Please excuse the rambling nature of this review. Thank you in advance! :)
Hi. Today I'm reviewing the film Riff-Raff from 1947. This is a film noir starring Pat O'Brien, Anne Jeffreys and Walter Slezak, and it was directed by Ted Tetzlaff. Oh dear. I can scarcely read that. In any event. Sorry, I am butchering that name. He later directed The Window as it turns out, and I have to say that I enjoyed this movie very much. It was not one of the top 10 films noir of all time, but it was fun. It was just fun. Pat O'Brien as the detective, he plays a guy named Hammer, interestingly enough, and it took a while for me to figure out that his first name was Dan.
In any event, they kept calling him Hammer, and I kept thinking of Mike Hammer. But no, this is Dan Hammer, and he's supposed to be in Peru or Panama. He's in Panama, right. I'm just fact checking here. I remember the movie, but I just saw it last night. Yeah, so anyway, yeah, I really thought it was a lot of fun and I thought, this guy, he just hands out a card to everybody and says, oh yeah, I'll take care of that for you. Oh, oh, you have a parking ticket. No problem. Your brother was arrested for robbery. I can take care of, he can take care of everything, but apparently himself. But no, he, he's a good hardboiled, maybe soft-boiled, softly hardboiled, something like that. There's an element of humor to this movie that just kind of comes out in odd ways, even though he does get beaten up at one point rather severely.
The implication is, I mean, the guy is sketching as this thing is happening and Walter Slezak plays the sketcher and he is good at that sort of thing. A guy who would sit by sketching something idly while somebody's being tortured, beaten up. So in any case, the scenes between them are good and he gets involved in looking for this map.
And the thing that gets me is this map is in his office. It's brought, you find this out early on. It's not like a big spoiler or anything, but everybody's looking for this map, which is a McGuffin, but it's also hanging there in his office and somebody who's looking for it actually passes it at one point and he seems to just, it's like it blends in so much that nobody sees it, I guess? Something to that effect. Anyway, overlooking the lack of likelihood that somebody looking for a map specifically would ignore the scrap of paper hanging on a bulletin board or whatever it was.
It's a fun movie. That's all I'll say. That's all I'll say along with everything else I've already said. Yeah, it would be a lot easier if I could actually talk to you rather than me trying to script anything, because I'm just an unscripted sort of person when you come right down to it. Either that or I'm doing this whole review all over again, and the answer to that is no, I'm not doing it all over again. What else were I going to say about this movie? Oh, Pat O'Brien is just so cool. He's just such a cool guy.
I don't know what it is about him. Apparently he played either a priest or a cop in previous movies and I know I've seen other movies with him in it playing a priest or something. Maybe a cop, I don't remember. But he's just very appealing.
He's such a nice guy and at the same time he's hardboiled, but he's a soft hearted hardboiled. He's certainly not Sam Spade. He's not even really Philip Marlowe or he is actually Philip Marlowe. He is the ultimate Philip Marlowe maybe in a sense, because he really seems to have a heart beating beneath that "I don't care" exterior. I think I've rambled on long enough about this, but yeah, I mean, this is just a fun movie and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm glad Eddie Mueller picked it out as one to show on Noir Alley. TCM's Noir Alley. Yes.
Despite the rambling, I simply can't not mention Pop the taxi driver. Percy Kilbride. He's just funny. He's just great. He adds to the whole humorous element in wonderful ways. He's a wonderful character and the dog. Of course, the dog. I can't remember the dog's now. What was the dog's name? I don't know, but he's cool. I like the dog. You got to love a detective with a dog, right? Sure. I guess. Although a cat would be cool too, I think.
Alright, then. Take care, and I'll be seeing you, as Patrick McGoohan once used to say.
*****
Directed by Ted Tetzlaff
Screenplay by Martin Rackin
Produced by Nat Holt and Jack J. Gross (executive producer)
Just fun enough for an extra half-star! :)
I couldn’t find a trailer, but I did find this intro.
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