mistakes. Derek tries hard, but lacks the gravitas of a hard-driving reporter. Unsurprisingly his pretty-boy career soon moved into costume epics. Crawford's perfect as a no nonsense newsman, who's turned the paper's circulation around with his single-minded style. Trouble is it's a basically one-note performance. There's no attempt by either director or actor to show a more sympathetic side. Thus the final element of a tragic web is undercut and the impact sacrificed to an awkward ending. The 80-minutes is okay as a noir, what with the occasional expressive lighting, feckless cops, and doomed protagonist. But ex-newsman and novelist Sam Fuller's expose of the newspaper business appears paramount. Note how often a newshound uses payoffs, large and small, to one-up the cops. Not much professional ethics here. Anyway, it's a strong supporting cast, though the picture perfect Reed is just that, while pairing her with Derek resembles a spread in Photoplay. I suspect they were hired to offset the many authentic slum-dwellers among the city's down and out; then too, lead actor Crawford didn't make it on his looks. All in all, it's an interestingly ironic film, but not one of Fuller's or director Karlson's more memorable.

nomoons11 I mean that just about everything he does he steals every scene he's in.Broderick Crawford was just a huge personality on and off screen that I imagine other actors, being around him, kinda had a feelin' they didn't have a chance of stealin' a scene away from him. He was just that good an actor.This little film is no different. He plays a newspaper editor with somethin' to hide.Throughout the film he has to make sure no-one finds out his little secret from his past. Enter his favorite little cub reporter who thinks of like a son and a woman's columnist who thinks he has just sunk the paper's integrity by printing scandalous news and not the real news people wanna read. She basically see's right through him but not all the way...well until the end.Check this one out. It's a winner for sure. I was pleasantly surprised.

Robert J. Maxwell Broderick Crawford is the rude, arrogant hustler who runs an exploitation newspaper. Never mind the ten million dead in the Chinese earthquake; what was the Senator up to with his secretary at 21? He keeps pushing his star reporter, ambitious, young, criminally handsome, non-actor John Derek to dig into sensational stories and come up with dirt. Derek's pal is cigar-chewing Henry (Harry) Morgan, who I wish to hell would make up his mind about his first name. Meanwhile, amid all the bustle, pretty Donna Reed sits at the Fashion Desk and pouts at the moral nihilism.The newspaper gives a Lonely Hearts Ball at which some of life's losers may meet their match. One of the guests turns out to be Rosemary DeCamp in an unusually dark role. She's the abandoned wife of Crawford. The brute abused and dumped her years ago and is now masquerading under a false name.Spotting Crawford at the dance, she takes him into an empty room and threatens to expose him for the unkempt miscreant he truly is. He accidentally kills her. Then he arranges circumstances so that it looks as if she slipped in the tub and died when her head hit the faucet.Derek senses that more can be made of the story. After all, the dance was sponsored by the newspaper and a follow-up will mean more publicity. Could it have been murder? He's so anxious to get on with it that Crawford is forced to go along with him.Complications ensue. Crawford has found a pawn ticket among DeCamp's belongings, perhaps incriminating, but when he visits the pawn shop on the Bowery he runs into an ex-employee, Henry Neill, now become a drunk. Jay Adler has a bit part as a drunken witness, a role he reprised later in a Twilight Zone episode called "The Jungle." Bit by bit, Derek tracks down the murderer while Crawford vellicates and sweats in the role he's forced to play. (Cf., "The Big Clock." Cf., also, "Presumed Innocent.") Well, it's from a novel by Sam Fuller and it's directed by Phil Karlson so it can't be all bad -- and it isn't. It's fast paced. Not a moment is wasted on anything resembling art. It's a crime story, a B picture, focused on the dynamics of a scandal sheet and the moral trajectory of its employees.Man, are those 1950s fashions egregious. What an insult to the human frame. Those FEDORAS alone are enough to spoil the appetite. It helps, sporting these ugly garments, if you can look like John Derek or Donna Reed. Of course, if you look like the hulking, balding, croaking Crawford, you should immediately give up.

evanston_dad A suspenseful little newspaper thriller about a bullish editor of a trashy paper (Broderick Crawford) who inadvertently engineers his own downfall when he commits murder and his young protégé (John Derek) dives into the case, smelling a sensational story that will send the paper's circulation skyrocketing.This film is full of little twists and turns that made me gasp and laugh out loud as they heaped one surprise on top of another. Crawford gives a convincing performance as a man who's taught his underlings too well: he has to try to figure out a way to make Derek give up on the case without making it too obvious that he wants the story buried. Derek is given an unconvincing love interest in the form of Donna Reed. She works at the paper too, but despises Crawford's management of it and sees a little too much of him rubbing off on her boyfriend for her own comfort. Derek is such an ass, it's inconceivable that Reed would want to give him the time of day. But the inconsistency in her character serves as only a minor distraction; it doesn't torpedo the film.Phil Karlson provides the fluid direction, and keeps things moving at a brisk pace.Good fun.Grade: A-