Clay Pigeon, The (1949)

Will play in English, even though the cover art work is in Spanish. It`s cheaper than the U.S. version. That`s why I bought it, but now I wish I had spent a little more for the U.S. version. Somewhat predictable hour long crime drama about a soldier returning home with amnesia

happy

Good movie

Excellent service. Great product.

Classic film noir.

I think the backstory of The Clay Pigeon is just as interesting as its plot. Not to be confused with the 1971 movie that starred Telly Savalas and Robert Vaughn, this 1949 B-movie thriller from RKO trots out a cast of nobodies. The biggest name I recognized was Barbara Hale, and only because I used to watch reruns of Perry Mason.Just maybe some plot spoilers.Who's to say the most hated man in the Naval Hospital in Long Beach, California wasn't the patient in Room 54? The unfamous Bill Williams plays Seaman 1st Class James Fletcher who spent two years in a coma, except that's not the end of this seaman's bad road. In Room 54, Fletcher wakes up to a murky memory, scars on his chest from a severe lashing, and up for a court martial, having been branded a traitor. To worsen matters, he slips out of the hospital in the middle of the night, on a slapdash mission to clear his name.This movie's got a running time of only 62, 63 minutes, so things have to happen fast. I wouldn't say our amnesiac is the most cunning of hombres. See him scurry around, a fugitive from justice, his mug plastered all over the newspapers, being hunted down by the police and by Naval Intelligence. He's got two leads, really. One is the home address of the sailor - and fellow prisoner-of-war - he's been accused of as complicit in his torture killing, having supposedly ratted him out for stealing rations. The other lead is another survivor (Richard Quine) of the Cabanatuan P.O.W. camp. Fletcher thinks this guy has got his back. "What a guy! I knew I could depend on Ted," Fletcher gushes.If you'd brushed up on your Hitchcock, and, so, you're familiar with The Thirty-Nine Steps or Saboteur, then you're not too startled when a desperate Fletcher takes a dead man's wife hostage. I mean, after all, Mrs. Martha Gregory (Barbara Hale) - widow of Mr. Torture Killed - was phoning the cops. Also, he needs her to drive him around in her car.Who knows for how long Fletcher could've kept up holding the girl hostage? Luckily for him, a car full of two gents try to run him and the girl off the road. This leads the girl to reason that, hey, if someone's trying to kill Fletcher, maybe he IS innocent.Here's the wild, crazy thing. The Clay Pigeon is based on a true story of a U.S. serviceman (and former prisoner-of-war) who spotted a brutish Japanese P.O.W. camp guard on a street in Los Angeles. Turned out, the Japanese prison guard had been born in the States - and, ergo, was an American citizen. Guy relocated to Japan before WWII and came back to the States afterwards. He was subsequently tried and convicted of treason.So, yes, a crucial part of the plot involves Fletcher who, while dining in a Chinatown restaurant in Los Angeles, recognizes Ken Tokoyama (Richard Loo) - a.k.a. "the Weasel" - a sadistic prison guard who got his jollies from torturing the prisoners at the Cabanatuan P.O.W. camp. As Fletcher learns to his great trepidation, the Weasel is already well-established within the local underworld.As mentioned, our seaman-on-the-run isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Oh, he has his two-fisted moments, but he also makes an awful lot of blunders. Maybe the smartest move he did was to abduct that widow. Because it takes the intrepid Mrs. Martha Gregory, not Fletcher, not Naval Intelligence, to piece the clues together.A sack of kudos to the movie for trying to be fair. While it presents Richard Loo as the despicable yellow peril, it also shines a light on how Japanese-Americans did their part to serve honorably during the war. Case in point, the sympathetic Japanese-American war widow who hides Fletcher from his pursuers in Chinatown. Comes a moment in that sequence in which Fletcher is in her apartment and the camera pans to a framed certificate awarding the Distinguished Service Cross to her husband who had served in the storied 442nd Regimental Combat Team. I appreciate that Fletcher talks up the 442nd to the widow. Incidentally, the 442nd was a WWII fighting unit made up almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese descent. Their motto was "Go for broke." I recommend the 1951 war picture that tells their story, starring Van Johnson. Can you guess the movie title?As for The Clay Pigeon, it's a brisk, noirish, post-war crime thriller that features a strong performance from Barbara Hale but not much of an attempt to hide the identity of the killer. Fact is, it's frustrating that it took them that long to figure it out. For the trivia-heads, the two leads, Hale and Bill Williams, were married in real life and were the parents of William Katt who would go on to star in the early '80s superhero tv series, The Greatest American Hero.There's definitely an element of film noir in this one. There's an air of cynicism with regards to our trust in our bedrock institutions. Namely, there's our hero who we presume is innocent but is pilloried by society and condemned by the U.S. Navy. Meanwhile, the man who tortured him and other P.O.W.s have the run of the streets of Los Angeles, free and clear to indulge in criminal activities. And, yes, there is a barely mentioned sub-plot involving a counterfeit ring, what with the Japanese's having forged $10 million in funny money. Anyway, for whoever cares about what I think, I recommend this movie. The leading man may be underwhelming and whodunit is plain and obvious, but everything else is jake, from the thrills, the sustained dramatic tension, the big denouement, the balanced portrayal of the Japanese, and even the understated romance. I did say Barbara Hale was good in this one, right?

"Is the war over?" -- James"For some people it'll never be over." -- NurseThe first film produced once Howard Hughes took the reins at RKO is a real winner. Based on a true incident, Richard O. Fleischer's gripping melodrama is every bit as good as his most lauded effort from this period, The Narrow Margin. Perry Mason's Della Street, Barbara Hale, is quite terrific alongside Bill Williams in a Carl Foreman story about an incident in which a returning US soldier recognized his brutal former captor back home in the City of Angels. Fleischer's genius for crafting lean and tense crime melodramas from small to medium size budgets with less heralded stars while at RKO is in evidence here. This one can stand proudly with films such as Follow Me Quietly and The Narrow Margin.When James Fletcher (Bill Williams) wakes up at a Naval Hospital with no memory of how he got there, his confusion and panic is further heightened when he overhears a nurse accusing him of treason. When an old Navy buddy, now blind, wants to get rid of him himself, he breaks out and takes it on the lam to clear his name, knowing he's no traitor. Martha Gregory (Barbara Hale) doesn't believe him, however, and puts up a fight when he comes asking questions. The wife of Mark, who James is accused of selling out to the enemy while they were interned together and brutalized at a Japanese prisoner of war camp, she tries to turn him in. Forcing her to drive him from San Diego to Los Angeles to meet up with his other old pal, Ted (Richard Quine), who was captured with them, developments along the way change her mind.What sways her in James' direction is an attempt to run them off the road by someone out to get rid of him, and none too picky about who they take out with him. When he falls asleep at the wheel the torture scars on his chest seal the deal for her, and the two work feverishly together to discover the truth. Fine pacing and some good atmosphere created through shots on the beach and a restaurant in Los Angeles' Chinatown called The White Lotus make everything convincing and entertaining. Following the trail of the prison guard called the Weasel he recognizes while they are having dinner, only Martha and Ted believes him to be innocent. A thrilling chase through the streets of 1940's Los Angeles on foot takes place at one point when a trap is set.Just as in The Narrow Margin, a tense ending takes place on a train when Martha gets Naval Intelligence to believe her story and the race is on to get to James before he's made his last stop. A revelation and a twist punctuate this enjoyable story with a hint of romance in the offing for James and Martha. Marya Marco stands out in a brief supporting role as the wife of a Japanese soldier who hides James from bad guy Richard Loo. Frank Wilcox, Frank Fenton, and Martha Hyer round out a good cast in this fine first effort marking the new Hughes era at RKO. This particular offering is a region two DVD. Another excellent film from director Fleischer and a must see for fans of taught crime films.

Arrived with in two days quality very good cannot fault the supplier everything was excellent I have used Amazon over the years and I have found the service to be nothing but the best

Un excellent thriller signé Richard Fleischer à rédécouvrir...Sans être un chef d'oeuvre, ce film est néanmoins un excellent film noir, bien mis en scène, et dont l'intrigue est très typique des films noirs de l'immédiat après-guerre: amnésie, identité, lien avec la guerre...En 1 heures et 3 minutes, Fleischer fait mieux que la très grande majorité des cinéastes contemporains en 2 heures 33 !!!