Yorick
Our hero's a creep, comes off obnoxious and entitled--treats the lady like trash . . . yet . . . she believes he didn't really murder her husband in the Japanese prison camp and so will help him because . . . because he's such a jewel?
And the Japanese torturer just happens to go to a CHINESE restaurant at the same exact moment our hero and his deluded lady friend are eating there!
How'd he get into the U.S.?
A couple of nice touches amid the tedious unfolding:
1) The above-mentioned Chinese restaurant in L.A.'s Chinatown seemed authentic (maybe even location?). By the way, our hero and lady stiffed the restaurant--they ran out without paying (he could've tossed some bucks on the table--always a cool maneuver and one I like to employ myself wherever possible).
2) Very moving was the exchange with the Japanese mom about her son who died fighting in the 442nd Regiment. (I'm glad the lady got an acting gig, but where was Anna May Wong? She would've been perfect.)
Spikeopath
The Clay Pigeon is directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Carl Foreman. It stars Bill Williams, Barbara Hale, Richard Quine and Richard Loo. Music is by Paul Sawtell and cinematography by Robert De Grasse.Jim Fletcher (Williams) is a survivor of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp who awakes from a coma with amnesia, and a charge of treason against him! Escaping hospital he aims to recover his memory and hopefully clear his name. The secret may be with another ex-POW inmate and the wife of the man who was killed on account of his supposed treason.Stripped down to the bare essentials by Fleischer, The Clay Pigeon is a one hour TV episode in essence. Dealing in that old noir favourite, that of amnesia, the director doesn't hang around to build any sort of supporting characters. This is firmly a two character piece as Williams and Hale (real life husband and wife) run through a narrative that has her initially hostile towards him, only to then unsurprisingly warm to him as events conveniently fall into place to prove his innocence.There's a willingness to balance out the anti Japanese slant that initially hangs over the story, and a twist in the tale, whilst hardly a surprise, earns writer Carl Foreman some grace to forgive the poor contrivances elsewhere. The night time sequences are nicely noirish, without really adding any sort of psychological dimension to the atmospherics, and the cast are adequate as per the quality of production. All told it's an enjoyable enough B-level noir out of RKO, even if it's hardly essential viewing. 6/10
bkoganbing
I'm not sure if Bill Williams and Barbara Hale were married at the time The Clay Pigeon was being made. Certainly their chemistry was apparent and is the best thing about the film. The film with barely an hour and a quarter running time did not have much time for plot development. Basically Bill Williams is a sailor who developed hysterical amnesia while in a POW camp in the Pacific. He comes out of a two year coma and learns he's to be tried for treason. He's been accused of selling out his fellow prisoners while in Japanese custody. Worse than that, he's accused of murdering one of his best friends while a POW.For a guy just coming out of a coma, Williams is a pretty agile person though he does retrogress at times. He heads for the widow of the man he's supposed to have murdered who is Barbara Hale. She's real reluctant to help him, but later when someone tries to kill them both she becomes a willing accomplice.Given the limited amount of characters in the film, there wasn't a terrible lot of suspense for me. In fact I figured out who was behind it about a third into the film, it was that obvious to the audience, but not to Williams. To be fair there were reasons why he wouldn't consider the possibility of what actually was going on.It was also just too too coincidental that he happened to run into the chief nemesis of the POWs, a sergeant who is played by Richard Loo whom they find in LA's Chinatown. The film had a lot of potential, it was a good idea, but it needed a far better script and direction.
MARIO GAUCI
Excellent 'B' noir - from the memorable opening sequence of a close-up of a sleeping man's face, with a couple of hands entering the frame to strangle him, to the exciting train-ride climax, which curiously anticipates the director's own THE NARROW MARGIN (1952) - with a topical, Hitchcockian plot of an amnesiac war veteran, accused of treason and of being party to murder, who goes on the run to prove his innocence. Despite unknown leads (including Bill Williams and Barbara Hale, a married couple in real-life and the parents of BUTCH AND SUNDANCE: THE EARLY DAYS [1979] star William Katt, which I unwittingly watched the very same day, and future director Richard Quine!), it's very stylishly handled by an expert in the genre, with special care given to the hero's hallucinatory flashes of his harrowing experiences in a Japanese P.O.W. camp.
AD
