Guy's brought back a lot of stuff from WWII. B-movie director Jack Bernhard brought himself back a wife and leading lady named Jean Gillie. Together they made a late night pulp noir so menacing it makes the cynical romance of "Gun Crazy" look like a Harlequin novel. "Decoy" sucker punched me when I first saw it. Being blindsided by a film is the greatest feeling in the world, and one that happens all too seldom. It takes the right combination of low expectation followed by high reward. Such was the case with "Decoy", a picture I initially only watched because it was on the same disc as "Crime Wave". I gave the disc a half hearted spin and soon became entranced by this hopeless low budget litany of betrayal, murder and avarice.
We open on a man's dirty hand's in a sink, his reflection in a broken mirror. I don't know of a more definitive opening image in film noir, a genre populated by men whittled down and parceled out by fate. The man, Dr. Lloyd Craig (Herbert Rudley), has a gaze somehow both zombie like and imbued with singular focused purpose. He hitches a ride into town, walks into an apartment and shoots Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) before being killed himself.
Sheldon Leonard is Police Sgt. Joe Portugal, a tough, no nonsense streetwise cop. I always loved Leonard in his brief appearance in "It's a Wonderful Life" as the bartender, and it's great to see him here in a larger role. He possessed the kind of voice people had in the 1940's, but don't anymore. Margot's hard boiled deathbed confession to Portugal takes us into the story.
It's the most far out of crime plots- a plan to dodge a death sentence by using a chemical antidote to gas chamber toxin. Margot's guy, Frankie (Robert Armstrong), is scheduled to meet his maker, and she plans on raising the guy from the dead so she can get her hand's on the resurrected sucker's stash of cash. Dr. Craig is the idealistic, altruistic doctor Margot seduces and manipulates; eroding his beneficent nature until he becomes her tool.
The reanimation of Frankie is the poverty row crime story version of the creation scene from "Frankenstein", right down to Frankie's proclamation "I'm alive." Even if the picture wasn't any good, it would still be notable for the gonzo prison break scenario. It's one of the rare noir's infused with horror and sci-fi element's. Considering many noir's mutual low budget pedigree with the more fantastic genre's, it's disappointing more filmmakers didn't exploit the potential for cross pollination (one personal favorite is Robert Siodmak's "Son of Dracula", a heartbreaking tragic horror noir gothic).
To reveal what happens from this point forward would be to take the dark joy away from experiencing some of the most wonderfully sinister plotting in all film noir. Suffice it to say, what happens to the men Margot has lined up is what inevitably happens to all dominoes meticulously arranged in a row. When the good doctor tries to pull out of his association with her, Margot says something that could be said to a million different guy's in a million different noir's, "You're in the middle. Deep. Over your head. No matter what you do now, you're still part of everything that's happened." He's yet another schlub who sold himself out for a pretty face, only to discover he'd been played, and now he's stuck with not only the dame, but her kill crazy soulless gangster boyfriend (Edward Norris), as well.
Dr. Craig is interesting as a character because it is the act of giving life that sends him spiralling into this nightmare; through helping to cheat death, he finds himself in a world of it. He again becomes Margot's instrument of resurrection, but this time he's bringing a box of cash from it's grave in a fog shrouded forest. By this time, the doctor has been reduced to a drunken, mindless Igor, digging in the dirt under his mistresses order's. The film ends with a cold, nihilistic finish, it's minor key harmonious with all that preceded it.
Women in film noir are a tough breed and Jean Gillie in "Decoy" may be the world heavyweight champion; an unholy arch femme fatale who uses her spiderweb of manipulation to try and snare a whole load of cash. Only thirty-three when "Decoy" was made, she returned to England afterwards, where a long career should have awaited her. Fate had other plan's. She died of pneumonia less than three year's later, having made only one more picture. Life just ain't fair sometimes.
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