Accomplice (1946) User Reviews

Where film noir meets western

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 10 July 2016]

This film noir thriller was made by the notoriously cheap PRC studio although they do manage a handful of decently-shot car chases to break up the otherwise low budget narrative. It's a private eye film with Richard Arlen doing his best impression of Humphrey Bogart as a sleuth whose encounter with an old flame sets him off on a journey involving murder, deception, and all kinds of crooked activities.

The plots of these films almost write themselves and ACCOMPLICE is a rather undistinguished film for what it is. Veda Ann Borg's femme fatale is a bit wishy washy and the actress lacks the kind of magnetism and charisma to make her character truly work. Arlen is a bit of a damp squib too, although some of the supporting cast make for delightfully weaselly characters.

Once two thirds of the running time is up the action shifts to the desert and becomes more action-oriented, in fact it resembles a western for the most part which is a far cry from the metropolitan setting of the early part of the movie. ACCOMPLICE is a cheap and rather forgettable slice of film noir action although aficionados of the genre might well get a kick out of it.

Several homicides later

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 5 June 2014]

Richard Arlen steps into Humphrey Bogart's shoes as a hardboiled private detective who gets hired by his former flame Veda Ann Borg to find her missing husband Edward Earle. Some years earlier Borg left Arlen flat at the altar as she traded upward to marry a man with money. Earle's got it all right and may have a love nest going with Marjorie Manners.

He also has a mink farm and a body with his head blown off with a shotgun is identified by Borg. The local sheriff Archie Twitchell thinks that Arlen might well be an Accomplice to Earle's murder.

Several homicides later we learn the solution. Richard Arlen's Simon Lash has a lot in common with Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade.

This PRC film has the usual cheapness associated with Poverty Row. But they have an intriguing film. And you'll love as much as I did two desert rats in Francis Ford and Earle Hodgins and the racket they've got going.

Decent Second Feature

[boblipton · 5/10 · 27 May 2020]

Richard Arlen is an eccentric P.I. His last case finished profitably, he's spending his time and money on old books, and is not looking for new cases. However, when Veda Ann Borg walks in,he changes his mind. Her husband had suffered a bout of amnesia and has now disappeared. Arlen suspects he's been tapping the till, but when he turns up dead, the case goes in a new direction.

It's a decently directed PRC mystery, with lots of actors past their sell-by date: not only Arlen, but Tom Dugan, Marjorie Manners, and even Francis Ford as an old coot. It's cheaply produced, of course, with most of the scenes shot on small sets, and occasional shots of Arlen walking into buildings, but the final third opens up a bit, with some location shooting around Shea's Castle in Lancaster. It's a well-tangled mystery, so that's a plus, but strictly second feature all the way through.

Muddled Screenplay Undercuts Results

[dougdoepke · 27 May 2018]

Plot-heavy detective programmer. Among the many characters, you may need a scorecard to keep up with who's impersonating whom. Nonetheless, Arlen's got the needed edge as PI Simon Lash-- (with a name like that, the creators may have hoped a movie series would emerge). Too bad that great vixen Veda Ann Borg can't seem to get motivated in what amounts to a crucial spider woman role. It's one of the few times I've seen her walk through a part. Though the many traveling shots along California's post-war highways and byways are well staged, filming lacks appropriate mood and atmosphere. Still, whose inspiration was it to film around that castle in the desert, a real one, not a studio creation. Those are memorable scenes and perhaps the movie's high point. At the same time, casting comes up with a number of colorful characters to spice things up-- Twitchell's cagey sheriff, Hodgins' assertive caretaker and Ford's craggy old man, for instance.

A few period years later and a pretty good noir might have emerged to flavor up the turgid storyline. Anyway, for folks interested in vintage street scenes and isolated castles, this is a good flick to check out. Otherwise, the 60-minutes remains a flawed programmer that still manages a few compensations.

Murky turkey, herky-jerky

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 3/10 · 8 May 2004]

'Accomplice' is a low-budget noir caper film, starring Richard Arlen after his career was long past its peak. I always liked Arlen; during the peak years of his career (late silent era to mid-30s) he was almost the exact equivalent of the modern Harrison Ford: an action hero, in the classic adventurer mould, who still had credibility as a serious actor in thoughtful dramas. 'Accomplice', regrettably, was made (on a VERY low budget) after Arlen's energies had run out, and it's a poor example of his craft.

Private detective Simon Lash (Arlen) is contacted by Joyce, an ex-girlfriend who jilted him at the altar. Joyce is played by Veda Ann Borg, who always looked trashy, and who gives a mechanical performance in this movie that makes me wonder if she's related to the Borg Collective (in Star Trek). Joyce's husband Jim has been suffering from bouts of amnesia, and now he's gone missing altogether. Jim was a bank executive, and Private Eyelash (I mean, private-eye Lash) is a cynical sleuth, so he naturally assumes that Jim's 'amnesia' was a pretext for embezzling bank funds. But then Lash investigates, and no funds are missing. Then, of course, he investigates a little more, and...

'Accomplice' sets up an interesting premise, but the script gets murkier — and the characters' motivations more contrived — as it proceeds. Noir films usually take place in a world where everyone is corruptible, everyone is motivated solely by self-interest, and the very few people who don't conform to those rules are subsidiary characters who get exploited or bumped off very early in the proceedings. 'Accomplice', however, belongs to that dismal subgenre which I call 'goodie noir', in which everybody in the world is a crook or a scoundrel EXCEPT the hero, who is always motivated by purely virtuous instincts and decency. I find this sort of story utterly implausible. Down these mean streets a man must walk, yadda yadda.

'Accomplice' is made even more painful because it's made on a wretchedly small budget. The film's director Walter Colmes (who?) shows an Ed Wood-like penchant for setting up his camera at the most ludicrous angle, over and over. We get too many car chases in this movie, and in each car chase we get lots and lots and lots of close-ups of spinning tyres. Ed Wood was an angora fetishist; is it possible that Walter Colmes was a rubber fetishist? The ending of 'Accomplice' is extremely contrived. Former silent-film star Francis Ford (John Ford's older brother) gives a welcome performance in a supporting role. I'll rate 'Accomplice' 3 points out of 10.

Bad movies sometimes have a strange charm, but this one, only slightly

[christopher-escher · 3/10 · 8 August 2008]

There are a couple of B-noir movies--Shack Out on 101 comes to mind--that sometimes entertain with their low-budgetness. Sometimes, like in Detour, they absoltely shine.

Accomplice has a good, writerly story in there somewhere. I gather from the credits it's from some serial novel about a private detective. But the writerly touches are so buried in the low budget and crummy acting that it's hard to find it. Still--it flashes through sometimes. An eccentric desert castle for the denouement. A detective who loves old books and Jesse James mythology. Some cool location shots in Lancaster. Chase scenes along Route 66. Some potentially interesting flirtation between old lovers and new lovers.

But it never comes together as the movie races along (only 60 minutes!) and the actors try to find the camera. There's also a great blooper where the lead PI ends a scene forgetting his line: "Better take your sleeping pills, it's a long way to....(pause) uh...." CUT.

Guess they missed that one in the editing room. Nonetheless, some lowbudget guilty fun, highlighting the thing line between bad/good and just bad/bad.

"Women, trouble! Here I go looking for more!"

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 20 May 2017]

You could say the same thing for convoluted scripts, rushed out by the dozens after the popularity of film noir sprang up in the 1940's. This poverty row thriller offers some second string leads and sidekick character actors in the leads-former A star Richard Arlen and hard-boiled Veda Ann Borg headlining a puzzling story involving a private eye, a dame, a supposed missing husband and a fraud scheme.

There's some decent dialog, a great car chase in the middle of nowhere and some interesting characterizations, but the plot and action are so all over the map, you need a compass to figure it all out. The supporting cast is entirely made up of unknowns, taking away from the sense of familiarity that you get from most old B movies.

When they start showing the map of Arlen's trip and end up in Mesa, Arizona, I had to remind myself of my tag-line for the wretched horror film "Mesa of Lost Women", which like this, I referred to as a "Mess of a bad movie". That plot twist alone makes this seem like a separate film than the first half. The only accomplice to this is two thumbs down.

Richard Arlen Still Had It!!

[kidboots · 6/10 · 8 December 2015]

Richard Arlen proved he hadn't lost his looks or his ability to put over his style of easy going acting but he was given no help in this movie which started off in an urban setting, moved on to a mink farm!! then ended up in the West where Arlen, by this stage of his career, was more at home. It was typical P.R.C. fare which meant it was not that great!!

Arlen played Simon Lash (a pulp detective created by Frank Gruber who also had a hand in the script), a suave private eye who is approached by an old girl friend who left him at the altar to marry a rich banker, Bonniwell. He is now missing with suspected amnesia and Lash is convinced that the only reason for Bonniwell's disappearance is the old story - embezzlement of funds but Joyce (Veda Ann Borg) is convincingly upset enough to make him think there is more to it!! In the meantime another banker goes missing and Lash then finds a secret love nest that Bonniwell has set up with Evelyn Price (Marjorie Manners), the only person in the movie who seems genuinely concerned at events. Unfortunately she isn't around for long and once again Lash is on the trail of a mystery assailant who leads him to New Mexico and a castle run as a hideout by a crooked marshall for criminal fugitives.

By the time the surprise mastermind shows up viewers are too bored to care - let's say that Lash had a lucky escape when he was left at the church. Veda Ann Borg made dozens of these movies and she was a welcome addition as the hard boiled Joyce. Every detective needs a side kick and Tom Dugan was adequate in the role. Silent movie hero Herbert Rawlinson has the small role of Springer. Director Walter Colmes tried to inject some excitement into the endless chase scenes by shooting close-ups of the speeding cars - close enough so you can read the make of the car!!

Routine....easy to skip.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 1 April 2021]

While Richard Arlen's early film career was amazingly successful and he was featured in the first Oscar winner, "Wings" (1927), despite his good looks the roles he was given in movies declined over the years until he was consigned to playing only in B-movies in the 1930s and 40s. Most of these are modestly enjoyable but slight films made for third-rate studios like PRC...and "Accomplice" is certainly a prime example of the sort of subpar Bs he made during this era.

In this movie, Arlen plays a private detective who makes the mistake of taking a case from his old girlfriend...a woman who ended up leaving him for another man. Soon, he's embroiled in a weird case where things just didn't seem to make sense until late in the movie. It went from Arlen being hired to find a missing husband who experiences bouts of amnesia to a case involving murder!

The film has some action and the plot is a tad confusing and muddled. None of it is bad....though none of it is particularly good either. An okay time passer and nothing more.

Cars moving across the road at a rapid pace

[blanche-2 · 5/10 · 20 November 2021]

If you want to see long, long car rides that go for miles, 1946's Accomplice is for you.

The film stars Richard Arlen, Veda Ann Borg, and Marjorie Manners. Arlen plays private detective Simon Lash, who takes a case from his ex-girlfriend Joyce (Borg) who can't find her husband, Jim Bonniwell. He has, she says, bouts of amnesia, which Lash doubts.

It quickly becomes a real mess. First, it seems as if hubby has not one but two girlfriends, and both seem to be in love nests, one with a woman named Evelyn Price (Manners). Then Lash receives a call from a sheriff in Palmdale about a dead body. Joyce identifies the body as the missing Bonniwell.

This film lifts driving over hill and dale to a new art form. At 68 minutes, it seems like about fifteen of them are spent watching cars move.

Not much to this, except I liked Arlen's relaxed manner. Low budget and a bad print.

Missing Person Report...

[azathothpwiggins · 28 September 2021]

ACCOMPLICE stars Richard Arlen as private investigator. Simon Lash. He's on the trail of a missing bank executive. This quickly develops into a murder investigation.

Out to solve the murder, more deaths follow., and Lash digs deeper into the mystery.

ACCOMPLICE is an excellent detective story with plenty of twists. It all culminates in a castle in the middle of the Arizona desert. Arlen is superb in his sleuthing role...