But Richard Arlen is very good as Frank Gruber's B-grade Marlowe, and Gruber himself made sure to participate in the screenplay (if only to keep some of his best one-liners intact from the source novel).
ACCOMPLICE is a film that shows the crossroads between noir, screwball mystery, and western, all too deeply rutted and jumbled up to amount to much. It was a far cry from WINGS, but Arlen is still fun to watch.
Nearly a decade earlier, MURDER IN GREENWICH VILLAGE is firmly in the screwball mystery vein, with Arlen teamed up with Fay Wray (damn, but she's gorgeous...) in a breezy and brusque tale involving--as IMDB review Mark Waltz sums up neatly--"a wacky collection of artists, socialites, millionaires, and dumb detectives." A restored print of this could add enough sparkle to make it into a cult favorite...
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