Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Monday, Nov. 7 - Roaring City

Roaring City (1951)

Hugh Beaumont, who previous had played Michael Shayne for a series of detective movies at PRC in the 1946-47 season (entertaining films, but having little to do with the Shayne character as depicted in the Brett Halliday novels), put the trench-coat back on for a series of three hour-long feature films as detective Denny O'Brien, released in short succession through Lippert Pictures in 1951. One interesting element about these films is that each consists of two half-hour-long stories, almost as if one is watching back-to-back episodes of a television show.

Dennis O'Brien is hired by Barton to bet on Harper, an old fighter, against Lundy, placing the bets in the name of Steve Belzig. Lundy dies of a blood clot during the bout. At Barton's hotel, after the fight, Dennis finds Gannon and Lundy, where he learns that Belzig is Lundy's real name and that Barton and Gannon had the fight fixed for Lundy to take a dive in the first round, but Barton told Lundy to wait until the seventh and Harper didn't last that long. Dennis is knocked out and comes to to find police Lt. Burger in the room with him with Lundy dead. Accused of the murder and out on bail, Dennis starts his own investigation and finds that Gale Chase is connected with Gannon. He makes Gannon think that Gale is double-crossing him, but is arrested by Burger before he can harm Gale...(end first story... start second story)... Irma Rand hires Dennis to pose as Ted Fallon...

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