Out of the Blue

It always amazes me just how many old movies there are that I hadn't even heard of until they show up on TCM, or nowadays, I come across them when I'm on Tubi or one of the other FAST platforms. Then again, there were quite a few lower-budget studios putting out B stuff. In this case, that studio is Eagle-Lion, and the movie in question is Out of the Blue.

George Brent plays Arthur Earthleigh, a businessman in New York who can afford one of those posh apartments with an open-air balcony. He lives there with his stodgy wife Mae (Carole Landis), who wants everything in the apartment to be just perfect. She's really irritated about her neighbor, artist David Galleo (Turhan Bey). He's an artist who has a German shepherd dog that insists on burying bones on the Earthleighs' side of the balcony, and that really ticks Mae off. She wants Arthur to get their lawyer and make David get rid of the dog, which is really more of an excuse to give David the character motivation to do what he does later in the movie. Meanwhile, watching from two stories above are a pair of spinster aunt types, Spring and Ritchie (Elizabeth Patterson and Julia Dean respectively).

Mae has to go up to Connecticut to visit her sick sister for the weekend, leaving Arthur alone at home. He goes out to a bar where he meets Olive (Ann Dvorak), who follows him back to the apartment because she's generally the sort of person following on from Katharine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby. For fairly understandble reasons, Arthur wants to get Olive out of his apartment, despite her claiming to have a heart condition that can be helped by copious amounts of brandy. Arthur thinks he's succeeded in sending Olive on her way, but she goes into the guest bedroom and passes out on the bed.

The next morning Arthur finds out what has happened. Worse, Olive has completely rearranged the furniture, which is going to piss Mae off when she finds out. And then to complicate things further, when Arthur more forcefully tries to evice Olive he accidentally strikes her, causing her to faint and pass out on the ground. Arthur thinks she's died, and decides that the best thing to do is deposit the dead body on David's side of the balcony. David has a string of women visiting his place to do modeling work for him, such as current client Deborah (Virginia Mayo).

David finds the body, but also realizes that Olive is not in fact dead, a fact which is very useful because he now has a way to get back at Arthur and Mae, by blackmailing Arthur into allowing David to keep his dog, as well as making Arthur think the police are on to him. The two biddies upstairs see the body and naturally call the police, since there's been a string of murders in the neighborhood. As you can guess, things get rather complicated, although everything mostly works out for the good people in this story.

Out of the Blue is a movie that may work for the right sort of person. To be honest, the comedic premise isn't a bad one, making me think of The Trouble With Harry, although in that case Harry was really most sincerely dead. The issue I had with the movie, however, was the Olive character. She gets so obnoxious that it's difficult to have sympathy with her. It's almost as though I would have been OK with if it she actually had died. And since the story is basically one extended joke, it can be a bit tough if you don't like the character at the center of the joke.

But again, I can see why some people are going to love a movie like Out of the Blue, so watch for yourself and reach your own judgment.