Bail Bondsman Bill Bailey doesn’t bother to wipe the blood off his money before he spends it and soon ends up behind the eight-ball. Director/Writer Rowland Brown’s tempestuous tale of Underworld undesirables posits a morally compromised protagonist as our sympathetic nexus, a man who grifts elderly matrons for collateral and advises his ‘clients” to abscond when a guilty verdict seems certain. Bill Bailey has stared so long into the abyss of human behavior that it has consumed him. It’s to George Bancroft’s credit as our protagonist that his presence is like the bad child that we chastise yet still love unconditionally. Bancroft channels Wallace Beery’s childlike insouciance into a character we care about...but shouldn’t!
The somewhat convoluted plot involves Bailey putting up bail money for his mistress Ruby Darling’s (Judith Anderson) brother who robbed a bank and made away with $500,000 in mostly worthless bonds. But Bailey falls for a rich girl Elaine Talbert (Frances Dee), daughter of a pineapple pioneer, who seems an ingenue but in truth is a sadomasochistic seductress. When Bailey is set up by his criminal cohorts for going to the police when Ruby’s brother skips town and supposedly takes the bail money (and Elaine) with him, a potentially explosive climax ensues.
BLOOD MONEY is a down and dirty Pre-Code film from a different aspect, neither purely gangster nor pro-law enforcement: the bail Bondsman walks that moral tightrope between the two. The film opens with a man packing his suitcase for quick getaway. His girl chides him until she opens the door to two detectives who are there to arrest him. BAM! Guy punches girl squarely in the face. Not a slap, mind you, full-on five-fingered fist! The next scene involves a clerk trying to get bail paperwork signed for the guy, sitting at a Judge’s bedside in the middle of the night. The medium shot makes sure to reveal both husband and wife in bed together! Another scene depicts a cross-dressing woman making a sissy joke to our gruff protagonist. Ha! Then we get moral corruption as business as usual until Elaine is introduced, an entitled woman in search of domination. She says so herself. In one of the final scenes, Elaine meets a desperately upset girl who just ran away from an “artist” who tried to rape her. Elaine becomes sexually charged and demands the address and she is last seen running towards his apartment. Wow.
Solid photography from DP James Van Trees with nice compositions and crowded tracking shots. The finale utilizes some nice suspenseful crosscutting that Hitchcock would later perfect. It’s an enjoyable Pre-Code romp through upside down morality and perverted obsessions.
Final Grade: (B)