StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

dougdoepke Starts off well as amnesiac vet (Williams) is chased by mysterious forces including not so mysterious Naval Intelligence. Now he's got to unravel the puzzle before it catches up to him. Good thing he gets help from dead buddy's wife (Hale). That chase sequence from San Diego to LA is particularly well done, and in good noirish fashion. Then too, the fight in Hale's apartment almost had me yelling for help. Only a devoted married couple like Williams and Hale could make it so physically realistic. However, once events locate in LA, the story settles into a more familiar pattern. Unfortunately, a compromised script prevents the promising start from reaching front rank. Paradoxically, the screenplay is from ace writer Carl Foreman (High Noon; Bridge on the River Kwai, et al). I can only surmise that the brief running time (63-minutes) and a tight B-movie shooting schedule forced him to compromise the narrative in implausible fashion. For example—Hale's quick turnaround with escaped fugitive Williams, especially when she thinks he's responsible for her husband's death; the chance encounter with Japanese ex-prison guard Richard Loo; the cops unexplained boarding of the train in the middle of nowhere when they planned to wait in Glendale; but most of all, the angelic mother who allows a fugitive stranger she's just let in the door to hide in the same room as her infant son. These devices may expedite the plot, but they also come across as just that, plot devices-- too many, in my view, for what is also a pretty dense narrative. At the same time, guessing the mystery's real culprit becomes pretty easy, thereby undermining the suspense. Also, director Fleischer shows little of the personal engagement that distinguishes his other noirs. All in all, the movie adds up to an average programmer that unfortunately promises more than it delivers.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Snappy little known film noir thriller involving amnesia victim US Navy man and former Japanese POW inmate Jim Fletcher, Bill Williams. It's Fletcher who's to stand trial for treason as soon as he's recovered enough to be released from the Naval Hospital he's a patient in.Were kept in the dark to exactly what Fletcher did until he escapes from the hospital and gets in touch with is best friends Matt's, and fellow Japanese POW, wife Martha Gregory, Barbara Hale. It's through Martha that Fletcher expects to find out just what all the fuss is about him being a traitor to his country! It's then that we find out that it was Matt whom Fletcher was reported to have turned over to the Japanese for stealing food out of the POW camps mess hall! For that "herrndous" crime Matt was both tortured and executed by the Japs for not only theft but wanton disrespect for the mighty Japanese Empire and its God-like leader Emperor Hirohito!Not for one moment believing, but just playing along with him, a word of what Fletcher says about him being innocent in her husbands death Martha is later convinced in that he's telling the truth when both her and Fletcher are almost run off the road, after he kidnapped her, by these two thugs who were tailing them. It's later when o the lamb when both Martha and Fletcher are dining in this L,A Chinese Restaurant, the White Lotus, that the truth comes out to what all this mystery of Fletcher being a traitor to his country is really all about! That's when the owner non other then Ken "the Weasel" Tokoyama, Richard Loo, dropped in to pick up the weekly receipts! It was the Weasel who was in charge of the Japanese prison camp that Fletcher and Matt were held in! Not only that it's the Weasel who can prove Fletcher's innocence by exposing the real traitor who ratted out Matt, in him raiding the camp mess hall, to his Japanese captors!Had hitting thriller with the confused, due to his amnesia, Jim Fletcher on the run and at the same time trying to find out the truth to who set him up in being accused in turning in his best friend Matt Gregory to the Japanese who later had him executed! The only chance, besides the Weasel, that Fetcher has to prove his innocence is to contact his friend and former POW Ted Niles, Richard Quinn,in L.A who can prove that he was in fact a "Good Joe" who stuck by his fellow POWS through thick & thin. That's in Niles himself being together with both Fletcher and Matt in the Jap prison camp and knowing that he wouldn't under any circumstances, even the threat of death, turn over his friends, like Matt and himself, to the Japs to be tortured and executed!***SPOILERS*** The film gets even more stranger when it comes out that the Weasel is now, four years after the war, working with the L.A mob in a plan to get their hands on some 100 million dollars of US counterfeit currency that was stashed, before the attack on Pearl Harbr, in a secret safe house by the Japanese Government to be used to undermine the US economy when the war broke out! Heart-stopping final as Fletcher now held hostage by the Weasel and one of his accomplices fights for his life in preventing the Weasel & Co. from throwing him off a speeding train that he was tricked into boarding!

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.

robert-temple-1 This is a hot one. It is brilliantly written by Carl Foreman and directed by Dick Fleischer, a potent pair of talents. Although it is a B picture, it is certainly a top B. Bill Williams gets a rare chance to star in a film, and he does an excellent job of it. This is a typical postwar noir film about soldiers who have returned scarred from the War. It is an amnesia film, and those are always great fun: a guy wakes up in hospital, he can't remember what happened, he has to piece it all together before it is too late, and the clock is ticking. How many times have we seen that plot? And yet it never pales and is always intriguing, because the processes of lost memory are always compelling, especially when there is danger. Richard Quine and Richard Loo both shine in their respective roles, Loo as a totally convincing Japanese baddie and Quine as a strangely effete case of 'who knows what his game is', who as the film progresses has a great talent for de-focusing and looking aside in a guilty manner. There is an early cameo by the young Martha Hyer. The dame is Barbara Hale, and she has an excellent part which she fills admirably. She starts out by hating Williams because she thought he killed her husband in a Jap prison camp. However, things get murkier and murkier, and the plot is marvellously convoluted, the pace terrific, and the whole film has a breathtaking tension and is superbly done. Who needs big budgets?