D.O.A.

I've made mention of D.O.A. in passing in a couple of my posts, and am pleased to see that it's airing today at 5:15 PM ET on TCM.

Edmond O'Brien stars as an accountant in a sleepy California town who has to go to San Francisco one weekend. On his first night out, he goes to a bar where he gets the hangover to end all hangovers: he wakes up the next morning sick enough to have need of a doctor, and the doctor kindly informs him that somebody slipped him "luminous toxin" in his drink, and that our hero now has only a few days to live. Who would poison a poor guy like O'Brien? And why? Well, the only way that this account will figure it out is to do the figuring himself. And so, he sets of on a journey into his past clients, believing that perhaps he had done work for somebody he shouldn't have, and hoping he can figure out who killed him before he actually dies....

D.O.A. is a very interesting little movie. It's one of those mystery-flashbacks like The Big Clock, except that it's got a budget that's quite a bit smaller. Still, it's got more than enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, and characters that are never boring, either. Interestingly, both D.O.A. and The Big Clock were remade in the 1980s.

D.O.A. has made its way to DVD, largely because at some point along the way, it fell into the public domain. So watch out that you don't get a bad print of the movie.