A short B movie that had been sitting on my DVR for quite some months that I recently got around to watching was the 1944 film The Last Ride. There's another film from 2011 with the same title about country singer Hank Williams, but this is a completely different film and story.
The movie's release date of 1944 puts it squarely in the middle of World War II. As you'll recall, there was a lot of rationing going on. No new automobiles were being made since all of the factories were converted to making vehicles for the military, and rubber for tires was in short supply too. So the young people who feel they're having their lives taken away from them through no fault of their own are not exactly thrilled. One group of youths finds that the tires on their car have been stolen, which is fact part of a tire racket. Joe, whose tires were stolen, learns from his friend Harry about the tire bootleggers, who are actually part of that racket by stealing the tires and then adulterating the rubber to turn one tire into more, and then charge through the nose for it. After getting his "new" tires, Joe goes for a drive, only for the tires to go bad, killing Joe and his girlfriend.
Virtuous policeman Pat Harrigan (Richard Travis) just knows that this is really a case of murder, but getting the goods on the people in the tire racket is going to be difficult. Indeed, he thinks he's got a couple of witnesses to Joe's being sold the illicit tires, but they get killed before they can testify. Pat's going to have to come up with another way to bring the gang to justice.
Worse, Pat's brother Mike (Charles Lang) sees to be making money on other people's misery, even though there's a war going on and a lot of propaganda about how everybody needs to do their part. Worse, a subplot has Mike as a romanti rival for Pat's girlfriend Kitty (a young Eleanor Parker). On the other hand, Mike's knowing a bunch of bad guys gives Pat an idea. He goes undercover with almost nobody other than the police chief (Wade Boteler) knowing. He takes a bribe in a way that's going to become very public and then punches the police chief to get himself "fired", which is quickly revealaed to be a ruse, not that you didn't know this before it's known.
If it's obvious to the viewer that Pat is going to be going undercover, it ought to be obvious to the bad guys too, although they seem to be surprisingly stupid for a gang that's been stealing people's tires for the rubber and making money hand over fist by doing it. They seem not to know that Pat is undercover, except for one guy who has the good sense to trail Pat to the otherwise deserted apartment house that serves as the rendezvous spot for Pat and the Chief. It puts Pat in danger, but since there's a Production Code and there's a war on anyway, you know that Pat is going to foil the gang at the end.
The Last Ride isn't a great movie, but it is a good example of what Warner Bros. could do with its B movies. It's also an interesting example of how the studios were contributing to the war effort in all sorts of ways, even to the propaganda of why we had to sacrifice our rubber for the war effort. For that reason alone the movie is worth one watch at least.
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