Jimmy Morrell sacrifices his firstborn and his morals for the almighty dollar before realizing breaking bad is no good at all. The film is as predictable as an empirical formula yet still finds some humour in its humors, so to speak. Bette Davis is miscast and minimized, her role too narrow for her talent and her chemical bond with Charles Farrell weak and insubstantial. DP Sidney Hickox once again makes a mediocre film more enjoyable with competent framing, lighting and excellent blocking.
Jimmy (Charles Farrell) and his girl Norma (Bette Davis) run a corner shop pharmacy that is entrenched in the daily activities of their neighborhood, a parcel of small-time life amid big city sleaze. Our blue-collar lovers are barely making ends meet until a group of gangsters, bankrupt after the repeal of Prohibition, blackmail Jimmy into counterfeiting popular essentials like toothpaste and cosmetics. It’s mostly harmless until the gang boss decides there’s money in fake medical supplies too! This leads to a crisis of conscience for Jimmy who attempts to quit his chemical preoccupation but, like Walter White 70+ years later, finds this divorce quite difficult. We see a gaggle of gangsters ordered to brush their teeth, hilariously choreographed like a Busby Berkeley chorus line! And we get to see Glenda Farrell in a brutal hair-pulling slugfest with her paramour’s new gal! Tragedy strikes: Norma is pregnant, and the baby dies because of the counterfeit Digitalis, the gang boss’s femme (barely a cameo by the wonderful Glenda Farrell!) gets gunned down for turning State’s witness and finally Jimmy answers with this volatile equation 10KNO3 + 3S + 8C → 2K2CO3 +3K2SO4 + 6CO2 + 5N2. Yes, I looked that up.
Dead fetus, fatal femme, bankrupt businesses, suicidal impulses and an acidic comeuppance finish this film. Yet somehow, it’s a happy ending for our couple when Jimmy is exonerated and it’s back to the headache remedies and six cent ice cream cones sans childcare expenses. The surviving gangsters break rocks in the hot sun and Dutch goes to the afterlife in dutch, of course.
Final Grade: (C)