When you get a phone call saying “Death and me are just around the corner, waiting for you,” you naturally run into a dark alley. Or you do, if you are about to be murdered in the whodunit Grand Central Murder from 1942.
The victim makes it to a train car, where she is killed. Enter guys in hats talking tough. Private Eye Rocky Custer, played by Van Heflin, is keen to solve the case. Soon the car is stocked with suspects, each with an ironclad alibi.
The men go about poking each other in the chest saying “Get it? Get it?” The women file their nails and do other girly things. All of the characters are oddly chatty, considering that this is a murder investigation.
The deceased’s maid brings some context into the din with her sassy narrative. The flashbacks follow her story of a conniving woman who took advantage of rich men and went running into alleys.
When suspicions are cast on one of the men, the presiding cop asks Van Helflin, “You don’t really think he done it, do you? At this point, I raided the cupboards.
Back on the job with a box of Triscuits, I watched them interrogate suspect after suspect. As one thug drew a gun, I began to think about mild cheese.
In the end, the mystery was solved and, sadly, the sluggishly executed noir conventions were upstaged by a wheel of gouda.
Twenty years before Kathy Bates was swinging an ax at James Caan, Clint Eastwood braved the wrath of sexually overheated teachers and students at a Confederate girls’ school in The Beguiled.
These films follow a predictable pattern: Pam Grier looks great in skimpy clothes, holds down a day job and racks up a terrible body count on her time off. Her target might be a crack dealer or a politician — the main thing is that they have pissed her off. This means that they -and we- will be seeing her half naked for a good part of the film as she pretends to be a prostitute. Having Grier pose as a prostitute was apparently very important to her producers. 