Backfire

Gordon MacRae is the honoree today in Summer Under the Stars. MacRae is probably better known for his musicals, but I don't think I've got any of his musicals on my DVR. The one movie of his that I do have on my DVR, however, isn't getting an airing on TCM tomorrow. That movie is Backfire, but I watched it anyway in order to do a post on it for MacRae's day tomorrow.

The movie opens up at a veterans' hospital in the Los Angeles area in November 1948. Steve Connolly (Edmond O'Brien) shows up, and asks one of the nurses, Julie Benson (Virginia Mayo), about one of the patients, Bob Corey (Gordon MacRae). Bob is in the hospital undergoing a series of surgeries for the injuries that he suffered during the war. Bob and Steve served together, and they had thought about going into some sort of enterprise together after the war, although Bob's injuries have put a dent in those plans. Still, Steve has been trying to get a VA loan with the intention to start a ranch in Arizona, although that sort of work is probably not so appropriate for Bob right now.

Fast-forward six weeks, to Christmastime. Bob is looking forward to seeing Steve again; in fact, he's supposed to show up both to celebrate the holiday with Bob as well as to keep Bob apprised of their business plans after Bob gets out of the hospital. Julie informs Bob, however, that she hasn't been able to get a hold of Steve at the hotel where he was supposed to be staying. Bob gives Julie a Christmas present to show his love for her, before Julie gives him a sedative to sleep.

The sedative produces delirium, and later that evening a woman comes into the room. Bob obviously thinks it's Julie, but when he's able to focus -- or thinks that he's able to focus -- he finds a mysterious stranger who isn't Julie, telling him that Steve has been in a horrible car accident and that, like Bob, shattered his spine, but wants to die. This strange woman supposedly knew Steve and gives Bob a pad on which she's written down her address, but when he wakes up the next morning nobody has any records of Bob having had a visitor overnight.

Bob finally gets out of the hospital, and is immediately picked up by the police, who take him to the homicide bureau. Now, Bob has a pretty darn good alibi in that he was in that VA hospital. Instead, the police detective Garcia (Ed Begley) wants to know what Bob knows about Steve. Before the war, Steve was a gambler who had run-ins with the law although he never went to prison; come December 7, 1941, Steve figured this would be a good time to start a new life. But he could easily have gone back to his old ways after the war. Worse, a well-known profesional gambler, Solly Blayne, has been killed, and Steve still had some contact with him, which is why he's a natural suspect. Well, that and he's gone missing.

In a totally unsurprising plot twist that would never work in the real world, Bob decides he's going to do an investigation himself and find out who the real killer was. To do that, he's going to have to find Steve first, or perhaps that mysterious woman who may or may not have visited. The murder was before Bob was informed of the accident, so Steve wouldn't have the sort of alibi Bob had. But you'd think that if Steve had been seriously injured, the authorities would have some record of the accident. Bob eventually gets help from Julie too, and their relationship is going to deepen as they try to clear Steve's name together....

Backfire is another movie that's very much of its genre. It's not a bad movie, but the plot really does strain credulity, and the movie doesn't do anything groundbreaking. A pleasant enough time-passer for a rainy day, and I don't feel like I wasted my time watchng it, but there's certainly better stuff out there.