The French Key

Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg have skipped on their board bill and try to sneak into their room to get their trunks, when they find a corpse on their bed clutching an old Spanish coin. Fletcher being a pseudo-detective learns the nature of the coin from a numismatist named Vedder, but learns that he is mixed up some way with the murder. Apparently the murdered man was mixed up with a gold smuggling outfit where the coins were actually stolen gold forged into the rare coins. However Fletcher has to find out the murderer and how & where the stolen gold is located. This is a very enjoyable B mystery aided especially but the witty dialogue by Frank Gruber, who also wrote the novel the story is based on. Its a shame however that Republic didn't decide to continue the series. Dekker and Mazurki are obviously enjoying themselves in the picture and Dekker does add a somewhat sophisticated touch to what could have been an ordinary urbane role. The movie does move nicely but the end Dekker's character does seem to change to a more hardboiled sleuth than the fly by the seat of his pants character he was. A good B-repertoire cast (Ankers, Foulger especially) make this an enjoyable hour plus. Rating, 8.