The Last Crooked Mile *** (1946, Don Barry, Ann Savage, Adele Mara, Tom Powers, Sheldon Leonard, Nestor Paiva) – Classic Movie Review 13,834

The 1946 crime thriller film noir programmer The Last Crooked Mile is quite engaging and appealing, with a touch of real class from B-movie bad girl Ann Savage as the femme fatale.

After a bank robbery by the Jarvis gang, one crook is killed in a shootout and the rest flee in their car. They are stopped at a roadblock, pursued by police and killed in a crash. But the $300,000 loot disappears and is sought after by a pushy insurance investigator (Don Barry), the police and the surviving robbers. Weirdly, quite bizarrely, the getaway car is rescued and sold to a carnival sideshow as an exhibit. The investigator finds the carnival and the car, and tracks down Jarvis’s girlfriend Sheila Kennedy (Ann Savage), a nightclub singer at a cabaret. 

Director Philip Ford’s 1946 crime thriller film noir The Last Crooked Mile is a real programmer, nothing special but not too bad, quite engaging, appealing and very watchable, with a touch of true class from B-movie bad girl Ann Savage as the femme fatale, the best reason to watch the movie. Don Barry is okay as the investigator Tom Dwyer, a bit smug and irritating, but okay, he’s fine, that’s the role.

Various lesser known but still eminent character actors chip in their cent’s worth, quite helpfully, most characterfully: Tom Powers as Floyd Sorelson, Sheldon Leonard as Ed ‘Wires’ MacGuire, Nestor Paiva as Ferrara, Harry Shannon as Police Lt Blake, Ben Welden as Haynes, John Miljan as Police Lt Mayrin, Charles D Brown as Dietrich, John Dehner as Jarvis, and Anthony Caruso as Charlie. They are another good reason to watch the movie.

The production values are, er, modest, with tiny sets and back projections, and not even a decent robbery sequence staged at the start, not to mention the femme fatale singing the same song twice (though it;s not bad either). Republic Pictures had no money to spare on this little one. Still, it is fast and brief.

It’s so unfair that Ann Savage got stuck in B-movies, and even so had such a short reign. Her bad girl roles include dastardly dames in The Unwritten Code (1944), Apology for Murder (1945) and The Last Crooked Mile (1946) and, especially, the venomous Vera in Detour (1945).

Adele Mara gets the short straw as the incredibly patient and tolerant Bonnie, the girl who loves Tom Dwyer, with too much comedy, and repetitive comedy at that, but she plays it up as best as possible.

It is written by Jerry Sackheim and Jerome Gruskin [Jerry Gruskin] (additional dialogue), based on a radio play by Robert L Richards. The spirited, oddball nature of the script is part of the film’s appeal, with only a few drossy lines of dialogue among some good witty banter.

Don ‘Red’ Barry is billed as Donald Barry.

Republic Pictures released it on August 9, 1946 (US).

Running time: 67 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,834

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com