Behind Green Lights

Last night I watched my DVD of Behind Green Lights, a movie I hadn't heard of until I saw it come up in the suggestions list at Amazon.

Carole Landis plays Janet Bradley, who at the start of the movie is visiting a blackmailer. Apparently he has some documents about her or her father, the reformist party's candidate for mayor, and the blackmailer wants $20,000 for them. However, he lets his guard down, and she's able to wrest control of his gun and the documents away from him.

The bad news is that later that evening, the man's car shows up at the police station, with him dead at the steering wheel, with a gunshot wound. Janet, therefore, is an obvious suspect, what with her fingerprints having been found on the gun. And newspaper editor Calvert (Roy Roberts) wants the police detective investigating the case, Lt. Carson (William Gargan) to book her. It could probably help Carson's career too since it would help the non-reformist candidate win and put Carson in good with them.

But there are problems. The medical examiner (Don Beddoe) notices that there's not much in the way of blood from that gunshot wound. And there's remnants of poison in the dead man's mouth. The conclusion is that perhaps the man was only shot after he was dead, and actually poisoned to death. Calvert realizes there's a problem, and suggests to the less-than-honest medical examiner that perhaps he should switch bodies in the morgue.

However, the switch is discovered, and the corpse ends up in the press room where cub reporter Johnny (Richard Crane) finds it and hides it in the closet, kind of like Rosalind Russell did to John Qualen in His Girl Friday, except that Qualen's character was very much alive.

It all adds up to a moderately interesting mystery movie in Behind Green Lights, and something that's surprisingly good for a B movie. That's the good news. The bad news is that the movie fell into the public domain, and the print on the DVD leaves a lot to be desired. It jumps from the Fox fanfare to the credits a little too quickly; it has a bug from the DVD producer in the bottom right corner for the entire movie; and the sound gets bad before the end.

The TCM Shop advertises a different DVD with both Behind Green Lights and Lady in the Death House from a different company. I have no idea if the print on that one is any better. It's a shame, because Behind Green Lights is one of those movies that winds up being more fun than it should have any right to be.