tedg The story is good because it is plotted well. It starts with a Ted-friendly fold: a guy is in a movie with his girl. He takes a break and kills someone and returns as if the murder was a movie. Well, it is.What follows is a collection of tough guys and dolls navigating through different interlocked schemes to cheap each other in some way. A few die. The good plotting comes from the intricate interlacing of the perfidy. The hero here is a mobster's "good" daughter who goes under cover to find the killer of her dad. The formula would have her won and lose both. She doesTed's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Panamint Low-budget but you really don't need a big budget for this type of contemporary 1950 murder-mystery. It does have sort of early Perry Mason black-and white television production values, but check out the cool 1950 cars.Hurd Hatfield's "presence" dominates this film and keeps it believable. The best way to describe this guy's acting is polished and smooth. In contrast, the lead actress is nowhere near Hatfield's acting league. However, she is attractive and OK for this B-movie role.The casting of the supporting roles is perfect and the director utilizes them to good effect. Watch for solid James Flavin (King Kong '33), and for very early silent star Franklyn Farnum in a brief part at the beginning. "Destination Murder" overcomes its cheapness. Hatfield was a bargain for the cheap salary they probably paid him. This film will hold your attention all the way through until the ending, mainly due to the good plot twists throughout.

blanche-2 Is it possible that Hurd Hatfield's career took this much of a nosedive in 5 years? Evidently. "Destination Murder" is a B movie for sure that stars Hatfield, Joyce MacKenzie, Albert Dekker, and John Dehner. A young woman (MacKenzie) investigates the murder of her father by a uniformed messenger hired by someone else. She has no trouble picking out the messenger in a lineup, and he leads her to a club run by Armitage (Dekker) whose manager is Hatfield. That's the way it seems anyway. People start turning up dead. The villain hatches an ingenious plot to beat the rap.MacKenzie is very attractive with a beautiful figure, but she is not much of an actress. Albert Dekker plays a monster well. Hatfield, with those imposing looks, sports a New York accent beautifully. A New York accent is one of the hardest, most of the time sounding put on and phony. Hatfield's sounds natural. Perhaps it was - I only heard him speak in Dorian Gray (British) and I can't remember what he sounded like on Murder, She Wrote. At any rate, he's smooth in this role. But every time I looked at him, I thought of Dorian Gray. Perhaps his link to that character is why his film career crashed."Destination Murder" is a nothing special B with some noir features, interesting for the cast.

sol **SPOILERS** Using the intermission between two movies at a local theater as cover Blue Streak Messenger Jackie Wales, Stanley Chements, goes out to big-time businessman Authur Mansfield's, Franklyn Farnum, home with his gangster boss Armitage(Albert Dekker) behind the wheel to murder him and get back,to the movie house, just in time for the second feature. Mansfield was a torn in the side to Armitage's nightclub rackets and by getting ride of him and then framing his murder on his business rival Frank Niles, John Dehner, was a stroke of genius on Armitage's part; knocking out two threats to his criminal operations with one stone.One thing that Armitage didn't count on was that Mansfield's young daughter Laura, Joyce Mackenzie, was at his home visiting from out of town and the greed and brazenness of the person who did his killing messenger Wales.After recognizing Jackie Wales in a police lineup Laura, who got a glimpse of the fleeing gunman, starts to work on Jackie by getting overly friendly with him. This lead her to the nightclub that his boss Armitage runs. Getting a job as the cigarette girl there from the real boss Stretch Norton,Hurd Hatfield, who feel in love with her. Laura was now in a position to get the goods on both gangsters, Armitage & Norton, and at the same time solve her dad's murder. After Jackie gets the hell beat out of him by Armitag, who likes to do his beatings to the sound of music, for asking for more money for the "hit" he did for him he later writes out an "insurange policy" by confessing in writing to Mansfield's murder. Jackies policy implicates his boss Armitage in case he, Jackie, ended up dead and then stupidly goes back to blackmailing him. Jackie gets this idea from Armitage's mob-doll Alice, Myrna Dell, who didn't realize that he was only a stooge to Norton, not visa versa, and together with Jackie, ends up getting murdered by him. While all this is going on the police are using Laura, without her knowledge, and Frank Niles, with his cooperation, to trap both Armitage & Norton in order to get "The goods" on them in Mansfield's murder. Laura who fell in love with Norton who unknowing to her had her father murdered didn't find this out until the end of the movie when Niles, with the police and Laura listening in and recording the conversation, got Norton to spill the beans on him and his operation. This was to make him, Niles, a partner after he earlier murdered his former partner Armitage, who was getting a bit drunk and a lot out off line, and made it look like self-defense. Decent film-noir with both Joyce Mackenzie and Hurd Hatfield doing as good as they could as two star-struck lovers who up until the end of the movie didn't really known that much about each other even though they were planing to get married.