Such a frustrating disappointment

Fresh and Exciting

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Red Light is directed by Roy Del Ruth and adapted to screenplay by George Callahan from the story This Guy Gideon written by Don Barry. It stars George Raft, Virginia Mayo, Raymond Burr, Harry Morgan and Gene Lockhart. Music is by Dimitri Tiomkin and cinematography by Bert Glennon.Something of an oddity, Red Light finds George Raft up to his neck in religion, revenge and a smouldering Virginia Mayo. After his brother, a chaplain, is murdered, he sets off to find the killer, whom can be identified by a message scrawled in a Gideon Bible. Find the Bible, find the killer.It is brought into the film noir sphere of things via Glennon's photography, which kicks in at the hour mark and runs concurrent with the murky thematics in the narrative, Frisco a rain sodden place of sleaze. Other than that it plays more as a crime drama, albeit one with some decidedly spicy killings and another top villain turn from Raymond Burr. Tiomkin's musical cues are strange and not always in sync with what is happening on screen, while the biblical hermeneutics and various plot contrivances irk rather than perk.See it for Burr and Glennon's work, or if you fancy a weird blend of noir and ethical religio redemptions! 6/10

George Raft headlines this 1949 revenge noir. Raft plays the owner of a successful San Francisco trucking firm. His kid brother, US Army Chaplin Arthur Franz has just returned from service in the Pacific. Raft puts him up at a hotel till he gets settled in again.At the same time, Raymond Burr, a former book-keeper of Raft's is doing a bit in prison. Burr had helped himself to company funds but was caught. He of course blames Raft for his being jailed. When he finds out about Franz's return he quickly hatches a revenge scheme.His cell mate, Harry Morgan, is getting out of prison the next day. "Could you do me a favor for some cash?" Says Burr. Morgan is of course not adverse to some pocket money.Two days later, Morgan pays Franz a late night visit. He enters Franz's rooms and puts three slugs into him. Raft, arrives a short time later for a visit where he finds Franz still clinging to life. Raft asks who was the shooter but only gets some whispered words about the bible. Franz then expires.Raft returns to his office and starts loading his .45, he intends to find the killer and dispense some payback. Police Detectives, Barton MacLane and William Phillips soon come a calling. They wish to know if Franz had said anything before dying. Raft is not the least bit helpful in that department. The detectives tell Raft to back off and let them do their job.Raft can find out nothing on the deed and this just eats away at him. A week later, it dawns on him that maybe his brother meant he had written something in the hotel room bible. He bribes a hotel bellboy, Stanley Clements, to get him into the room. The bible has disappeared. Raft has Clements bring him a list of people who have stayed in the room since his brother.First up on the list is Virginia Mayo, a night club singer from Los Angeles. A quick trip to LA finds Miss Mayo. He tosses her apartment and finds a picture of several men in Army garb, including Franz. Mayo soon shows and Raft gives her the third degree. It turns out that Mayo's brother and Franz had been in the same unit in the Pacific. It was just a freak thing she had stayed in the same room as Franz. Mayo has just lost her job so Raft offers her one. Raft sets Mayo up in in his San Fran apartment. He wants her to hunt down the other names on his list of hotel guests for that room.Now Raymond Burr shows up just fresh out of prison. The first thing Raft does when he sees him, is work him over. Raft figures Burr had a motive for murdering Franz. Detectives Maclane and Phillips soon put a stop to the beating. They inform Raft that Burr has the perfect alibi. He was still in Prison when the murder happened.As Mayo tracks down the names on the list, Raft pays them all a visit. He quizzes them all about whether they took the bible from the hotel room. It is not till the last name, Phillip Pine, that he gets an affirmative. Pine is an Army vet who lost his sight in the service. He had checked into the room to kill himself. A hotel employee had talked him out of it. The man had then read to him out of the bible. Pine had taken the bible with him when he returned to his wife and family. Raft offers to buy the bible from Pine, but someone, Mayo, has already been there to grab the bible. Raft returns to his office to look for Mayo.While all this is going on, Burr has taken his prison buddy, Morgan for a train ride. Morgan has become a loose end that needs to be trimmed. A quick one, two and a shove off the back of the train, settles the matter. Burr has also been hanging around Raft's office asking for work. Burr says he has learnt from his prison stay and just wants a chance to prove he has changed.To cut to the quick, Morgan has survived his toss from the train. He staggers in from the rain to Raft's offices while Raft, Mayo and the Detectives, Maclane and Phillips are having a talk about the case. They are looking at the bible for clues. There is a passage Franz had circled in the bible. "Vengeance is mine" Outside Raft's office, on the hallway stairs, Burr and Morgan run into each other. Both pull their guns and start blasting. Burr, not wanting Morgan to spill about his part in Franz's murder, is the better shot and down goes Morgan again. When everyone rushes out of Raft's office to see what is happening, Burr points at Morgan. He tells them that Morgan was a burglar and Burr had shot him in self defense.Morgan is however one tough monkey, he moans and points at Burr. "He paid me to kill your brother…" before he finally expires. Burr beats the feet for the roof exit with Raft and the Detectives in pursuit. Burr empties his revolver at Raft but misses. He then climbs up a big flashing neon sign to get to the next roof. He does not get far as he steps on some live electric wires. ZAP! Burr falls to the roof as Franz's words flash through Raft's mind. Vengeance is mine.

How satisfying! What better casting than George Raft as ANGRY MAN?? The Lord may say: "Vengeance is mine," but Georgie says "the heck with that noise -- this one's MY baby!" He rampages through a multi-state search-and-destroy mission in his quest to find the message hidden in the Gideon Bible that was in his brother's room when he was killed. Raymond Burr and Harry Morgan are his Mutt and Jeff antagonists: The irony of course being that as he fervently seeks the Bible, he fervently disregards it. But with a little Mayo on the side, things turn spiritual on Georgie, forcing him to listen to The Man before he can do a Godzilla on Godzie's old pal Burr. This is George Raft vs. The Lord, and it's anybody's match! Great fun all around, and there are even moral lessons, if you're into moral lessons, and intense but effective music to learn by, in the bargain. If you can find it, it's worth an hour and a half in your busy schedule, and you might even end up spiritually uplifted -- but stay out from under big trucks -- they're heavy!

Meticulously groomed George Raft was a notoriously one-note actor, but his monotone worked harmoniously in the flattened acoustic of film noir. In Roy Del Ruth's Red Light -- an unusual "religioso" thriller -- he owns a trucking empire; his brother, a priest and army chaplain, has just been gunned down in a hotel room. The clue to the assassin's identity is supposedly scrawled in the room's Gideon Bible, which has gone missing. Raft enlists the aid of Virginia Mayo to track down both Bible and killer. But when they succeed, Raft's plans for revenge are thwarted by the Deity, in the form of a huge electrical sign during a pelting rainstorm, underscoring the movie's moral: "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord." Raft's quest is jam-packed with every cinematic device that makes the noir cycle such delectable (if forbidden) fruit: flicked-away cigarette butts, rain-streaked windowpanes, grotesquely lit close-ups, San Francisco at its sleaziest. The film's heavies, Raymond Burr and Harry Morgan, win no congeniality awards; Burr's performance here may well be the nastiest in his impressive portfolio of thugs. Despite Dmitri Tiomkin's pietistic score, which lurches from the "Dies Irae" to the "Ave Maria" and back again, the spiritual side of the story seems clumsily overlaid, a late addition to the film's hard-core noir structure. And the title remains a puzzle. Is it meant as an injunction to "Stop" the cycle of bloodshed? A reference to the votive candle whose flame indicates that the Blessed Sacrament is in residence? Or to the electrocuting signage which ends the movie? No matter; it does little to dispel the deep, and deeply satisfying, thematic gloom.