Homicide Bureau (1939)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Powerful

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Police Captain Haines(Moroni Olsen)is fed up with the public's lack of approval on the way a crime epidemic is being handled. He orders his men to clear up their investigations without violating the constitutional rights of the arrested criminals. This will please the newly appointed head of the Police Department Lab and internal affairs. Detective Jim Logan(Bruce Cabot)is of the old school opinion...a little pushing and thumping is OK in making an arrest. Haines is forced to demote him, but Logan doesn't really care. He discovers that some local junk dealers are enabling crime bosses in the accumulation of scrap metal to send to foreign powers(not clearly identified) to manufacture munitions in aiding their war efforts.After this movie, Miss Hayworth will be on her way to major stardom. At times Cabot seems one-dimensional and pedestrian to the script. Other players include: Marc Lawrence, Norman Willis, Richard Fiske and Stanley Andrews.

Political ironies abound as hopelessly right wing L.A.P.D. investigator Bruce Cabot bridles under foolish legal restraints conflicting with his tried and true police state methods such as breaking and entering, unlawful searches and seizures, and beating up suspects.Particularly frustrating are naïve wealthy liberal matrons who misguidedly protest violations of evildoers' constitutional guarantees.The pre-Patriot Act bad guys are colluding with warring foreign powers (read 1930s Japan and Germany) wanting American scrap metal for munitions.Youthful lab chemist Rita Hayworth (modernly called a forensic investigator) does precise scientific sleuthing with her amazing Spectrograph, a wondrous device that tells all, even resulting in a marriage proposal from callous cop Cabot whose police brutality contributes to the gang's downfall.A laughably bad film, concluding with the police commissioner apologizing for hampering his "coppers" with "too many kid gloves." Clearly illegal police procedures win the day keeping America's junkyards safe from hostile foreign dictatorships.Demonstrating versatility, actor Marc Lawrence, later blacklisted in the anti-Communist 1950s, plays a fascist thug.

With all the criminal forensics displayed on television these days it's a surprise to see a late version thirties version of it. Avoiding the autopsy part, RIta Hayworth playing a forensic expert examines murder weapons and other physical evidence. Nobody makes a big deal about her gender except at first. I was expecting to see her quit and get married by the end of the film but surprisingly she never even comes close to thinking about it. While a major part of the movie, the forensics is second to the main topic of the movie, police brutality.The police force is under new rules passed by the city council preventing the police from roughing up the suspects. The officers chafe under the restrictions just hoping for a chance to torment the apparent villains into a confession. The brutality isn't shown, just alluded to, except in a scene where the hero cop breaks into a crook's apartment and throws him around until an accident nearly kills the crook. There's also a scene where the city politicians react to a dragnet that the police do in a desperate attempt to solve a murder.It actually interesting until the point where the standard B movie plot dynamics take over and the film reverts to typical matinée cops and robbers complete with a kidnapping, a silly shootout and eventual redemption for the tough guy hero. The police brutality topic is, unfortunately, dropped.Pretty good except for the standard ending.

One thing that surprised me in this film was the amount of scientific documentation it exhibits. A female scientist is assigned to the police department in a forensics position. I was also surprised at how little controversy was shown about that fact. But during the course of the movie, comparison of materials (from a single source or not), ballistics evidence, weapon edge evidence and more are all showcased. Not quite a commercial for police as scientific marvels, seeing as how another part of the main story involves whether or not police ought to be able to rough up criminals or not, but considering how far before the Miranda ruling this movie was made, it now comes across as an interesting look at the state of forensics in the late 1930s. For true devotees of The New Detectives (and maybe CSI, though it has little to do with crime scenes per se), this is certainly an interesting title.