Accomplice

Frank Gruber’s novel Simon Lash, Private Detective serves as the inspiration for this potboiler about a blonde bombshell, Joyce Kimball Bonniwell (Veda Ann Borg), hiring her former flame, Simon Lash (Richard Arlen), to find her missing husband. What he initially assumes is an infidelity and divorce case, the kind he refuses to take on principle, quickly develops into something more up his alley, murder. A body identified as the husband turns up on a mink farm, his head blown off supposedly by suicide. A mistress, financial stress, and other things get thrown into the mix, too, just to muddy up the waters.

This film is better than it has any reason to be, but it is still at its roots a cheaply made detective thriller, aided heavily by a story that has a lot of twists and turns crammed into a relatively short running time. The relationship between Simon and Joyce is a real highlight, especially how it plays out in the finale at a castle in the desert when all the cards are laid out and the bullets start flying. 

Accomplice sets out to be confusing, intentionally throwing out red herrings left and right to keep you guessing. It also rushes everything so that if you are not hanging on to every little line of dialogue, it is easy to miss some important detail and get a bit lost. This makes for an uneven film that doesn’t have time to be boring but also isn’t particularly satisfying, even if you manage to figure out the final twist before it is revealed. 1946 - 68 Minutes