At this point in Humphrey Bogart's career, he was now a well enough established actor to be given free rein of his choice of director while on loan to Columbia Studios. He came up with John Cromwell who had given him his first break in the play Swifty, back in the 1920s. Cromwell decided to work with him again, but there was a problem, they had no story. According to Cromwell; they finally got this one , a noxious sort of thing , but I felt perhaps we could make something of it.' The 'noxious sort of thing' in question was Dead Reckoning, which turned out- unintentionally, it seems- to be almost a parody of The Maltese Falcon. Just like Sam Spade, Rip Murdock ( Bogart ) is trying to avenge the death of his partner; in this instance they were formerly paratrooper pals. It also borrows shamelessly from the film Double Indemnity, the same idea of a narrative voice-over commentary by Bogart. Even to the point of Fred MacMurray's repeated references to the smell of honeysuckle, in Double Indemnity, while Bogart harps on the smell of jasmine in the hair of co-star Lizabeth Scott. Sadly there is not the same friction and chemistry between Bogart/Scott as with MacMurray/Stanwyck. Bogart in this movie does not really seem interested in his sexy leading lady Scott, and it shows on film. Sadly for Lizabeth Scott, as an actress she was not lucky enough to have been taken under the wing of a brilliant Svengali-like director, which had been the main factor in setting Lauren Bacall on the road to success. But I still found her performance is exceptional under the circumstances and more interesting than Bogart's. While not near one of his best films, it is still a curiosity to see for Bogart fans and Scott fans alike. Either you'll like it or you won't, I'll let the reader decide for themselves.
Review of Dead Reckoning
