Decoy (1946) User Reviews (63)

'Margot' Is One Mean, Money-Hungry 'Mother'

[ccthemovieman-1 · 8/10 · 4 September 2007]

This movie, recently made available through a set of film noirs (Volume 4) packaged with two on each disc, gets points for originality. I mean, how many movies - much less film noirs - do you see someone executed, then brought back to life, then shot in the back minutes later? Now that's what you call having a rough day!

Robert Armstrong's "Frank Olins" had to endure all that one day. He's the crook who has the money stashed away somewhere and "Margot Shelby" (Jean Gille) is the woman who is bound-and-determined to get it - all of it. "Frank" claims a few times that if he isn't going get the money when he gets out of jail, nobody will and those aren't words that "Margot" wants to hear! Frank knew this dame and other members of his gang, most notably "Jim Vincent" (Edward Norris) were not trustworthy.

Well, he certainly was right about "Margot." She's the femme fatale - one mean mother - who has only one thing on her mind: money. She never wants to return to her old, poor, dingy ways of her youth in small town England. Now, she's in America, part of gang and she knows how to manipulate men. Of course it helps to be extremely pretty and have a great body, which she does. She plays the men and, well.....like most noirs, the ending is not particularly a happy one for most of the characters in this story.

Personally, in this film I enjoyed seeing a lot of familiar faces from TV programs and such of the 1950s, beginning with a young Sheldon Leonard who plays the tough, pursing cop in this movie. I also thought Armstrong sounded a lot better than in his early '30s adventure stories. Speaking of sound, the music in here was ill-timed, dominating some scenes which took away from the dialog.

Make no mistake, though: this is Gilles' movie. For classic movie fans and particular film noir buffs, this is worth checking out. It's always fun to see a new "face," and that certainly applies to Gillis, whose character reminded me a bit of Peggy Cummins' one in "Gun Crazy."

I thought the ending of this film - the final minute - was especially good. So many times, you get the ending that doesn't stay true to the main character, but this one did.

DECOY (Jack Bernhard, 1946) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 18 July 2008]

Given this film’s rarity (it went unseen for 30 years), I guess even self-confessed film nuts could be excused for never having heard of it – that is, until its announcement as part of Warners’ fourth “Film Noir Collection” on DVD. While some of the pairings in that 10-Movie 5-Disc Set were done without rhyme or reason – and it had seemed to me to be so here as well! – the film actually had a connection to its companion piece, CRIME WAVE (1954; which I’ve just watched a couple of days ago), via the credit on both of blacklisted scriptwriter/actor Nedrick Young (he appeared in the latter but only wrote DECOY).

Being a Monogram production, the film wears its Poverty Row status on its sleeve – with a bizarre plot (involving the re-animation of the dead: this has to be the only vintage crime outing to take the genre into the realm of sci-fi!), gritty look and second-rate cast – but which it generally manages to turn in its favor. In my review for CRIME WAVE itself, I had written how surprised I was that the film proved to be so good – this, then, came as even more of a shock (joining the ranks of such ramshackle ‘B’ noir gems as DETOUR, DILLINGER {both 1945} and GUNMAN IN THE STREETS [1950])! The film was devised as a showcase for British actress Jean Gillie by her husband, director Bernhard – however, the couple would divorce soon after and (even more sadly) Gillie herself would be dead of pneumonia in just a couple of years’ time! Still, hers is one of the most unscrupulous femme fatales ever conceived – ensnaring practically the entire male cast in her obsessive pursuit of money – and which she plays in a slightly overstated (but, under the circumstances, entirely fitting) manner.

The rest of the cast includes Edward Norris as Gillie’ crooked associate, Robert Armstrong as her ageing gangster boyfriend currently on Death Row and the only one who knows the location of a stashed cache' containing $400,000, Herbert Rudley as the small-town doctor enticed by Gillie into her unholy revivification scheme, and Sheldon Leonard as the cagey and dogged cop on their trail. Norris is somewhat stiff, while Armstrong (the original Carl Denham of “King Kong” fame) brings his typical zest to the role of love-struck and over-the-hill duped mobster – but both Rudley (bemoaning his betrayal of the code governing his profession) and Leonard (secretly enamored of Gillie himself, he’s willing to answer her plea at the moment of death to “stoop to her level”…but she just laughs in his face!) match the lady’s display of cool elegance disguising an essentially hard-boiled nature. Incidentally, Gillie’s character anticipated such celebrated noir bad girls of the ‘deadly sweet’ variety as Jane Greer in OUT OF THE PAST (1947) and Peggy Cummins (coincidentally, another British actress) in GUN CRAZY (1950) – but also Gaby Rodgers in KISS ME DEADLY (1955) in view of her similar histrionic outburst when finally laying hands on the long sought-after object of contention.

Unfortunately, it’s been revealed that the print of DECOY utilized for the DVD is slightly censored: one of the main characters is trampled no less than three times by a car which has Gillie at the wheel – however, we only get to see this once in the current version! For the record, Bernhard (whose first directorial effort this was) had been an executive at Universal – responsible for such popular ‘B’ horror outings as HORROR ISLAND and MAN-MADE MONSTER (1941; which I still haven’t managed to check out!). Finally, I’m to follow DECOY with another noir of his – the evocatively-titled BLONDE ICE (1948), via the “Special Edition” released by VCI…

Murderous Exotic Diamond Begs Unearthing

[secragt · 8/10 · 20 April 2004]

A stingingly bizarre noir entry every fan should seek out. Why? First, this ultra-rare crime drama has one of the two or three most ruthless and irredeemable femme fatales in B+W history, Margot Shelby, as blisteringly portrayed by standout brit Jean Gillie. Second, it features one of the strangest hybrid sci-fi/noir premises, introducing an exotic chemical to reincarnate the dead as the conceit to get Margot's man-slaughtering act started. Third, it all actually comes together in this strangely involving prison breakout cum road picture, which takes us all the way from the death chamber to a grove of trees in the woods (another death chamber) and back to where it all began, in a family's quiet suburban house (still another death chamber).

Once you get past the reincarnation, the plot is fairly conventional set pieces which mostly hold up and which benefit from a honey of a twist at the end. Along the way there, we get to see greed, betrayal, spinelessness, insanity, bravery, more betrayal, submission, redemption and more Jean Gillie, whose gin blossom charm and hyena-like guffaw at once blends Richard Widmark's killing debut in KISS OF DEATH with the murderous cackle of SPECTRE in the mirrored killmaze in MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. Either way, she is death and she is irresistible. As is this movie. Find it and you'll see.

Jean Gillie is an awesome Femme Fatale in this sci-fi flavored Noir.

[Brother5 · 8 April 2000]

(April, 2000): Just saw a rare print at the American Cinematheque Noir festival and the film knocked my socks off. As evidenced by this performance, Jean Gillie would have been one of the greats of Noir had she not died in 1949. She powers through this film, getting man after man to do her bidding, never taking no for an answer. And the obstacles that would stop a lesser character don't bother her in the least. The problem confronting her: her boyfriend is on death row. Only he knows where $400,000 from a robbery is. And she uses her feminine wiles to persuade him, and two other men, to discern the location of that dough because, *she wants that money.* Even the gas chamber doesn't slow her down ... which is where the slight sci-fi element is introduced. If this turns up on late-night video, set your VCR. You will be amazed.

Odd, intriguing film from Poverty Row

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 23 February 2010]

1946's Decoy is a fascinating noir, directed by Jack Bernhard, whose intention it was to showcase his wife, Jean Gille, for American audiences. Gille had worked since 1935 in British films. Unfortunately, two things happened to railroad Gille's career - she and Bernhard divorced, and then she died of pneumonia three years after this film was made.

Tall, slender, with silky blond hair and a British accent, Gille has a formidable role here as the noir femme fatale, Margot Shelby, who will stop at nothing to find and possess $400,000 a death row killer has hidden. To that end, she plays all ends against the middle. He plans to go to his grave with his secret, determined to be the only person who will ever spend that money. No matter how much he loves Margot, he won't tell her where it is. Margot finds out that methylene blue is the antidote for the gas used to execute prisoners and convinces a doctor (Herbert Rudley), who works at the prison, to administer it after the execution. Once you're dead, you're dead, except in this film, I guess. Well, somehow, the doc revives this guy, and Margot, the reluctant doctor, and her boyfriend (Edward Norris) go after the loot.

The story is told in flashback by Margot to Sergeant Portugal (Sheldon Leonard), though at the start of the film, we see the segment leading up to Margot telling her story. I actually went back and watched the beginning over.

Gille is tough as nails, and while her acting style is overt, it's perfect for this type of film. She might have enjoyed a career as a noir femme fatale in the U.S. were it not for her misfortune. Good movie, if you can buy resurrection.

"It's simple arithmetic."

[utgard14 · 7/10 · 8 December 2014]

What a great B movie. In the powerful opening minutes, a wounded man hitchhikes to a San Francisco hotel, where he shoots an unarmed woman (Jean Gillie) and dies. While she lay dying, the woman tells a police detective (Sheldon Leonard) the events that led up to this. Her killer was a doctor she had duped into helping her bring her executed convict boyfriend back to life (!) so she could find out where he had stashed some loot. All through her story, it becomes clear this woman is pretty heartless and sadistic.

Jean Gillie was married to this film's director. This was his attempt to make her a star. Unfortunately nobody really became a star making pictures for Monogram, no matter how good they may have been. A short time later the pair divorced and Gillie moved back to England. She died there of pneumonia at the age of 33, just 3 years after this was released. Gillie showed how much potential she had in this movie. It's a shame her life was cut so short. Nice to see Sheldon Leonard playing a detective. He was usually playing tough gangsters. He's plenty tough here, even if he is on the right side of the law. Edward Norris and Herbert Rudley are both good. Robert Armstrong, the biggest name in the picture at the time, has little screen time as the executed boyfriend but does well with what he has.

Exceptional film noir from Monogram, a Poverty Row studio not known for much that was exceptional. There are a lot of memorable moments in this one. The beginning and ending are really great. The atmospheric scene where Armstrong is brought back to life is another highlight. With a couple of changes this could have easily been turned into a horror movie like The Man They Could Not Hang. It's definitely one you'll want to check out.

A knockout film noir with no frills, save Methylene Blue – and Jean Gillie as Margot Shelby.

[bmacv · 9/10 · 7 December 2002]

When Jean-Luc Godard dedicated Breathless to Monogram Pictures, foremost in his memory must have been Decoy. It's a movie whose reputation, over the years, has grown into folklore, because it's all but impossible to view or obtain. For aficionados of film noir, it has attained the stature of a Holy Grail (or Maltese Falcon), a fabulous treasure the quest for which seems doomed to futility. It has, however, showed up at festival screenings, and now circulating, in samizdat as it were, is a subtitled copy taped from Croatian television.

While probably it can't ever live up to the inflated legend that trails in its wake, it's decidedly no disappointment. Monogram and its raffish rivals on Poverty Row shot fast and cut corners, working from fast-and-loose scripts full of implausible chunks of plot for viewers either to swallow or choke on. Usually, the results were shoddy and forgettable. But now and again enough elements came together to generate unexpected chemistry. Decoy marks one such serendipitous occasion.

The key element in this explosive reaction is Jean Gillie, an English actress whose early death in 1949 deprived cinema of one of its darkest Jezebels. Like her compatriot Peggy Cummins (Annie Laurie Starr in Gun Crazy), she makes no attempt, as Margot Shelby, to Americanize her origins; in explanation, Decoy lets her spit out her contempt for poverty in an eloquent aria about that 'dingy, dirty street' that 'runs all over the world,' and through the sooty mill town in England she came from. She vows never to go back to want, and her unquenchable greed powers the plot.

Tricked out in haut-forties snoods, stoles, muffs and dead-serious hats, Gillie cuts a swath through the various men who stand between her and the $400-grand stolen by her gangster boyfriend (Robert Armstrong. Trouble is, he's the only one who knows where it's stashed but won't tell even though he's on death row.

But her days as a high-maintenance moll have taught her a thing or two, one of them that a tincture called Methylene Blue can reverse an execution by cyanide. She works her wiles on maverick mobster Edward Norris and an idealistic doctor who does prison autopsies (Herbert Rudley), enlisting them in her gruesome scheme. They hijack the fresh corpse, en route to an 'oven job,' and, in a sequence reminiscent of Frankenstein, bring it back to life.

Still, the tight-fisted old zombie won't trust them, instead roughing out a map to the buried strongbox but keeping half (why just half?) against the prospect of this second coming's failing to take. It's a turn of events that kicks Gillie's avarice into lethal overdrive....

Though the movie wouldn't be remarkable without Gillie, it shows a fair amount of craft. From his 11 recorded directorial credits, Jack Bernhardt couldn't have been expected to contribute much, but he adds some arresting details (a sprung window shade in the doctor's office among them) and an offbeat pace. He splits the ending in two, leaving half in its proper place and opening the movie with the other, in a gas-station men's room where the shattered mirror and filthy sink outdo one another as emblems of last-ditch squalor. Police detective Sheldon Leonard figures prominently in those two segments; the rest of the movie is told in extended flashback.

There's barely a moment when Gillie isn't front and center, for which gratitude should be fulsome. She delivers a go-for-broke performance, short on nuance but long on the flamboyant gesture. She coldly guns the motor to run down one of her victims, skitters into hysterical giggles when she shoots the next, and, dying, laughs in Leonard's face after coaxing him to kiss her ('Jo Jo, just this once, come down to my level'). She's a knockout, and because of her the elusive Decoy, despite the inevitable shortcomings of its Monogram origins, can be counted a knockout, too – film noir with no frills.

Nice effort

[AAdaSC · 7/10 · 28 December 2011]

Jean Gillie (Margot) devises a plan to spring her lover Robert Armstrong (Frank) from prison. She gets help for her plan from Edward Norris (Jim) and an unwilling Herbert Rudley (Dr Craig)). The idea is to get Armstrong to locate some hidden money for them to share. However, there are ulterior motives at play......

Methylene blue is at the centre of this story. It is used in the plot to revive Robert Armstrong after he has been killed as it is an antidote to cyanide poisoning. However, be careful if you want to experiment on someone you don't like very much as it serves as an antidote to the poison while you are living and not after you have died. It takes nothing away from the good idea for the plot though. However, poor Robert Armstrong doesn't live for very long after he is revived and so we don't get to see the side-effects of this drug, which turns your urine green and makes the whites of your eyes blue - we would then have been in a completely different film genre, possibly a comedy horror.

The cast do well despite 3 of them not being very good at acting - Jean Gillies, Herbert Rudley and, in a minor part, Marjorie Woodworth. Jean Gillies, while she is the driving force behind the film is either very good as demonstrated by her ruthlessness while at the steering wheel on the way to dig up the money and her determined self-confidence as she knows what she needs to do, or dreadfully unconvincing as in her scene when she talks about coming from the dirty street to which she never wants to return (her posh Kensington accent fools nobody - she's NEVER been a girl from the streets) and her insane encouragement to Herbert Rudley to dig for the money. Her OTT hysterics are not convincing in both these examples. It is funny to watch, though. Herbert Rudley plays a broken man for most of the film and comes across as a wet fish which is frustrating, although he comes good right at the beginning when he finally becomes a man and pulls a trigger. Still, he is annoying to watch for most of the time as this story unfolds in flashback. As for Marjorie Woodworth who plays Rudley's nurse and girlfriend.....ha ha ha....she's just terrible.

The film is well-paced and atmospheric, eg, the scene when Herbert Rudley is reviving Robert Armstrong and the scene where Jean Gillies engineers a flat tyre situation as she, Rudley and Norris make it to the location where the loot is buried. It is a shame that the film has been cut as it would have been far more powerful and disturbing to see Gillies do what she does to Norris twice as originally filmed as opposed to the one time she does it (which is shocking enough). And her laughter as she fools Sheldon Leonard who plays Sergeant Joe Portugal provides a memorable ending. She was one mean bitch.

The acting is sometimes wooden, the dialogue is sometimes woeful (a very annoying comedy duo at the morgue provide an example of this along with the claptrap speech about coming from that dirty street that Gillies delivers), a posh English accent seems a wrong choice for the lead role and the music is sometimes way too over dramatic but somehow, it doesn't seem to matter. What would normally be a recipe for disaster strangely has a very different effect and produces an entertaining film.

It is sad to discover that in real life, Jean Gillies died of pneumonia 3 years later in 1949 in London.

Ms dirty rotten scoundrel.

[ptb-8 · 9/10 · 2 February 2004]

An awesome shocker in every truly great way. DECOY is a slow burner and when Its pace gathers and the pieces of the story (and Jean Gillie's astonishing character performance) come together.......well I wish I was in a big audience for that collective revelation and reaction. I guarantee the last half an hour is enough to have anyone gobsmacked at her behaviour. The version I saw is the grainy TV print from Europe, so to see DECOY in a new print in a cinema with a crowd would be one of the great events you could want. I want it - and this just confirms again why I love Monogram Pictures. This film is worth the hunt....and Godard was right. Read all the other rave comments for the storyline... but do not miss this Monogram 1946 DECOY under any circumstances!

Resurrection From the Gas Chamber

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 29 November 2011]

I have to say that Decoy was one interesting cinematic experience. The story had a lot of holes in it and the plan that was made by the bad guys had a lot of faults in it.

But what makes this film get as high a rating from me as I give it is the presence of Jean Gillie who made only one more film after this one before dying at 33. Just like another British beauty Kay Kendall.

Gillie is one devil woman and she's got one devilish plan to $400,000.00 of stolen loot that Robert Armstrong has hidden away. She's been Armstrong's moll for years, but he's going to the gas chamber. Never mind Gillie's found a way to beat the gas chamber. But it involves getting a doctor and another hoodlum to pull it off.

The key is Dr. Herbert Rudley who supervises the executions. There's a chemical if administered within a short time that can counteract the effects of cyanide. Gillie puts on quite a campaign to vamp Rudley and soon he's just putty. Her other hoodlum boyfriend Edward Norris is amused at Rudley, but he's also thinking with his crotch.

Even Sheldon Leonard playing a cop instead of gangster for once is also not immune to Gillie when she turns it on. If some company could have bottled what Gillie had and sold it to the government it would be quite a formidable weapon.

The script isn't all that great, but Gillie and the cast of sex struck males really put this Monagram classic over.

Minority Report -- Mediocre first half, better second

[mmmarks · 5/10 · 24 May 2012]

This film deserves to be seen, but it does not warrant such abundant high praise as given by others. The first half has many scenes in which the acting is wooden at best (e.g., the actress playing the nurse in the doctor's office is terrible), and many of the character bits fall flat. Note, for example, the moment when Jo Jo comes into the bar and tosses a coin tip to the flashy pianist. When the pianist grabs the coin with his left hand, the music keeps right on playing as if he had three hands. The bit is supposed to signify Jo Jo's "coolness," due to his friendly relationship with the black musician, but the soundtrack error undermines the intent.

Making things worse is a gravely under-par musical score. The music is always trite, and, as another commentator has noted, it is often mixed too loud. This becomes most obvious in the doctor's office scenes, where the sugary "love theme" comes on way too strong. Perhaps the composer was trying to write against the tone of the film to give it more weirdness, but I doubt it. Many other noir films of this period have scores that are much more effective—either more over the top and jazzy or more restrained. (Rozsa's noir film scores have powerhouse openings, then tend to be quite reticent until the ending.)

To be fair, I wish the DVD version now available had the complete auto murder sequence (with Gillie running over her victim twice!), because I am sure that would have made the film stronger overall. And seeing it in a theater with a revved up audience would certainly make it more fun. But even so, this is an example of a film that got overrated due to its being out of circulation for so long. Sure it's dark and nasty and weird; it's just not very good.

A superior slab of poverty row noir.

[Dewey1960 · 10/10 · 30 May 2005]

DECOY (1946) ranks -- alongside Edgar G. Ulmer's DETOUR (1945) -- as probably the most astonishing example of poverty row noir, a potent highball of resolute darkness and perversity, best viewed in the early morning hours, preferably just before dawn.

Released by Monogram Pictures and directed by Jack Bernhard, DECOY also features a stunning central performance by JEAN GILLIE, a British-born actress who, sadly, died in 1949. Gillie plays the girlfriend of a convicted murderer (Robert Armstrong) who is about to take the secret of a buried fortune in stolen cash into the gas chamber. With the help of the prison doctor (Herbert Rudley) who she blatantly seduces, Gillie has concocted a scheme to revive Armstrong through the use of a strange chemical gas ("methelyne blue") after the execution. After doing so, in an inexplicably startling sequence of pure pulp science fiction, Gillie then manipulates Armstrong's henchman (Edward Norris) into bumping off Armstrong once he's forked over a map to the stolen loot--before being knocked off himself by Gillie in a particularly grisly and disturbing scene. Gillie's own retribution comes at the hands of the prison doctor who returns to exact revenge before succumbing to his own violent fate. She eventually dies in the arms of the cop (Sheldon Leonard) who has dogged her from the beginning -- but not before bitterly mocking his heartfelt compassion for her.

This is a film not to be missed under any circumstances, and for discerning viewers an experience not likely to be equaled by many other "B" films. Bernhard directed a number of other interesting poverty row titles (VIOLENCE, 1947; UNKNOWN ISLAND, 1948 among them) but nothing quite as remarkable as DECOY. Jean Gillie, incidentally, was married to Bernhard at the time DECOY was made.

First, Sometimes It's Better To Do The Patient No Good.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 7 July 2008]

This Monogram quickie is better than it has a right to be. A convict, Robert Armstrong, is about to be executed in the gas chamber. Visited by his paramour, Jean Gillie, he tells her that he will never reveal the location of the $300,000 from the heist. He'll take the secret to his grave.

That's what he thinks. Miss Gillie, a serpentine, recreant witch, seduces the innocent Doctor Craig, Herbert Rudley, into a scheme to hijack Armstrong's dead body on the way to the crematorium and bring it back to life by counteracting the effects of hydrogen cyanide with an antidote, methylene blue. Rudley, the fool, thinks that Gillie wants the revived Armstrong to give them the money so that the two of them, Rudley and Gillie, can move elsewhere, live together, and he can begin a more prosperous practice. The revivification scheme works, but it's necessary for Gillie and her new boyfriend, Edward Norris, to knock off a couple of people along the way, arousing the interest of a pugnacious cop, Sheldon Leonard.

By the time Rudley wises up to the fact that he's a sucker, it's too late. He, Gillie, and Norris are on their way to the site of the buried treasure, with Rudley being held at gunpoint. When their car gets a flat, Gillie takes advantage of the opportunity to run her boyfriend over and turn him into road kill. I told you she was treacherous. And when she and Rudley finally dig up the locked box with the money, she shoots Rudley twice and leaves him for dead. He is not, however, dead yet. He washes his filthy hands in a grimy gas-station sink, the way no doctor ever should, then hitches his way back to town, manages to reach Gillie's apartment (or "flat", to her) and plugs her. She's been swooning over the box but when Sheldon Leonard's detective opens it, it's filled with ripped paper and a sarcastic note: To whoever double-crossed me and dug dis up, I leave dis one dollar bill for yer trouble. The rest of da money I leave to da worms. (Trying to approximate Sheldon Leonard's working-class, New York accent, as he reads the note aloud.) Look, it's the kind of movie that is so fast paced that even if you don't thoroughly enjoy it, it's over quickly. Yet it does have some redeeming features which can be glimpsed like playful ghosts grinning through the artificial fog and the haze of cyanide and shadows and low budget and spare sets.

The acting isn't at all terrible. It's no worse than mediocre. And Jean Gillie is a beautiful young woman. And if the plot itself is straight out of Charlie Chan, the writer (Stanley Rubin) must have had a little fun with the dialog, because there are some zippy lines.

One of the assistants at the prison morgue has a habit of reading the dictionary and he savors the word "dichotomy," pronounced with the "ch" of "choose." Later he chides his colleague: "Now don't be obfuscatory." And Gillie, salivating over the prospect of being rich, pipes up with, "C'mon! I've got money singing in my head!" Cop to Gillie: "People who use pretty faces the way you use your pretty face usually don't last too long." At the end, the detective cradles the dying Gillie in his arms and carries her to the couch. "Jo-Jo," she begs, "just this once, come down to my level," and she poses for a kiss. Leonard bends over her tentatively and she laughs loudly in his face and promptly gives up the ghost. This babe is a winner in my book, and the movie's not bad either.

If you have the chance, be sure to listen to the audio commentary on the DVD. Stanley Rubin is co-commentator, in his 80s, and sharp as a tack.

It may be bizarre and fabulous in spurts, but it's a creaky low budget flick in the end

[secondtake · 5/10 · 27 August 2010]

Decoy (1946)

This kind of death row movie makes you appreciate how hard it is to pull off a great movie. Here, all the flaws show, almost textbook perfect. The acting struggles between pretty good (the lead female, the femme fatale one, Jean Gillie) to pretty awful (including, unfortunately, the lead male, a doctor, Herbert Rudley). The detective who shows up now and then (Sheldon Leonard), is actually pretty strong, a coldhearted, no-nonsense type, charmless, perhaps, but with some acting subtlety. (Leonard was a smart guy, actor and director for a lot of classic entertainment television years later.)

But in "Decoy," notice how the archetypal elements are all there. The plot is as interesting as many melodramas, if a bit far-fetched in the one detail that is its hook. But there is no Joan Crawford to raise the whole thing up. Cinematographer Bill O'Connell did do the astonishing original 1932 "Scarface" and he makes this movie excellent in the night scenes, but much of the rest of it is merely functional. The director, Jack Bernhard in his first film (in a five year career), could have made more of all of this. When an actor flinches in reaction, it's obviously an overreaction a better director would have reshot. The music swells and soars. The prison priest is sombre. The nurse calls the doctor "darling" even though he's in love with someone else.

But still, there are moments, and it has a great period feel to it whatever its flaws. And a line now and then pops up, crude and noirish. "Come here baby, I want to look at ya." Or the Frankenstein-like, "I'm alive, I'm alive!" Headlights signal across a lonely highway, men struggle with their unexplained passions, good women give bad women the eye, and innocent people die needlessly. The key brief moment that rises above is a man's grappling with being alive at all. And there is that box of money out there which everyone wants, and he's the only one who knows where it is, while he's actually alive and kicking.

It's all in a day's work. Don't expect a cult marvel--it's no "Detour," not at all "Gun Crazy," to name two B-movie classics. It's a creaker with some involving moments, getting better in the second half, and with a campy last three minutes (the woman's laugh is worth the whole thing). But by the end, you might have to remind yourself about the beginning, before the big flashback.

Jean Gillie redefines femme fatale.

[horn-5 · 22 June 2001]

And makes Barbara Stanwyck and Ann Savage look like Ned(Jane?)in the first reader in the process. And, in "Decoy", femme fatality is a more apt term as all the male characters she encounters have less chance of surviving than Elisha Cook Jr. did going against Jack Palance in "Shane"...zip,nada,none,nought,zap and gone. Sheldon Leonard survives an encounter but only because she is dying when he shows up. The surprise is that she didn't take him out on the way out. Repeated viewings still figure him for no better than even at that. The taglines and blurbs on the posters and ads paint the following picture of her Margot Shelby character: "SHE TREATS MEN THE WAY THEY'VE BEEN TREATING WOMEN FOR YEARS!" Another line defines that as; "She Two-Times, Steals, Cheats, Double-Crosses...Anything To Get What She Wants...and then KISSES THEM OFF." Actually, she runs a car over Edward Norris, which was lack of good judgement on his part for hanging around with a broad known for..."kissing quick and killing quicker." She takes doctor Herbert Rudley away from Marjorie Woodworth,as she needs him to revive her just-executed in the gas chamber boy friend---no lack of plot in this one---which accounts for the only credibility gap in the film...somebody please tell me why Marjorie Woodworth wanted Herbert Rudley in the first place. Good riddance,Marjorie, you can do better although, come to think of it, you seldom did. Gillie gives Rudley a shovel, makes him dig up the buried money and then, in payment for past favors and services, shoots him dead. She had to double check to make certain as there wasn't much difference in his performance either way. Bottom line: Jean Gillie gets a wing to herself in the Femme Fatale Hall of Fame.

Money is a powerful motivator.

[Hey_Sweden · 7/10 · 9 February 2014]

Good, solid low budget film noir is no "lost classic", but is still a fine example of the genre, that works basically because of its memorable femme fatale, played to grasping, greedy perfection by sultry Brit Jean Gillie, who was given this film vehicle by her then-husband, director Jack Bernhard. She makes the most of it, and is supported by a great bunch of actors. The movie begins with a flourish, and ends equally well, with a neat and twisty tale to tell (scripted by actor / screenwriter Nedrick Young, based on a story by Stanley Rubin) and a respectable amount of mood and atmosphere.

Sadly, the lovely Gillie had only time to make one more movie - 1947's "The Macomber Affair" - before dying of pneumonia at the tragically young age of 33. If anything gives "Decoy" a true lasting impression, it's her conniving and crafty character.

She plays Margot Shelby, a gang moll who gets shot and fatally wounded in the opening sequence; she dies slowly enough to give hard-nosed, jaded police detective Joe Portugal (Sheldon Leonard, in an excellent performance) her whole sordid story. She was after the money hidden by her mobster boyfriend Frank Olins (Robert Armstrong). Olins had been found guilty of murder and is sentenced to death, but Margot and her other man, Jim Vincent (Edward Norris) learned of a way to revive the dead using a chemical process. As part of the plan, Margot uses a poor sap of a doctor, L.L. Craig (Herbert Rudley).

All things considered, this is well directed by Bernhard and always entertaining, and should be worth a viewing for devotees of film noir. It keeps its grip throughout, for a breezy and enticing 76 minute run time.

Seven out of 10.

Decoy (1946) ***

[JoeKarlosi · 7/10 · 22 February 2009]

DECOY (1946)

If you like strange movies, try this. A ruthless femme fatale (Jean Gillie) does whatever is necessary to the men in her life to get hold of some stashed "dough". Part of this odd noir film involves the theme of reviving the dead, so hence there's an offbeat horror angle thrown in on the side.

I thought Gillie was terrific in her role, and there was some fun dialogue and able assistance from Sheldon Leonard and Robert Armstrong, among others. A very weird film indeed.

*** out of ****

A really focused lady

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 15 August 2007]

A bit far fetched and a little wooden in places this is nevertheless such an excellent story that it is simply irresistible. Stunning performance from Jean Gillie as the femme fatale, par excellence, with no less than all four of the leading men in awe. Apparently we get to see little else from this enigmatic lady because she marries the director, divorces shortly after the film's release and dies within 3 years. Shame because such promise here with a really solid and uncompromising turn. A really focused lady, she doesn't even blink as others die around her and movie's false and real endings are priceless. Great entertainment all the way.

a good film noir

[bobcathy78-1 · 7/10 · 20 August 2007]

I got Decoy from Critic's Choice Video. They're an Internet and catalog DVD company. I had never heard of the movie before, and this copy was crystal clear. It came in a boxed set entitled Warner Bros film noir # 4. Just to see this movie is worth what you'll pay for the rest of the movies. Jean Gillie was great in this movie. It makes Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity look like a pussy cat. It's sad to find out she died only making this movie and one other. I understand she died from pneumonia and was only 34 years old. If you get the movie from C C video, listen to the comments of one of the writers of the movie. It brings the movie to life. It was interesting to see Sheldon Leonard in this movie. He plays a cop. Of course, he became famous years later on television.

Low(brow) is High in a wicked world(view)

[melvelvit-1 · 10/10 · 28 May 2007]

"A disproportionate number of fondly remembered B pictures fall into the general category of the film noir. Somehow, even mediocrity can become majestic when it is coupled with death." -Andrew Sarris, "The Beattitudes of B Pictures", 1974

Monogram, a "Poverty Row" studio fondly remembered today for it's horror, East Side Kids & Charlie Chan films, also made a few memorable film noirs (THE GANGSTER, SUSPENSE) and DECOY is the jewel in its crown. What would be considered over-the-top in an A Picture is often commonplace in the second feature and this macabre yarn crams quite a bit of plot into its short running time. A dazed, mortally wounded man hitchhikes to San Francisco to shoot a gangland chippie who, in turn, tells a laconic cop in flashback the events leading up to the bloodbath. Seduction, betrayal, prison execution, buried treasure, triple-crosses and casual killings come fast and furious but the most fantastic element is the revival of a dead gangster after the state gives him the gas! In this film's contained universe the characters, all of whom are either corrupt or corruptable, are driven by greed and lust. The gun moll, Margot Shelby, is probably filmdom's ultimate femme fatale whom no man, living or dead, can resist -including the cop on the case. The cast includes a few of Hollywood's most memorable character actors: Robert "King Kong" Armstrong as the executed killer, Sheldon Leonard as the somnambulistically world-weary policeman mesmerized by Margot and Eddie "Mr. Ann Sheridan" Norris as an underworld character also smitten with Shelby.

The film revolves around British newcomer Jean Gillie (a corrupted cross between Jean Parker & Veda Ann Borg) as the lethal lovely who'll let nothing stand in her way as she scrambles for the stolen $400,000 Armstrong buried before he takes his secret to the grave -and even that doesn't faze her! The ending is both ironic and sardonic and bears out a favorite film noir theme of mine: You can't win; you can't break even; you can't even quit the game ...and you're lucky if you get out alive. Noirometer: Over-the-top and through the roof! A femme fatale in flashback, brief (female) voice-over narration, the use of lighting to mask limited sets due to a restricted budget, a cynical world-view with disareeeable people doing any number of unpleasant things and some innovative directorial touches spell N-O-I-R. The gas chamber execution is filmed from the POV of the condemned man and we see an audience watching us through the glass as the fumes from the gas pellets rise. Later, when the dead man is revived (with "Methylene Blue"), we see (again through his POV) the fog slowly clearing from our eyes in a riff on the FRANKENSTEIN life-giving laboratory scene ("I'm alive!" replacing "It's alive!"). It could be that the horror elements in this film (which include the greedy girl going mad in a misty graveyard-like setting) are what excludes this film from many a film noir canon. In all fairness, if this is true noir, then so is Paramount's 1941 B, THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL, which mixes courtroom melodrama, murder and the underworld with brain transplants and revenge, all narrated by a prostitute who walks out of the fog to tell her tale. I would never rate a B movie the same way I would an A feature and this little gem is a perfect example of the Golden Age Second Feature. To say one gets their money's worth here is an understatement. It's simply the best and, along with PRC's DETOUR, can give insight and appreciation to a style of film-making that's, unfortunately, long gone. Here's an example of the influence of a studio like Monogram:

"Don't laugh. After all, name another company that has had the honor of having a feature film dedicated to it. Jean-Luc Godard, the former French director-turned-political activist, made his first feature, 'A Bout de Soufflé' (BREATHLESS) and told everybody how his film making had been influenced by Monogram Pictures. So Godard became a Maoist. Did anybody ever dedicate a film to MGM?"

"Don't let that pretty face go to your head"

[mls4182 · 6/10 · 12 January 2023]

Pretty isn't as pretty does. Margot is a ruthless, ice veined femme fatale and deadlier than the male. She seems to enjoy killing more than the money she craves. She is a delight to watch.

Who knew methylene blue could bring someone back from the dead? I saw it happen, so it must be true. Even the corpse was shocked. He had to light a match to believe it. "I'm alive!"

This film is so strangely mesmerizing you almost forget how ludicrous plot trick it relies on. It is a glossier and more expensive "Detour."

It is a shame Jean Gillie passed away so young. Who knows how her career could have turned out.

Intriguing But Mediocre

[shanejamesbordas · 5/10 · 26 November 2007]

For those who have heard about this film as being a great forgotten classic of Film Noir, prepare to be disappointed. 'Decoy' is ultimately just another cheap and badly acted B-movie. In spite of a few moments of inspired camera work and a tantalizing opening, 'Decoy' slogs its way through its badly paced 75 minutes, quickly turning flat and staid. Anyone even half-awake during the duration will be two steps ahead of the deeply silly, almost Ed Wood-like, plot twists. Although much has been made of Jean Gillie's femme fatal as being darker and nastier than any other from the period, she comes across as rather prissy and one-dimensional. Despite displaying a plethora of admittedly intriguingly dark and unforgiving traits, she remains a somewhat indifferent creation.

For a really legendary poverty row Noir classic with a more memorably nasty female, seek out a decent print of Edgar G. Ulmer's masterful 'Detour' (made the year before this) instead.

PAY THE LADY THE FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND $$

[tcchelsey · 10/10 · 3 December 2022]

For some reason, DECOY was put on the shelf and never really surfaced enough on television for all of us oldie addicts. Finally, it has been resurrected and added to a box set with other film noirs, special thanks to Warner Brothers.

This is actually a first; genuine noir slash horror as it deals with bringing a dead gangster back to life with a revolutionary drug. Actually, the drug is real (without going into specifics), but cannot restore life, especially someone who just died in the electric chair. If you're a true movie buff, this has shades of the Boris Karloff classic, THE WALKING DEAD (1936).

British actress Jean Gillie plays the proverbial dragon lady, ready to get her greedy hands on a fortune in cash stashed away by gangster Robert Armstrong. Gillie, at the time, was married to director Jack Bernhard who met her in Europe during WW II. Also look for Sheldon Leonard, this time playing a cynical police detective instead of the usual slick gangsta'.

The opening and closing scenes are what B films are all about, and then some. An unusual trip into the macabre and quite well produced by Monogram Pictures, whose specialty of the house were westerns and the Bowery Boys series.

A thank you to TCM for routinely showing this gem.

decoy

[mossgrymk · 6/10 · 28 December 2022]

If you can somehow manage to keep your IQ from periodically slipping beneath one hundred as you watch a plot that involves, among other things, characters being killed, then unkilled, then killed once again, and if you can find it in yourself to ignore some of the worst acting in a male lead this side of Lee Bowman (talking of course about Herbert Rudley as Dr. Lloyd Craig) then you will be rewarded with one of the top ten greedy, femme fatale roles in American movies essayed by one Jean Gillie who, had she not been tragically taken from the screen at thirty three, would surely have gone on to give Liz Scott a run for her money, (appropriate imagery for this sensually venal Brit). Give it a C plus.

Film Noir Or Horror?

[AaronCapenBanner · 5/10 · 12 November 2013]

Jack Bernhard directed this obscure cult item and bizarre film noir/horror hybrid that stars Jean Gillie as a ruthless Femme Fatale who seduces gangster Jim Vincent to break into a prison where her husband(played by Robert Armstrong) has just been executed in the gas chamber, but she knows a way of reviving him so that he will tell her where his fortune in cash is buried! The plan works until Jim kills her husband in a fit of jealousy, forcing them to find the money with an incomplete map. Sheldon Leonard plays the policeman in pursuit. Strange film has a ridiculous plot, but Jean Gillie is something else as the lethal leading lady, truly an unrepentant sociopath to the bitter end.