The rest of Decoy lives up to this terrifically compelling opening sequence. In flashback, told to cop Joe Portugal (Sheldon Leonard) by Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie), the woman in that hotel room, we are treated to a lurid story of greed, double-crossing and wanton murder. Margot's boyfriend Frank Olins (Robert Armstrong, of King Kong [1933] fame) is about to be sent to the gas chamber, but the $400,000 he stole is still buried somewhere and only he knows where. Margot has an only-in-the-movies plan, however. If she can get Frank's body to a crooked doctor within an hour of the execution, a special drug can be administered which will revive him; then Frank can retrieve the money. While the drug-induced revival works out, in a "mad-doctor" sequence which even has the revived Frank exclaiming "I'm alive! I'm alive!", the ensuing drama gets a bit more complicated and way more violent. Suffice it to say that Margot will not let anyone get in her way to recover the loot: not Frank, not the doctor, not Frank's henchman Jim Vincent (Frank Norris), not cop Joe Portugal.
Decoy is unified in its delightfully cheap, pulpy, Monogram style, though in truth it looks pretty good for a poverty row studio like Monogram. Sheldon Leonard is probably the most recognizable face here, and while it's fun to watch him slap people around and take Jean Gillie's breathtaking final putdown, Decoy is far and away Gillie's baby.
A British actress who was married to Decoy's director Jack Bernhard at the time, Gillie had appeared in a number of British films but had yet to conquer Hollywood. She and Bernhard broke up soon after making this film, and her career never went anywhere despite good notices. She acted in one more picture and a good one at that, The Macomber Affair (1947), before dying of pneumonia in 1949 at only 33 years of age. Had she lived, she would very likely have developed a significant career, for in Decoy she is absolutely sensational. In black gloves, a low-cut tight-fitting dress, and glittering diamonds around her neck, Gillie is the epitome of a femme fatale, beautiful and mean literally to her dying breath. Watching her play - and eliminate - man after man on her quest to get the money is a sight to behold.
Like Margot, Decoy is lean and mean, a tough little obscurity which can now be discovered by movie lovers thanks to Warner Home Entertainment, which has included it in the Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4. The only flaw on the DVD is the fact that the nastiest moment in the movie is missing. Margot kills a man in one scene by running him over, and in the original release, she drives over his body a second and third time. That sequence was purportedly seen at American Cinematheque screenings in the early 2000s but is missing from this transfer; film historian and reviewer Glenn Erickson, on his commentary track, speculates that the sequence must have been edited out for television airings in the 1950s and 60s and that one of those prints was used for the DVD.
In the commentary Erickson interviews Stanley Rubin, who is credited with Decoy's story. Rubin was interested in how far greed could take a person and originally wrote Decoy as a radio piece, later selling it to Monogram. (Writer/actor Nedrick Young wrote the finished screenplay.) It's an excellent conversation, fun to listen to and full of compelling information about the movie, those associated with it, and other elements of Rubin's career. (Rubin also did a commentary track in 2006 for the DVD of Macao [1952] which is more interesting than that film itself!) Rubin says that Jean Gillie raised the level of Decoy by the force of her own talent, which seems true, and Erickson clearly knows his stuff. He also pops up in the 5-minute featurette on the making of Decoy, which is the only other extra. Other talking heads in this well-edited piece include Rubin, Molly Haskell and even Dick Cavett.
2007 is the fourth year in a row that Warner Brothers has released a multi-disc set of classic film noir, and this time around they have packaged ten titles instead of the usual five. A pair of movies can be found on each disc, and DVDs are available individually or in the complete set. Decoy shares a disc with Andre de Toth's first-rate Crime Wave (1954) and is one of the best reasons to pick up this entire collection. Very highly recommended!
For more information about Decoy, visit Warner Video. To order Decoy, go to TCM Shopping.
by Jeremy Arnold
