Wednesday, 15 October 2025

I Love Trouble (1948 S Sylvan Simon)

An unusual private eye thriller, with Franchot Tone commissioned (by Tom Powers) to investigate his wife - not a mission any film-savvy PI would undertake. Roy Higgins' screenplay, adapted from his own novel 'Double Take' - a better title, by the way - does indeed paint a confusing picture, involving Vegas gangster Steven Geray and his henchmen John Ireland and Raymond Burr, sister of the wife Janet Blair, dodgy couple Janis Carter and Eduardo Ciannelli, Adele Jergens (was she the one with the gun and the swimming pool?), faithful and useful assistant Glenda Farrell, funny man Donald Curtis and Lynn Merrick. Plenty of dames to shake a stick at - what's going on? Tone dishes up humour throughout e.g. waking up under sleeping beauty's bed and leaving a 'Kilroy was here' message for her on her pillow. The machinations of the plot somewhat eluded me, as usual, though I did get the idea that someone was probably not who they said they were.

So that helps. A not particularly stylish but entertaining thriller (though there's a most interesting camera wobble into unconsciousness effect which I haven't seen before), photographed by Charles Lawton sometimes on location. A Cornell pictures indie, distributed by Columbia.


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