RAILROADED! (1947) B/W 72m dir: Anthony Mann

w/John Ireland, Sheila Ryan, Hugh Beaumont, Jane Randolph, Charles D. Brown, Clancy Cooper, Peggy Converse, Hermine Sterler, Keefe Brasselle, Roy Gordon, Ed Kelly

From Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style edited by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward: "The robbery of a beauty shop that served as a front for a gambling racket results in the death of a policeman and the apprehension of one of the robbers, Cowie, whose face was badly disfigured. Interrogated by the police at his bedside, the fatally wounded criminal implicates an innocent friend, Steve Ryan, as his accomplice. Not believing that her brother is capable of such heinous crimes, his sister, Rosa, convinces police investigator Ferguson to reopen the case. Their suspicions center on Duke Martin, a gunman who double-crossed the gambling racket that hired him by stealing the booty. As Ferguson and Rosa hunt down witnesses who might link Duke to the robbery, the trigger-happy gunman stays ahead of them and leaves a number of corpses in his wake. He ritualizes each murder by perfuming his bullets and polishing his gun before he commits his crime, and this affectation finally gives him away. In a final shoot-out in a deserted bar, Ferguson kills the sadistic Duke.

"Railroaded is another low-budget noir extravaganza directed by Anthony Mann and, like the earlier Desperate, it is a crisp, well-made thriller. The real tone of the noir sensibility is revealed by John Ireland's grotesque portrayal of Duke Martin. There is an erotic quality to his ritualizing anointment of the bullets and the self-satisfying response to the massaging of the gun barrel. The almost ludicrous Freudian association between sex and violence is carried off so convincingly that Duke's obsession is never questioned or laughed at. In Railroaded, Mann was more concerned with the dealings of the noir antagonist, Duke, than in the vindication of the wrongly accused fall guy. The retribution for the crimes committed by Duke are inconsequential. What matters in Railroaded is that the aberrant nature of Duke's character was not compromised. The lack of redemption attests to the noir code, and the screenplay by John C. Higgins (who also wrote T-Men, Raw Deal, He Walked by Night, and Border Incident for Anthony Mann) is strongly rooted in the hard-boiled tradition of pulp magazines of the period."