D.O.A. **** (1950, Edmond O’Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler, Neville Brand, Beverly Garland) – Classic Movie Review 2565

Director Rudolph Maté’s invigorating 1950 film noir crime thriller is a well-deserved long-term cult classic, and was remade in 1988 starring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan as D.O.A. It starts off with dead on arrival small-town accountant Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) telling the San Francisco police that he has been murdered.

Informed that he has been poisoned and has only a few days to live, he tries desperately to find out who killed him and why. Flashbacks then give the whys and wherefores, moving at a frantically hectic pace totally unusual for a film noir of the period. It is all over in 83 crisp minutes.

When Bigelow goes to San Francisco for a week-long spree before settling down with his fiancée Paula (Pamela Britton) that starts off with a night on the town, he wakes up with what doctors tell him is a luminous toxin in his body – and there’s no antidote. 

O’Brien is excellent as the radiation-poison victim turned detective and he’s given suitably noir-style support by a fine cast headed by Luther Adler, Neville Brand in his film debut as a henchman named Chester and Beverly Garland in her film debut billed as Beverly Campbell. 

Also in the cast are Lynn Baggett, William Ching, Henry Hart, Laurette Luez (in her film debut), Jess Kirkpatrick, Cay Forrester, Virginia Lee, Frank Jaquet, Lawrence Dobkin, Frank Gerstle, Carol Hughes and Michael Ross, with Hugh O’Brian (uncredited) as Jazz Fan.

D.O.A. is most effective and engrossing both as a noir thriller and as a study of an innocent man dashing around California trying to fathom his fate.

When Bigelow registers at the Allison Hotel in Los Angeles, the name above is writer Russell Rouse, while cinematographer Ernest Laszlo and assistant director Marty Moss are also on the register.

An end credit states the medical aspects of this film are based on scientific fact and that ‘luminous toxin is a descriptive term for an actual poison.’

The shot of O’Brien running down Market Street in San Francisco was taken without city permits, with some pedestrians visibly confused as he bumps into them. Producer Leo C Popkin owned the Million Dollar Theater, whose marquee is seen in the movie.

D.O.A. has fallen into the public domain.

The film was remade in Australia in 1969 as Color Me Dead, directed by Eddie Davis, before the D.O.A. remake, directed Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton in 1988.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2565

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