I've been seeing a couple noir movies in the past months that involve kidnapping in some way, and while this was already a pretty taboo subject for a film in this era, this one goes even further and makes the entire plot about it. The movie is pretty confusing but has two good actors, Dennis O'Keefe and Raymond Burr, who do noir better than most in the genre. Before the racketeering and black marketing starts, we see a girl named Paula (Gale Storm) who has arrived in LA trying to locate her sister who's gone missing. Paula's sister had recently had a daughter before her disappearance. A reporter named Mark Sitko (Dennis O'Keefe) offers to help after overhearing Paula's panic inducing situation. As Paula and Mark leave, they run into a private eye named Kerric (Raymond Burr), who tells Mark he has been hired by Paula's father to help look for her sister. Although how he was employed is never explained, Paula later confesses to Mark that her sister ran away because her father was abusive. Later on, Mark gets some horrible news and apparently Mary (Paula's sister) has killed herself with carbon monoxide inside a stolen car, but Paula can't believe this: her sister doesn't know how to drive. Mark's boss, Chief McRae, tells him he will get the cops to help with Paula's case, but only if Mark is able to come up with evidence that there exists a black market for babies in which they are sold and their mothers are killed. While Kerric attempts to shadow Paula, she and Mark arrive at a Salvation Army home where they find Mary was staying. Another woman (who claims to be Mary's friend while she was there) says one day an elderly woman came there and offered to buy Mary's baby, which she refused to agree to. Once Mark has what he thinks is enough evidence, he devises a trap to bait out the baby brokers. The cops set up hidden microphones outside the home of Mrs. Donner (the old woman who owns the organization), Mary's former friend poses as someone who wants to sell her child, and Paula and Mark pretend to be its future adoptive parents. Meanwhile, Kerric meets with Little Guy DeCola, the mobster responsible for killing Paula's sister. Kerric tries to act tough, but is reminded of his place when DeCola says he will have him murdered if he steps out of line or crosses Mrs. Donner's operation. Kerric can't take the heat and calls up Paula. He says he is willing to sell her her sister's baby as long as she gives him 1500 bucks. After getting in a car with him, she is taken to a boarding house where the kid is, although she is told she can't leave for a whole day. As soon as Kerric steps outside, he is violently beaten and taken to Donner and her thugs. Kerric is tortured and burned with matches until he admits that he double crossed Donner's plans and gave Paula Mary's kid. He is then beaten to death, and Donner attempts to cover her tracks. She and her thugs visit the boarding house and force Paula and the baby into a car, which then drives to an under construction country club. Mark pursues them there, shoots Donner's guards to death, and Donner is killed when she attempts to drive away and overturns her car. Paula and the baby are then rescued, and the black market is liquidated. This movie was quite hard to follow, but I was at least glad to see Burr playing a much more active part in the story when compared with the last film I saw him in. He still played the hoodlum with a temper people know him as here, but at least he's not being confined to one room for 80% of the runtime. I really can't think of many other noirs (let alone movies in general) that feature an old woman as the antagonist, although Guilty Bystander with Zachary Scott does have this (and coincidentally also has to do with a kidnapping). For once, Burr is not playing the main villain, which is fine with me. I thought Gale Storm (what a name) was not really the best leading actress they could have picked. She doesn't really have much expression throughout the film. Her sister was killed so she has somewhat of an excuse, but there's probably a reason she wasn't in many noirs. To summarize, Abandoned is a unique movie that fails in some ways most other noirs succeed in, such as not having an old woman as the main villain or involving kidnapping, but I would say it paid off.
Review of Abandoned
