Don't listen to the negative reviews

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's a film about bootlegging rubber tires in the middle of the war and opens with an elderly Irish cop coming across some suspicious characters standing in front of a warehouse. "What's going on here?" Oh, nothing. "I'll just take a look in that warehouse if ye don't mind," says the cop, who is shot to death while trying to open the door. Delaney, the cop, is in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which requires a search warrant from a judge after establishing probable cause. But never mind. This isn't a technically demanding film. The old cop's murder sets the son, a private detective, on the trail of the gang, to their ultimate disadvantage.It should be pointed out that during World War II, tires and the rubber they were made from, were as valuable as gold. You couldn't GET new tires. The rubber that they were made from came from Southeast Asia, now in the hands of the Japanese. What little rubber the Allies had were used to build tires for military vehicles like Jeeps. Stealing tires was not just a criminal act but an unpatriotic one.Well, the cop's son, Damian O'Flynn, is about to be inducted into the U.S. Army. As a first lieutenant. (How do you do that?) He's angry and fast. He cooperates with the police at first because they're both in pursuit of the chief heavy -- Jack La Rue, not to be confused with "Lash" La Rue. Some reviewers keep pointing out that I'm criminally careless for having mixed up the two. Well, I AM criminally careless but at least I don't suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder! Anyway, the heavy here is Jack La Rue, née Gaspere Biondolillo in New York. And kindly don't confuse him with Jack La Rue, Jr., son of Jack La Rue, not son of Lash La Rue. Now, I'm glad we got that out of the way.No particular acting skills are on display. None are necessary. It's a fast paced mystery with no fooling around and no time for theatrics. The performers are professionals. They hit their marks, say their lines, express whatever feelings are appropriate to the situation, and dart out for the next scene. They're all likable enough, and Helen Parrish is conventionally attractive.

If you tend to like minor B-movies of the '40s, this is definitely one to see. Male lead Damian O'Flynn as a tough private detective and female lead Helen Parrish as a younger friend of his who tries to make sure her hero doesn't get hurt both have charisma. The editing never gets slow, and the script is delightfully jam-packed with classic cliché lines of the movies and of the era, but serving a watchable story.Neil Hamilton, eventually of the Batman TV series, is effective in one of the supporting roles. Gaspere Biondolillo plays his usual straightforward heavy. The print available on the inexpensive Alpha DVD is good.

It's disheartening to see Stuart Palmer's name mixed up in this little film (in every respect of the word) about rubber racketeers. The identity of Mr Big is as obvious as the dimple in Helen Parrish's cheek, thanks not only to Palmer's fall-back on a standard plot stratagem, but to rigid type-casting. Dull Damian is a ho-hum hero, and if I see Robert Homans go into his Irish-on-the-beat act just once more, I'll sic Jack LaRue on to him like a shot. Jack plays a heavy as usual, although Palmer gives him a smart intro as the gangster who survived the police clean-up after prohibition, because he'd taken great care to pay his income taxes on all the murder and high-jacking contracts he took out. Sounds fishy to me, but at least it's a new angle. Vince Barnett has a brief role as a waiter, while Neil Hamilton wastes our time as a crooked businessman. The only bright spot in the movie is provided by happy-as-a-thug Dick Wessel (of all people) who takes a shine to our cute-as-a-vinyl heroine. Yes, Helen plays a disc jockey in one of these places where customers placed a dime in the juke box and relayed their music order to a central exchange full of 78s. This ingenious set-up was featured in several "A" features but here it's given the strictly from hunger treatment.Sherman's direction is B-grade competent, but boring as all get-out. Bring back Sam Newfield! Muddy photography doesn't help liven up interest either. Other credits are equally shoe-string.For a climax, Sherman uses the old Poverty Row dodge of staging a scene on the actual floor of an unvarnished Republic sound stage. Well, he does fill the space up with lots and lots of fake rubber tires. We all know that rubber tires are so pictorially attractive, what could be more excitingly suspenseful than a mild little chase through such wonders?

There is the thrill of low-budget film noir. And there is the frustration of meandering, uninteresting movies made on the cheap. This one falls into the second category.The Spot is the name of a nightclub. The film is about a policeman whose father has been killed by gangsters. He heads out to track them down.Maybe it was the bad print. Maybe it's me. But I felt I'd seen this a hundred times, most of those times better than it is here.It has promise, too: The cop is fascinated with a woman who plays records she introduces over juke boxes. They then meet. Now, though this was made well before I was born, I have seen that kind of juke box. And it is incredibly fascinating: When I was a teenager, I wandered into a bar that still had such a device. I always liked juke boxes, in bars or diners. But this one was different. You talked to it and a sultry sounding female voice talked back to you! That is addressed here but dropped into the general, uninteresting stew.The movie has one thing going for it: In a small role, it features the very young Anne Jeffreys. What a beauty she was, and doubtless still is!