One of my all time favorites.

Admirable film.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The first in MGM's wonderful Crime Does Not Pay short series stars an up-and-coming Robert Taylor as an embezzler who turns himself in, lying and saying he spent all of the money he stole ($200,000 - a lot of bread in 1935). His plan is to serve the few years of prison time so that when he's released he will be able to spend all that money without the cops looking over his shoulder. But once inside the pen he starts worrying something might happen to the money and before long he's thinking of escape. Great beginning to the series with an interesting story with some neat twists and a big star when he was still a nobody. A lot of fun for classic film fans, particularly if you enjoy crime dramas from back in the day.

The very first Crime Does Not Pay short subject featured as its protagonist one of MGM's mainstays for the next three decades. When he did his last film for Leo the Lion in 1963 Robert Taylor set a record for the longest running studio contract for any player.Buried Loot is about as humble a beginning as you could have. Taylor is a bank clerk who has embezzled $200,000.00 plus and then goes into his boss and confesses. Says he spent it all, slow horses, fast women, you name it. He gets a 5 to 12 year sentence for his crime.But while figuring on a minimal two year term, Taylor has the money buried in a secure place, hence the title Buried Loot. Do the time and then live it up. But prison not being the wholesome experience can play funny tricks and you have a lot of time to build things up in your mind and have mind games played on you.During those first years at MGM Taylor was the matinée idol and it was always a tossup between him and Tyrone Power over at 20th Century Fox as to who was the handsomest fellow in films. Taylor's own good looks are woven into the plot in a grisly way.How they get him I won't reveal. But think about White Heat and what was done to nail James Cagney.Buried Loot was highly melodramatic but it serve to give good exposure to a star that MGM was building up for a long term investment.

***SPOILERS*** We get the story straight from the horse's mouth the straight talking and no BS MGM Reporter about a man who thought he can profit from his crime who in the end got far more then he expected in an extended stay in the clink for it.Bank teller Albert Douglas had come up with this foolproof plan to embezzle $200,000.00 from the bank,the Seacoast Bank, he worked for by admitting his crime and later, after he served his time behind bars, retrieve it and live happily ever after. Everything worked like clockwork for the brash and sure of himself Douglas getting 5 to 10 years in Sing Sing and with good behavior he's expected to be out on the street a free man after five years with a stash of $200,000.00 waiting for him. It's when Douglas' cell-mate Louie Rattig came up with this plan to crash out of prison that Doglas started to change his mind about stying for the duration of his sentence and joined Louie in the jailbreak. Louie got Douglas to thinking that the stash of cash may not be around, by being discovered, by the time he got out of prison thus leaving him without a pot to you know what in.**SPOILERS*** With both Douglas & Louie now free by impersonating a priest and the father of a convicted murder about to get zapped in the electric chair it's only a matter of time before Douglas checks out the place in the wilds of New Jersey where he hid the stolen money. To make doubly sure that he'll get away with his crime the handsome looking Douglas, played by a 24 year old Robert Taylor, messed his face up with acid having him look like the Frankenstein Monster so that no one would recognize him when he takes off by boat to South America with the stolen loot!As we and Douglas soon finds out all this was for nothing with him being caught in a sting that was set up for him before he even entered a guilty plea in court. Douglas was given by the law enough rope to hang himself and as things turned out it was his both greed and arrogance that ended up doing him in! Albert Douglas found out the hard way something that he should have known before he ever even thought of breaking the law and then manipulating it in his favor: Crime does not pay and he'll pay for that mistake until he's he's old and gray if in fact he gets that far in prison!

A handful of 'episodes' from this ground-breaking series used to turn up on the U.K. branch of TNT, but they seem to have been dropped from the schedule over here ever since the Cable channel became TCM – which is a pity. As intimated by the complete title of the short, this was the very first entry and it certainly set the template for the rest as it is still considered among the best of them; while it does not involve a subsequently famous director like some the others, its lead Robert Taylor would achieve feature-film stardom that same year (ironically while loaned out to another studio!). The premise of this one is actually quite improbable but the Police authority that introduces the film assures us it is based on fact: Taylor has embezzled funds from the bank where he is employed and, after burying the loot, confesses the crime to his superior and that he has already spent it all. He is given five years in prison fully intending to do the entire term but, while there, his cell-mate instills doubt in him that everything can happen within that space of time and convinces the young man to break out (disguised as a priest and his companion!). After going their separate ways, Taylor goes to quite an extreme to ensure his anonymity and be free to reap the rewards of his robbery – burning his face with acid! The irony is that, as soon as he digs up the booty, he runs into his ex-'pal' and is forced to share a cab with him…which lands our unwise hero at his old work-place, and it is revealed that all who aided in his flight from jail were undercover cops, since his former boss had never believed Taylor's spendthrift tale! As I said, despite being a mere two-reeler, this features a compelling plot line (with the star in atypical bad-guy mode) and also contains most of the essential qualities of the gangster film then still prevalent (not to mention the unexpected dash of horror in the disfigurement episode).