Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Powerful

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Rather than let the police solve the murder of her wealthy father, the daughter (Joyce McKenzie) enters into the shady underworld to find the responsible party behind her father's murder. This underworld centers around a swanky nightclub named "The Vogue", with Steve Gibson and the Red Caps as its in-house musicians. Upstairs resides the club's presumed owner, a hulky Mr. Armitage (Albert Dekker) and his presumed assistant Stretch Norton (Herd Hatfield). McKenzie works her way upstairs by getting in close with the actual shooter, a messenger boy named Jackie Wales (Frank Clement), who agreed to kill her father for five thousand dollars. Why the decision to kill the father was taken seems ridiculous, but things move along fairly well, as Mr. Armitage makes a fine role in the collection of B movies sadistic bad guys, as he takes care of business while a player piano churns out Chopin. Dekker's role resembles something Raymond Burr might have played in a better funded post-war crime drama. Nonetheless, the director Edward L. Cahn finds some excellent scenes to fill up the screen.

Oddball Film-Noir. A Low-Budget Gem from Low-Budget Director Cahn. It is Quite the Quirk This. A Movie that has Gritty Characters with Hard-Boiled, Cold Blooded Killers. One (Stanley Clements) Looks and Acts Like a Teenaged Ticket Taker at the Local Bijou.Albert Dekker and Hurd Hatfield are a Nasty Duo. Hadfield has a Bi-Sexual Bent and Dekker Again Plays One of His Sublime Criminals with the Personality of a Profiled Psycho Killer. The Females are Joyce MacKenzie and Myrna Dell, Both Engaging Enough in Their Perspective Personas, Although MaKenzie Seems a Bit Old for a College Student.The Tone of the Thing is The Thing Here. Director Cahn, As Always, Manage to Take a Miniscule Budget and Make it All Look Attractively Demented with Echoes of Pulp. It Should Also be Mentioned that the Negro Musical Group at the Nightclub Stands Out and at the Beginning of the Decade Foreshadow a Musical Revolution just a Few Years Away when Race Records Crossed Over.Overall, a B-Noir that is Made Interesting by its Very Cool Ambiance and Some Off Beat Actors. Worth a Watch for Fans of Film-Noir, B-Movies, and Those that Appreciate a Strange Atmosphere.

**SPOILERS** Using the intermission between two movies at a local theater as cover Blue Streak Messenger Jackie Wales, Stanley Chements, goes out to big-time businessman Authur Mansfield's, Franklyn Farnum, home with his gangster boss Armitage(Albert Dekker) behind the wheel to murder him and get back,to the movie house, just in time for the second feature. Mansfield was a torn in the side to Armitage's nightclub rackets and by getting ride of him and then framing his murder on his business rival Frank Niles, John Dehner, was a stroke of genius on Armitage's part; knocking out two threats to his criminal operations with one stone.One thing that Armitage didn't count on was that Mansfield's young daughter Laura, Joyce Mackenzie, was at his home visiting from out of town and the greed and brazenness of the person who did his killing messenger Wales.After recognizing Jackie Wales in a police lineup Laura, who got a glimpse of the fleeing gunman, starts to work on Jackie by getting overly friendly with him. This lead her to the nightclub that his boss Armitage runs. Getting a job as the cigarette girl there from the real boss Stretch Norton,Hurd Hatfield, who feel in love with her. Laura was now in a position to get the goods on both gangsters, Armitage & Norton, and at the same time solve her dad's murder. After Jackie gets the hell beat out of him by Armitag, who likes to do his beatings to the sound of music, for asking for more money for the "hit" he did for him he later writes out an "insurange policy" by confessing in writing to Mansfield's murder. Jackies policy implicates his boss Armitage in case he, Jackie, ended up dead and then stupidly goes back to blackmailing him. Jackie gets this idea from Armitage's mob-doll Alice, Myrna Dell, who didn't realize that he was only a stooge to Norton, not visa versa, and together with Jackie, ends up getting murdered by him. While all this is going on the police are using Laura, without her knowledge, and Frank Niles, with his cooperation, to trap both Armitage & Norton in order to get "The goods" on them in Mansfield's murder. Laura who fell in love with Norton who unknowing to her had her father murdered didn't find this out until the end of the movie when Niles, with the police and Laura listening in and recording the conversation, got Norton to spill the beans on him and his operation. This was to make him, Niles, a partner after he earlier murdered his former partner Armitage, who was getting a bit drunk and a lot out off line, and made it look like self-defense. Decent film-noir with both Joyce Mackenzie and Hurd Hatfield doing as good as they could as two star-struck lovers who up until the end of the movie didn't really known that much about each other even though they were planing to get married.

If you find yourself up all some stormy Tuesday night with a bad cold, this movie may be just the thing to go with your hot toddy. It's a grade C or maybe D movie with a couple of good lines, plot twists and not-too-bad performances. A young(ish) lady home from college witnesses her father's murder by a delivery boy; when the police don't move fast enough for her, she turns sleuth herself. Most remarkable is Hurd Hatfield (the charmless star of The Picture of Dorian Gray five years earlier and virtually the only recognizable name in the cast), now come to this poverty-row sump of the movie industry. Destination Murder qualifies as film noir, but just barely; Noir can be cheap, but it's usually a little better than this.