"Shield for Murder" Review

 

by Daniel White

Edmond O'Brien turns in an intense, top-tier performance in Shield for Murder, a 1954 film noir that he ably co-directed with Howard W. Koch. A crime drama about a crooked cop gone cuckoo, it's a pulpy, punchy little flick. And unlike so many other movies made in the same era, and covering similar territory, Shield for Murder deserves to be labeled a film noir. Produced by Aubrey Schenck and distributed through United Artists, O'Brien plays Barney Nolan, a trigger-happy detective who has a reputation for using excessive force.

When the film opens, Nolan is accosting a bookie who he knows is carrying a sizable bank roll. Shooting him in the back, our lawless lawman steals the loot. Unknown to our unhinged flatfoot, the crime has been witnessed by an elderly man peering out his second story window. Nolan has been marked and is destined to be snuffed out. Which is one of the main reasons Shield for Murder earns its noir credentials. An upholder of the law who transgresses his own moral code, Nolan has only one way to go: downward until he is destroyed. Destroyed by his own greedy desires and twisted ambition. In the grips of a lustful passion for his girlfriend, a nightclub chippy (the sexy Marla English), Nolan took the dough to purchase a house for the two of them.

Zipping along, the film seldom falters and has a couple of tantalizing, well-executed scenes. One of them takes place in an Italian eatery where the increasingly unbalanced copper meets a tipsy, lonely barfly, poignantly played by Carolyn Jones. There, Nolan exacts his revenge on two dogged henchmen hired by an underworld kingpin to retrieve the money he absconded with. Pistol-whipping both thugs senseless, Nolan horrifies the other patrons, including good-time gal Beth (Jones). The second scene unfolds in a public gymnasium where Nolan has an excitingly staged shoot out with one of the recipients of his bistro beating. Two well-helmed, smartly-crafted moments in this gutsy, gripping, gritty B movie.

The same year Shield for Murder was released, Edmond O'Brien appeared in The Barefoot Contesssa. For his portrayal of a cynical press agent in that flick, he would win the Academy Award for best supporting actor. A gifted character player who occasionally landed the lead as he does here, O'Brien would go on to direct one more movie, 1961's Man-Trap.

The film features the bland, first Mr. Shirley Temple, John Agar, as Nolan's friend and protege on the police force. The always watchable Richard Deacon has an uncredited cameo as a mercenary night student who shelters Nolan when the police dragnet closes in on him. And Claude Akins is on hand as half of that menacing duo in hot pursuit of our desperate protagonist.

With an above-average screenplay by Richard Allan Simmons and John C. Higgins, based on the book by William McGivern, Shield for Murder is available on YouTube.