JOHN BROMFIELD WITH JULIE LONDON IN 'CRIME AGAINST JOE'

John Bromfield and Julie London in CRIME AGAINST JOE Year: 1956 Rating: ***1/2

In 1956, handsome, muscular, square-jawed yet still somehow affable/relatable-everyman actor John Bromfield starred in three features by low-budget studio Bel Air Productions...

In their best remembered and best in quality, HOT CARS, he's a beguiled used car salesman reluctantly working for criminals; in THREE BAD SISTERS an idealistic pilot trying to save the only good sibling; and in CRIME AGAINST JOE the titular wrong-man character...

Opening Titles for CRIME AGAINST JOE

A Korean war veteran suffering PTSD's that makes him seem like a character Bromfield was never meant to play: a sexually-frustrated mommy's boy who can't work for a living so he paints beautiful dames (the same portrait used in SISTERS) and day-drinks using the kind of hackneyed slurring-sound of old-school cinema drunks, all while trying to find the perfect woman...

Making the first half tremendously awkward and horribly miscast since Bromfield, looking like one of those hunky womanizers who'd have no problem landing ladies, has the personality of a geeky twenty-something who never had a female in his life...

Opening Titles for CRIME AGAINST JOE

So friendly carhop Julie London's far too easy advances seem doubly strange in this wrongly-accused thriller that improves after Joe sobers up, and is blamed for a nightclub singer's murder...

After which he's far more in his element, traipsing around sparse Eisenhower-era Los Angeles suburbs looking for the real killer... following culprit/red-herrings from dapper Rhodes Reason to a hefty middle-age politician, while getting no essential help from the wealthy father of gorgeous sleepwalker Patricia Blair, who Joe had helped back home the exact night/time of the slaying...

John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

An extremely low-budget exercise that still looks good despite Joe being (in one sequence) dropped off under bright sunlight into an after-hours tavern before leaving to wander the 2am streets...

But all that continuity doesn't matter, really, in a B&W potboiler that includes a pretty nifty final fight sequence in an indoor public pool — wrapped in a curio that vastly improves upon each viewing.

Julie London and John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Patricia Blair in CRIME AGAINST JOE

John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE with Patricia Blair

Morgan Jones and John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Julie London and Rhodes Reason in CRIME AGAINST JOE

John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Julie London and John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Julie London in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Julie London and John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Julie London and John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Frances Morris and John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Alika Louis in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Alika Louis in CRIME AGAINST JOE with John Bromfield and John Pickard

John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

Henry Calvin in CRIME AGAINST JOE

John Bromfield and Henry Calvin in CRIME AGAINST JOE

John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE with Patricia Blair

John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE with Patricia Blair

John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE

John Bromfield in CRIME AGAINST JOE (with Marla English painting from Three Bad Sisters)

John Bromfield and Julie London in CRIME AGAINST JOE Year: 1956 Rating: ***1/2