Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

zardoz-13 "Baby Face" director Alfred E. Green's provocative mystery "Cover-Up" lives up to its title. This deceptively bland movie concerns a homicide in a rural town, and everybody in the town hated the individual who was gunned down in his own home. An outsider who represents a large insurance company arrives, but he doesn't accept the questionable the story that everybody else buys. They believe the victim committed suicide. Nevertheless, the sheriff does his best to shield the real murderer from exposure for the crime. Initially, the hero sticks around to prove his theory about murder rather than the contrived charge of suicide. Eventually, however, the insurance man changes his point of view and adopts the perspective of the sheriff. Meantime, he encounters the girl of his dreams, and they fall in love. "Cover Up" received several negative reviews, but I think that these spectators have misjudged this modest but effective movie. Interestingly enough, one of the two scenarists, Jonathan Rix was actually leading man Dennis O'Keefe. "Highway Dragnet" scribe Jerome Odlum penned this offbeat melodrama that benefits from "Hitler Gang" lenser Ernest Lazlo's atmospheric cinematography.Chain-smoking Insurance Detective Sam Donaldson (Dennis O'Keefe of "Raw Deal") is dispatched by his company to investigate the apparent suicide of a policy holder, Roger Phillips, in a closely-knit small, Mid-western town. Sam discovers many provocative things about this suicide that don't add up and leads him to suspect Phillips didn't commit suicide. Instead, Sam concludes that the suicide was really murder. When the movie opens, we see a train pull into a railway depot and a fashionably attired woman, Anita Weatherby (Barbara Britton of "So Proudly We Hail") gets off it with Christmas packages piled high to her chin. Naturally, Anita cannot hold the load and drops some presents. Gallantly, Sam volunteers to help Anita, and the seeds of romance are sown. Sam is baffled when he learns that Phillips has already been buried; no coroner's report has been filed; and the bullet that killed him is missing. Furthermore, according to the undertaker, the body contained no powder burns from a gun having been discharged at close range. Eventually, cantankerous Marlowe County Sheriff Larry Best (William Bendix of "Detective Story") not only provides Sam with the bullet that he found at the scene of Phillips' death, but also that he states that a Luger was the kind of automatic pistol used to kill Phillips. Meanwhile, Sam's superior at the Insurance agency tells him to get to the bottom of the case. Before long, Sam learns that Anita's father, Stuart Weatherby (Art Baker of "The Beginning or The End"), had given the local town doctor a Luger that he brought back with him from World War I. Mistakenly enough, Sam suspects that Stuart committed the crime. Indeed, Sam has the local newspaper publish a false story to lure Stuart into showing up at the late doctor's house to incriminate himself. Stuart's housekeeper burns the newspaper with the fake article in it and then burns Weatherby's decades old beaver coat handed down to him by his own father. When the dead man was found, the murderer stood over him with a coat dripping with water. Sam believes that a forensic specialist will be able to link the water that dripped off the coat to Stuart's coat, but the housekeeper burns the venerable coat. This doesn't prevent Stuart from taking the bait and falling into Sam's trap. The big resolution scene reveals that Stuart didn't kill the policy holder. Instead, a doctor who died recently from a heart attack but who was held in high regard by the community was responsible for killing the man.William Bendix plays the suspicious sheriff, and we suspect that he may have been responsible for the crime. "Cover up" is a good movie, but it is far from conventional. The idea that a murderer could get away with a crime because his exposure as a murderer would ruin his reputation is an interesting concept.

blanche-2 Dennis O'Keefe stars in "Cover Up," a 1949 film also starring William Bendix and Barbara Britton. O'Keefe is insurance investigator Sam Donovan, who comes to a small town during the Christmas season to investigate the suicide of a man who had a $20,000 insurance policy; if it wasn't suicide, the policy pays $40,000. So far we're not talking about any numbers that have meaning for anyone in 2014, but this was a bundle in 1949 when the average annual salary was $3900.Everyone insists the man committed suicide, but there is no gun to be found, and a delay in getting the coroner's report, not to mention the laissez faire attitude of the sheriff (Bendix). Everyone is very vague about where their own gun is, to whom they lent it, and when. This includes Stu Weatherby (Art Baker), one of the town's most prominent citizens. Sam has met Weatherby's daughter (Britton) and fallen for her. But supposing her father committed the murder? Decent film where nothing really stands out except possibly the fresh young beauty of Barbara Britton. O'Keefe was a solid leading man and played this type of role often. It was fun to see Virginia Christine, a TV staple, and the woman who sold us Folger's Coffee for so many years. Doro Merande made the most of her part as the Weatherby housekeeper.All in all, okay.

RanchoTuVu An insurance investigator (Dennis O'Keefe) arrives in a small town right at Christmas time to find out about an apparent suicide that his company may have to pay out for. He's met an attractive inhabitant (Barbara Britton) on the train ride into town. The person who O'Keefe's character is supposed to believe killed himself turns out to have been very unpopular. The evidence of his death points not to suicide but to murder, though everyone in the town from the bus driver to the sheriff (William Bendix) seem totally unfazed about what has happened. This could have been a lot more exciting if the townspeople had gone farther in trying to stop the investigation. They are all so nice and yet this guy is dead, and not by his own hand. So, ergo, it would seem that they are, in fact, not so nice after all, and that this town is covering up murder, though the film seems to be telling us that that is OK, that the dead guy somehow had it coming and that the spirit of Christmas overrides the evil of his murder. Nonetheless, a few parts stand out for being bizarre, most especially the one played by Doro Merande as Hilda, the housekeeper for Barbara Britton and her family, who in one scene is outside setting fire to the dad's fur coat and later tells everyone that it was an accident. All in all, though this is a strange movie, which is a good point, it seems shackled and prohibited from reaching its true realization.

bensonmum2 Before his company will pay out, an insurance investigator (Dennis O'Keefe) arrives in a small town to look into an apparent suicide. But he immediately begins to suspect something's not quite right. No gun, no powder marks, no bullet, no coroner's report, and no sheriff's report seem to lead to no suicide. Was it suicide – or was it something even more sinister? It may not be the noir I was expecting, but Cover-Up is a nice little 40s style mystery. The plot kept me going up to the end. It's full of red herrings and I could have never guessed the outcome. Other than the It's a Wonderful Life style ending, I've got nothing to complain about. The cast is more than capable with Dennis O'Keefe, William Bendix, and Barbara Britton giving nice performances. I'm not all that familiar with Britton, but it's easy to see why she was a Revlon Girl for more than a decade. The cast also features Doro Merande who steals every scene in which she appears.I picked up the DVD on the budget Geneon label. If you don't mind a lack of extras (and that includes the absence of a menu), it's not a bad deal for the money. The cover art is misleading. I have no idea what movie it was taken from, but it most certainly wasn't Cover-Up.