Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

evanston_dad I watched "Decoy" on a Friday and barely remember enough about it to muster up this comment on the following Monday.I'm a devoted film noir lover, and it doesn't take much to satisfy me: I just need a bit of that noir atmosphere, hard-boiled dialogue, and moody cinematography to make one watchable. I don't usually expect much from the plot, since in these kind of movies the plot is many times beside the point. But the entire premise of "Decoy" is just too preposterous to bear. I might have been able to get past that if the other elements of the film had been better, but the acting, especially by Jean Gillie, who's given an "introducing" during the film's opening credits, is terrible, and every other aspect of the film is mediocre at best.Maybe worth seeing for a noir completist but otherwise one to pass by.Grade: D

jarrodmcdonald-1 Originally produced by Pathe/Monogram, Decoy is currently being issued on a disc with Crime Wave from Warners. The print has been beautifully restored, and while it was definitely shot on a limited budget, it does not look any cheaper than most film noir from that period. Jean Gillie, the British actress who makes her American film debut in this picture, is the ultimate femme fatale. Sheldon Leonard is one of the good guys this time, and as she spills her story to him, we are drawn into the action. There are so many memorable scenes and images in this film. Particularly, there is a point in the narrative where Miss Gillie runs a guy over with a car—and another one where she shoots a man out in the forest and just laughs about it. But she makes up for (some of) this when she helps save a friend from the gas chamber, but unfortunately he has a short future. Jean Gillie had a short future, too. She died three years after she made this film of pneumonia.

secondtake Decoy (1946)This kind of death row movie makes you appreciate how hard it is to pull off a great movie. Here, all the flaws show, almost textbook perfect. The acting struggles between pretty good (the lead female, the femme fatale one, Jean Gillie) to pretty awful (including, unfortunately, the lead male, a doctor, Herbert Rudley). The detective who shows up now and then (Sheldon Leonard), is actually pretty strong, a coldhearted, no-nonsense type, charmless, perhaps, but with some acting subtlety. (Leonard was a smart guy, actor and director for a lot of classic entertainment television years later.)But in "Decoy," notice how the archetypal elements are all there. The plot is as interesting as many melodramas, if a bit far-fetched in the one detail that is its hook. But there is no Joan Crawford to raise the whole thing up. Cinematographer Bill O'Connell did do the astonishing original 1932 "Scarface" and he makes this movie excellent in the night scenes, but much of the rest of it is merely functional. The director, Jack Bernhard in his first film (in a five year career), could have made more of all of this. When an actor flinches in reaction, it's obviously an overreaction a better director would have reshot. The music swells and soars. The prison priest is sombre. The nurse calls the doctor "darling" even though he's in love with someone else. But still, there are moments, and it has a great period feel to it whatever its flaws. And a line now and then pops up, crude and noirish. "Come here baby, I want to look at ya." Or the Frankenstein-like, "I'm alive, I'm alive!" Headlights signal across a lonely highway, men struggle with their unexplained passions, good women give bad women the eye, and innocent people die needlessly. The key brief moment that rises above is a man's grappling with being alive at all. And there is that box of money out there which everyone wants, and he's the only one who knows where it is, while he's actually alive and kicking.It's all in a day's work. Don't expect a cult marvel--it's no "Detour," not at all "Gun Crazy," to name two B-movie classics. It's a creaker with some involving moments, getting better in the second half, and with a campy last three minutes (the woman's laugh is worth the whole thing). But by the end, you might have to remind yourself about the beginning, before the big flashback.

JLRMovieReviews We open on a man who seems disoriented and who is walking on the side of a country road and moving slowly and deliberately like a zombie. Who is this strange man? And, what is he up to? We see him hitchhiking, getting a ride, and getting into town. He arrives at an apartment building, and as he goes up the elevator and on his desired floor, we see he is armed.Newcomer Jean Gillie narrates this story by flashback. She tells of how her man was in stir. She wants him out so that she can get her hands on his stolen loot that he had hidden and only he can find. The hitch is that he is about to get the chair, and she with an accomplice are planning on stealing a corpse and bringing him back to life.This definitely is a curiosity piece and perhaps the weakest of the lot in the Classic Film Noir Set #4. But still worth a look for its relatively fast pace and unique plot that, while it feels ahead of its time, it bites off more than it can chew. With its outlandish elements, the viewer may feel somewhat disappointed and/or dissatisfied. But overall for 70 minutes, it does entertain.