A Crime Does Not Pay Series No. 2. A notorious gangster is murdered and the police believe that another gangster, Leo Rinelli, committed the murder. However, there is no hard evidence of this and worse yet, from the police's point of view, is that Rinelli has a cast iron alibi. He was at the movies and can prove it because he was called away to take a telephone call. The police delve deeper and come up with an interesting albeit old hat resolution to the problem. The short is filled with stalwart character actors whose faces will be familiar if not their names. Edward Norris as Rinelli does a great job and it's surprising that he didn't have an even more illustrious career, although he did dozens of movies.
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Paularoc24 March 2013
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bkoganbing30 November 2019This MGM Crime Does Not Pay short subject concerns with breaking an alibi that gangster Edward Norris. Al Bridge who is the chief police inspector of an unnamed city narrates to a colleague how one of his men Charles Trowbridge solves a few murders by showing how in a particular case a false alibi is broken.
Up till now Norris's family has shielded him from the law, but not any more. Norris's stock and trade has been the creation of false alibis to get away with his evil deeds.
Let's say some unique family circumstances allowed our perpetrator to get away with his crimes until now.
But the moral of these shorts is you can't keep getting away with it. -
boblipton30 November 2019The second entry in MGM's long-running crime series has Al Bridge telling the MGM Crime Reporter a long and unlikely yarn of an unbreakable alibi and how it was broken, as it always will be broken because CRIME DOES NOT PAY.
MGM was moving slowly and erratically into short subject production. On the minus side, MGM, from its amalgamation in 1923, had been the home of prestige features, and short-subjects could best be left to the companies that specialized in such movies. On the plus side, those companies could no longer show comfortable or even any profit, and in-house production gave MGM a means to train talented newcomers to the industry.
This one is well-produced with a fine cast, although I think the story offered is so unlikely as to be nonsense. -
tadpole-596-91825624 September 2020. . . on this Planet are identical twins, ALIBI RACKET documents. As Patty Duke hinted "when cousins are two of a kind," the look-alike shenanigans of "dead-ringer" relatives often turn murderous when the two peas in a pod are exact carbon copies. Though ALIBI RACKET smugly seeks to assure its viewers that frying "Joe" and throwing away the key for "Leo" has curtailed their crime spree, can we be actually SURE of that? What if the twin's criminal genes are shared with a third clone--or, worse yet--a fourth?! Perhaps this hidden half of the homicidal quadruplets are too smart to be caught! In Real Life, when Lee H. Oswald famously remarked "I'm just a patsy!" most of America took him at his word, given such an honest face. It goes without saying that the ACTUAL killer of JFK concealed behind that Grassy Knoll was Lee's twin brother, Joey! How else can anyone account for the thousands of Oswald sightings reported by credible eye witnesses since November, 1963?
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billsoccer24 September 2020I enjoyed the story - a suspected mobster had great alibis, and the police are continually flummoxed. The mobsters eventual comeuppance and the reason for it are explained in the same end, but that's what's was unsatisfactory - the police gathers everyone in a room - ala Agatha Christie - and explains in detail how the mobster did it. Would have been nice to see instead of having the script water hide all the details from us, though that was the fashion in those times.
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SnoopyStyle21 January 2023It's the MGM presents Crime Does Not Pay Series. It's the second short in the series. The Chief Inspector of Police recounts the murder case of racketeer Mike Lichter. Joe Rinelli is the next in command and the obvious prime suspect, but he has an airtight alibi. The cops work to break it.
This is the standard Crime Does Not Pay Series episode. It does have a fun little murder mystery with an ending reveal buried within it. It's not the most compelling, but it's zippy. Not all of these are that fun. At least, they're not bringing out the rubber hose. That would be something and not this series. -
mark.waltz24 January 2018The second "Crime Does Not Pay" series starts off clever enough, but I have to question several details here that are too unconvincing to believe. Edward Morris plays a dual role, similar looking brothers who haven't seen each other in years yet are reunited when one of them is brought in on murder charges. Everything seems tight, but as inspector Al Bridge explains, there's always something wrong in the obvious false alibis criminals use to protect themselves. Everything was going along just fine, but when the inevitable flashback occurs, credibility literally flies out the window. Still, this shows off a dozen or so minor players in bigger parts for a change, and if it had not been for that one flaw of strange timing, I would have fallen hook, line and sinker. Details needed to be ironed out on the final script that never are, and that's where this comes off as the crime that could have paid had the script writer not underestimated the intelligence of the viewers.
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planktonrules3 July 2013During the 1930s and 40s, MGM made a string of "Crime Does Not Pay" shorts--all of which illustrate excellent police work and serve to convince viewers that crooks ultimately WILL get caught. It's interesting, but these films usually showed a lot more realistic police procedures than the regular movies at the various studios (many full-length films portrayed the cops as idiots). In addition, they tell great stories that even when seen today are quite satisfying.
The film is told through a flashback. The story begins with a mobster being killed--and the most logical killer is a fellow mobster. However, this suspect has a seemingly air-tight alibi--one in which it appears he went to great lengths to establish where he was and when. But, thanks to nice work by the police, they are able to prove exactly how the guy was able to be at one place while killing another at a different location. Very enjoyable and well-written.