bkoganbing Crime Against Joe is a modest noir thriller with much to be modest about. Red herrings as murder suspects are fine, but in this case too many were created in the story leaving a lot of loose ends in what should have been a more coherent script.The title character is John Bromfield a returned Korean War veteran with a severe drinking problem. That's how we first meet him, living with mom Frances Morris and trying to become a painter. Another Toulouse L'Autrec, taller, less talented and as big a boozer.But one night when Bromfield has had a snootful and gets a ride home from buddy Henry Calvin a cab driver, there's a murder of a woman and he's the number one suspect. Back in high school he was a big man on campus, but he's a flop now.Here's where it goes completely haywire. From the town drunk he sobers up real fast and with the help of Julie London a rollerskating server and singer at a fast food place he puts the pieces together.I knew Henry Calvin was in the cast. But the man with the girth best known as the rabblerouser from Ship Of Fools, the Wazir in Kismet and most of all Sergeant Garcia in Zorro is absolutely unrecognizable. That deep bass voice is not employed at all. Granted this was a program filler, but little care was taken with the preparation of Crime Against Joe.

secondtake Crime Against Joe (1956)The point of seeing a B movie like this isn't always to find a great masterpiece in the rough. There are the moments or originality, the bit performances, the style of photography or writing. But there is also the glimpse into a time period that sometimes seems more real exactly because it isn't all polished up and idealized.And this is a pretty interesting, not so bad movie. It's set and shot in Tucson in 1955 (there's a calendar on one wall), a very low point for Hollywood movies, and this is coming from the fringes of that (one of the producers was the "third writer" in "Casablanca). There is one star, of sorts, a white crooner (and looker) named Julie London, who is lovely and sincere and not half bad..John Bromfield is the centerpiece, and if he's a hair clunky, this makes him kind of more believable as a good-looking guy named Joe Manning on the outs. He's an ex-soldier who thinks he's an artist but knows not a very good one. He drinks too much. He wants a woman in his life, and the movie begins with him kissing his wise mother goodnight and he goes out on the town. "Well, I'm looking for a girl," he says to the singer from the bar (another torch singer, Alika Louis, who appears here in her only movie).One of the social revelations of the movie is attitudes toward drinking and driving. Joe gets hammered while sitting in his car, drives to a diner, and is visibly drunk as a couple of cops say hello to him (one even chuckles, as if it's kind of funny). More chilling encounters with the cops come later. A killer is bumbling around town, and it looks like it's either Joe (and we don't know it) or the cops are going to think it's Joe (and it's not). It's a pretty tense situation held back only by some occasional awkwardness.What makes it work, though, is the down to earth acting because it builds up the Hitchcockian mood of a wrong man under suspicion. Witnesses misinterpret things, evidence gets piled up based on presumptions. It's good stuff. And then Joe has to figure out the crime for himself, which he applies himself to with intelligence. (His acting gets better as he sobers up.)And by the end you see why the movie has its title. It's no masterpiece, but it has enough going on to keep a movie lover glue, I'm sure.

Movie Critic B minus... I watched this only because Julie London was in it...unfortunately the movie revealed that she is not nearly as pretty as her record album covers suggest...she has sort of a wedge shaped head what looks like a bad nose job. It didn't help that she was too old for the part she plays. I now understand why she never became a film star of note.Movie: Joe is a 30s something semi-loafer who lives off his mother and paints pictures...some sort of psychopath has been killing women in the small town he lives in. He is suspected of these murders by circumstantial evidence--his year high school pin is found near one of the victims. Julie London is in a love with him (he didn't know) and supplies him with an alibi. The quack psychiatrist who over reads things into poor Joe's past is the most realistic thing that happens in this plot.A sort of living nightmare murder rap against Joe closes in around him. Believable to a degree to any one with experience in these things.In the modern world with DNA evidence and such none of this would have happened (we hope).--but I would not count it out.I suspected the fat cab driver about mid way through the thing although at this point didn't really care as this script is so lame.There is a subplot about a sleep walker and her incestuous father that leads no where. Why was it even put in--to eat up some film time maybe? = B double minus. However gets a 5 because these kinds of judicial/police malpractice and psychiatric nonsense do happen. Also witnesses lying and distorting things. If not for that it deserves a 1. One reviewer said it was filmed in 5 days; I believe it and written on the fly.OK for a quick 60 minute watch.

MartinHafer Up until the end, I didn't mind this film too much--it seemed like an okay B-film from a small studio. However, by the time the credits began to role, I was irritated--irritated at such a poor payoff and such dopey acting by the real killer. I am sure audiences must have snickered at this! Joe is a war vet and full-time freeloader and binge drinker. On one of his many nights out, he happens to be about when a murder is committed and police assume he's the guilty party. There are people who can exonerate him and in the real world this would have happened, but the writer included a dangling plot element about a seemingly incestuous father and his creeped out daughter is never at all developed properly--and eventually it just dangles and disappears from the film. Later, after tracking down graduation pins from 11 years ago, they are able to get the real killer to appear...and overact horribly.The bottom line is that the film had promise but made nothing of it. Julie London and the rest of the cast are pretty much wasted and the film is disappointing when you put all the pieces together. Only worth your time if, like me, you have relatively low standards.