Gabby, a wisecracking penniless bachelor with a flair for fast talking, fast horses and faster women (not necessarily in that order), finds another kind of work with his idle hands: auto mechanic. This Pre-Code melodrama/crime thriller races along like a speeding car, rattling off risqué jokes with piston pumping verve, thanks to the deft direction from Benjamin Stoloff and nice POV compositions and tracking shots from DP Henry Sharp.
Gabby (Edmund Lowe) finds work in a high-rise garage and quickly discovers it’s a Chop Shop, as his Brother-in-Law “Beef” (James Gleason) chooses to look the other way: this is Depression Era, after all! Of course, it’s not Melodrama without a Femme Fatale and the Boss’ girl Silver (Wynne Gibson) soon falls for Gabby. But the story isn’t about their secret romance (hell, the Boss doesn’t seem to care much), it’s about criminal racketeering and revenge. When Beef’s little boy Buddy (Dickie Moore) is struck by one of the stolen cars and crippled (temporarily), Beef seeks to assuage his own participatory guilt and ends up dead by CO. Gabby, knowing Beef was murdered, confronts the Boss and his mute henchmen, which leads to a thrilling climax of poetic justice by automobile.
Some interesting things. The boss uses a 1930’s type of text message to communicate with his henchmen and give them orders or to warn them of impending danger. The Boss’ henchman, an almost hunchbacked and leering man, mute and evilly expressive, may be the Big Boss pretending to be the apparatchik! Also, the garage hides a Speakeasy behind a chauffeured limousine on its upper floor, accessible only by entering the vehicle and exiting through the passenger side door! When Buddy is struck by the stolen vehicle, the event is created by some wonderful cross-cutting and quick tempo editing, then we see the child get run over! Damn, Pre-Code films were fucking harsh.
Finally, in the denouement as the Boss races down the multi-story ramp in his limousine, and his henchmen race upwards with police in hot pursuit, we get a bombastic dose of gravity (and gravitas) as the head-on collision sends the Boss’ car plummeting to a fiery death! And once again, we get to see the death with some neat miniature work. And my favorite part is the call-back in the finale: Gabby interrupted a wedding ceremony between some sideshow performers (Tod Browning, anyone?) in the very first reel and Stoloff give the little person Groom the final word: a blustery raspberry!
Final Grade: (B)