Out In The 1950s Film Noir Night- Dick Powell’s Cry Danger

DVD Review

Cry Danger, starring Dick Powell, Rhonda Fleming, William Cannon, RKO Pictures, 1951

No way, no way on this good green earth was Dick going to let by-gones be by-gones, not after he had been framed, framed with a big-sized frame, squared, rectangled, rhombused [sic, okay], you name it framed, right, and then had spent a nickel’s worth of that lifetime frame up in Q, and Q, as anybody could tell you, would be happy to tell with no big fanfare, at least anybody, any guy, any right guy who had sniffed the walls of the place was no Sunday school picnic, not unless your Sunday school picnic was filled with tough cops, tough prison guards and even tougher inmates, inmates like his buddy, Danny, who had also been big, fat picture framed and was ready to move hell and heaven to get out, get out to his Rhonda , his sweet woman Rhonda (if she was still waiting, waiting all lonely night waiting as Dick said she would be, but you never know about women, lonely night waiting women, waiting a nickel’s worth now too) .

Besides Dick figured that there was the question of the dough, the dough from the bank robbery that he, and Danny, did not commit and that was laying around somewhere, a cool one hundred thousand dollars somewhere and he had an idea, a pretty good idea where. Yah, I can hear the reader groan what is the big deal about a hundred Gs, walking daddy money, barely enough to buy coffee and cakes today but back in the 1950s, the time of Dick’s frame, nothing to sneeze at, nothing at all, and the kind of dough that would have the coppers, the eager grafters, any self-respecting grifter, hell, maybe just lonely housewives and off-the-shelf hookers very interested in taking a piece of that pile. And it did

So Dick, as any pallid prison pardoned guy in his right mind would do, started after the money, after the dough, and he suspected that the dough trail would lead him to the frame, and that lead would probably put him at Cannon’s door, Cannon his old boss, and running companion before he, Cannon, got ideas about going big time, big time at some other guy’s expense. His. And while Dick had taken his beatings when he was younger, had done some small times, a few months here or there in some county cell for some misbegotten caper, he was not built to take another guy’s time. And so in the end brother Cannon was a marked man, a Dick-marked man. The only question was how he was going to get it. The dough was going to be icing on the cake, services rendered, twenty thou for each sweaty stinking year up in Q. And things started to come together once he landed in town, once he got L.A. under his feet, once he checked this and that out and began to draw the noose around old Cannon’s head.

But wouldn’t you know, know just like the sun rises in the east, that a dame would gum up the works, gum it up bad and twist him inside out before she was done. Yah, a dame. See Dick told Danny he would look in on his wife, Rhonda, Rhonda of the flaming red hair and the meaningful looks back in the days when she was his girl, before good-looking smooth-talking maybe willing to cut a corner or seven Danny swept her off her feet and left him hanging. But a nickel’s worth without a man, an around man anyway, can make a girl lonely. And then they, Dick and Rhonda, had those old torches to cut up, and like a lot of good intentions that Dick look-in turned into something else, an old flame thing. And Rhonda depended on that, depended on that old time feeling. So as Dick closed in on Cannon, she started closing in on him.

Of course along the way Dick took a couple of off-hand beatings, par for the course when serious, serious 50s dough, was about, gave a couple, also about par for the course for the same reason, was in and out of trouble with the coppers who were looking for that elusive dough as well, has a few well-deserved drinks, bought and paid for by all kinds of eager-beavers trying to loosen him up (foolish guy and dolls, didn’t they know Dick was not the buying kind, no way) , smoked about ten thousand cigarettes, some serially (unfiltered of course), and kept up a line of proper film noir guy who has been around the block patter before the fall…

And hence this film.