Michael McHale Movies
- 1954
Duffy of San Quentin is an Allied Artists low-budgeter based on the life of the warden who first introduced reforms in the infamous California penal institution. Appalled by conditions in San Quentin, the grey-haired Duffy inaugurates a series of improvements. He also sets up an honor system, which brings him under fire from conservative law enforcement agencies. The lumpy, episodic continuity of Duffy of San Quentin is due to the fact that the film is comprised of an hour-long TV pilot film, padded out with hastily assembled new footage. While Duffy was consigned to TV within two years of its release, the film did well enough to engender a sequel, The Steel Cage (likewise a pilot film). Ironically, Paul Kelly, who stars as Duffy in both films, served a prison sentence for manslaughter in the 1920s. The British title of Duffy of San Quentin is Men Behind Bars. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louis Hayward, Joanne Dru, (more)
Ever since slipping into Public Domain, The Big Trees has become one of the most accessible and oft-televised of Kirk Douglas' pictures. Douglas plays an unscrupulous lumberjack who covets the land owned by a religious sect. All that's saving him from being the film's main villain is the fact that there's an even nastier contingent out to claim the sect's territory. His greed tempered by the love of pious Eve Miller, Douglas turns out to be a good guy after all in the film's climax. Watch for Alan Hale Jr. as "Tiny," doubling for his own father, who appears in long-shot in the stock footage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eve Miller, Patrice Wymore, (more)
- 1951
In this action comedy, a bunch of bungling jewel thieves are in such a hurry to flee the site of their latest caper that they leave their loot on the back seat of the cab they used for the getaway. Later they return and torment the driver into revealing where he stashed the stones. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1951
Broderick Crawford plays Johnny Damico, a detective who suddenly finds himself up to his neck in trouble and his career on the line. Going home in the rain one night, he finds himself just a few feet from a shooting on a dark street, where the gunman claims to be a detective from another precinct, flashing a real badge -- and then slipping away. Damico discovers that the victim of the shooting was a witness who was to have appeared before a grand jury investigating waterfront crime, and that the same man who shot him also murdered the chief investigator on the case just a few hours earlier (which is where the badge came from). Damico could lose his job, but instead he's given the chance to redeem himself -- he's sent undercover and given a new identity as New Orleans tough-guy Tim Flynn, who insinuates himself onto the New York waterfront when he arrives on ship. He manages to hook up with union thug Joe Castro (Ernest Borgnine) and his strong-arm man Gunner (Neville Brand), who try to frame him for a murder that also gets a potential stoolie out of the way and that hooks Damico up with crooked police sergeant Bennion. After following one blind alley involving a federal agent (Richard Kiley) working as a longshoreman, Damico manages to get an intro to Blackie Clegg (Matt Crowley), the man working behind Castro, Gunner, et al, who's as cool and slippery as they come and as sadistic as he is vengeful. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Broderick Crawford, Betty Buehler, (more)
- 1950
In Storm Warning, Ginger Rogers stars as a model visiting relatives in an unnamed small town. She happens to witness the beating death of a man at the hands of the KKK. Rogers soon discovers that the whole town is controlled by this vigilante group, and that her loutish brother-in-law Steve Cochran is one of the group's members. D.A. Ronald W. Reagan is the man who breaks the stranglehold of the hooded terrorists--through the simple expedient of walking into one of their meetings and calmly identifying each of them by name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, (more)
- 1949
Homicidal criminal Charles McGraw busts out of jail, kidnapping the three people responsible for his incarceration. The hapless hostages include detective Michael O'Shea, district attorney Frank Conroy, and nightclub singer Virginia Grey. McGraw makes no secret of his plans to kill O'Shea and Conroy once he has successfully made a getaway; he has other plans for Grey, however, and for a while it seems as though she'll willingly play along with him. The cat-and-mouse game reaches its peak of tension some sixty minutes into this 65-minute thriller. Sparse and unpretentious, The Threat contained far more excitement than many a more expensive, star-studded film noir. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael O'Shea, Virginia Grey, (more)
