Postwar Shadow Group Threatens Democracy!

Patriotism Is Bent To Crime's Will in Violence (1947)

A Monogram oddity about infiltrators to a patriotic org that's cover for racketeering, social comment going no further even though recent The Best Years Of Our Lives and Till The End Of Time pointed in direction of such groups as greater threat to stateside democracy. This being Monogram, distrib for independent Bernhard-Brandt (their year-earlier Decoy a modest sleeper), there'd be no political airing, the so-called United Defenders a simple crook bunch hid behind populist agitating. Where was profit in editorial beyond that? Monogram got bookings because they were reliable with product; if their annual pledged thirty for a season, there'd be thirty. Violence is about shabby rooms, hemmed-in streets, and players you'd think long dead by 1947 (King Kong's Frank Reicher as an elevator operator!). Down-stable from Warners Nancy Coleman is the name, which speaks to poverty of same at Mono; she'd later call Violence "a horrible picture," saying it represented a "low period" in her career ($10K for two weeks' work). A misfire yes, but that won't diminish interest, for how is any noir devoid of at least curiosity? Violence gets a vote for intent, less for execution, but as that's expected with such an obscurity, there's no letdown for watching.