Decoy
Tags: plot twist, cult, murder, sadist, flashback

Plot synopsis:
The story picks up in Margot Shelby's apartment, as she is dying from a gunshot wound. Police detective Joe Portugal arrives at the scene to hear her last moments and possible confession. Margot recounts all the events that lead to Dr. Lloyd Craig shooting her shortly after arriving at her apartment. Via flash-back, we travel back to the beginning:
Margot's boyfriend was gangster Frankie Olins. Frankie robbed a bank and got away with around $400,000. He hid the money in a safe place before being arrested by the police. Since Frankie accidentally killed a guard during the robbery, he has been sentenced to death in the gas chamber. Frankie has never disclosed the location of the buried money to anyone. Margot, in order to get both Frankie out of prison and get her hands on the money, pretends to be in love with another gangster, Jim Vincent. She promises to share the stolen money with him if she can get Frankie to disclose the location. To this end, Vincent is recruited to fund Frankie's defense, and later, his possible resurrection from execution. In order to counter-act the effects of cyanide poisoning, Margot recruits the help of Dr. Lloyd Craig, the prison physician. They subsequently "steal" Frankie's body from the prison morgue.
Once Frankie is revived, he draws a map to the location of the buried loot for Margot, but on handing it to her, keeps half of the map for himself. Now that Vincent and Margot have the location, Margot encourages Vincent to shoot Frankie and take his half of the map. With Frankie truly dead, Margot, Vincent, and Dr. Craig now must be able to get out of the city.
Since Sergeant Portugal is aware of both Margot and Vincent's possible involvement in the dead convicts body disappearing, they determine to use doctor Craig and his car. As Dr. Craig's license plates will get them through any police roadblock, they force the reluctant Dr. Craig to drive them out of hiding to look for the money. Vincent's plan is to kill Dr. Craig once they leave town, but Margot has a plan of her own. She flattens a tire and tricks Vincent into fixing the flat. As he is lowering the car from the tire jack, she runs him over, killing him. She now forces Dr. Craig, at gunpoint, to dig up the buried money. Once she has the money box, she shoots Dr. Craig, leaving him for dead. However, he survives and follows her to her apartment, where he shoots her in revenge, thus bringing the story to the present. As Margot finishes her story to detective Portugal, she dies. Portugal opens the money box only to find a single dollar bill wrapped in a note from Frankie, stating that he did not intend to leave any money to a double-crosser.

Review: A knockout film noir with no frills, save Methylene Blue  and Jean Gillie as Margot Shelby..
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
– 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.
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!
Odd, intriguing film from Poverty Row. 1946's Decoy is a fascinating noir, directed by Jack Bernhard, whose intention it was to showcase his wife, Jean Gille, for American audiences.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 sci fi elements of this film are embedded in the plot, and concern reviving a man who has been executed in the gas chamber by means of an antidote to the cyanide gas administered soon afterwards by the prison doctor.
Nevertheless, the resurrection drama gives the plot a lurid Frankensteinian twist that adds to its appeal, especially when the resurrected criminal is killed a second time in the same day!Jean Gillie delivers a sensational performance as the ultimate femme fatale -- a gorgeous, sophisticated fashionista -- who is also a brutally manipulative and murderous villain who stops at nothing to satisfy her materialistic ambitions and get her greedy little hands on $400,000 from a bank heist.Herbert Rudley is effective as the prison doctor caught in a moral dilemma between professional ethics and his infatuation with Gillie.
A femme fatale who cannot wait for her man to come out of jail and retrieve the $0.4 million that he has stashed somewhere, gets to know about an antidote that could bring him back from the dead, if he was put to death in the gas chamber.The tall Jean Gillie was very beautiful and acted reasonably well.
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.
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.
It may not be a really great film, but as a B-movie it does the trick in terms of giving us a sordid tale of greed, life after death, and the lack of morality in human beings, either always there or growing piece by piece.In Decoy it's a femme fatale whose heart is as black as a midnight abyss; Margot Shelby (interesting lead female Jean Gillie) is after money, lots of money, from her man who is waiting on death row, who pulled off a heist but kept the secret of where the money was under total wraps.
Enter in a doctor (very good Herbert Rudley as Dr. Craig) who sets off our story in atypical but absorbing reverse: he appears at the start of the movie walking like a zombie, hitches a ride to San Francisco, and shoots a woman in a room - the details of everything that has happened is told by this woman, Margot, with total clarity.Again it's not the most sensible plot to start, but it grabs a hold of attention and keeps things juicy all the way through the most startling thing of all: the resurrection of Frank Olins by a mysterious serum that Dr. Craig possesses that somehow brings back a man from the gas chamber!
This is because even in the generally demented world of film noir, in the world of DOA and Kiss me Deadly, this Monogram cheapie stands out as quite odd.The plot: a death row convict is brought back to life, yes actually back from the dead, so he can lead the bombshell girlfriend and her stooge to hidden lout.
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.
Margot Shelby - played by Jean Gillie - has to be one of the most unscrupulous and determined femme fatales in the noir genre.
Stealing a slogan from Gilda to describe such evil woman like Margot Shelby,although the plot was unbelievable,this picture is a real gem and l thrilled when heard that it will be came out shortly,after to watch it didn't disappoint me,in a blood killer woman,greedy femme fatale like few,she behave like a spider,handling every men at your feet,dragging down,pushing, hurting with no feelings at all...apart the methylene blue and another holes that come along in a low budge noir..all remains is fantastic,so sorry for too short time picture!!!Resume: First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.5.
It stars Jean Gillie, Robert Armstrong, Herbert Rudley, Sheldon Leonard and Edward Norris.
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 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!
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.
Being in the mood for a short burst of Film Noir a month ago,I decided to take a look at a title that a very kind IMDber had sent me.Finding myself really enjoying the movie,I got a disappointing surprise,when my DVD player stopped playing the film 45 minutes in.Trying on 3 other DVD players,I as shocked to find that none of them were able to play the full feature.Desperate to see the full film,I started to search everywhere online for the title,and was delighted to recently stumble on the title,which led to me getting ready to see the full decoy finally take place.The plot:Rushing into the flat as Dr. Lloyd Craig drops to the ground from a gunshot,police officer Joe Portugal finds Margot Shelby taking her final breaths,as Shelby attempts to get hold of a sealed box laying on the side.Picking up the box,Portugal asks Shelby to tell him how she got hold of the box.The past:Successfully robbing $400,000,gangster Frank Olins soon finds the law catching up with him,and showing their appreciation over Olins refusal to reveal where the cash is hidden,by sending him to death row.With her boyfriend only having a few days to go before he's sent to the gas chamber, Margot Shelby begins making plans on how to get Olins out of jail,and also get him to reveal where the cash is hidden.Catching the attention of small time gangster Jim Vincent,Shelby using all of her cunning skills to make Vincent believe that if he helps her to find the location of Olins cash,then he will get half the amount.As Olins takes his finally steps to the gas chamber,Shelby begins to talk to a Dr working at the morgue called Lloyd Craig,who tells Shelby about a drug that can bring the dead back to life.View on the film:Burning down the good ol' country gal image she had shown in the British Comedy Tawny Pipit,the graceful Jean Gillie (who tragically died of pneumonia 3 years later,age 33) gives a tremendous performance as Margot Shelby,with Gillie showing a red mist to cover Shelby's eyes,as she gets closer to tracking down the money.Along with the red mist,Gillie also shows a real skill in keeping Shelby's cards close to her chest,as she begins to put her plan in to action.Wrapped around Shelby's fingers, Edward Norris gives a masterful performance as Jim Vincent,with Norris showing Vincent's low-life roots to become brittle,as he is taken in by Shelby's charms,whilst Herbert Rudley gives an excellent,twitchy performance as Lloyd Craig,who Rudley shows is desperate to get back to his comfort zone.For the superb screenplay by Stanley Rubin and Nedrick Young give the title a distinctive Gothic Horror edge,which allows for the writer's to create a deep feeling of the characters entering a sinister world.Strongly linked to the Gothic Horror edges,the writer's inject a deep decaying root into their Film Noir world,by showing the relationship between Shelby,Vincent and Craig to be one that is built on a pack of lies,which lead to an extremely cynical final note.Returning to the US with his then-wife Jean Gillie,director Jack Bernhard gives the title a real sense of elegance,thanks to Bernhard closely working with cinematographer L.
William O'Connell to cover the movie in shimmering low-light,which along with showing the characters attempting to hide their true motives,also allows Gillie to look like a ravishing Femme Fatale.Digging into the titles Gothic Horror streak,Bernhard gives the film a harsh,cold atmosphere,by allowing the 'red mist' from Shelby's eyes to be cast across the screen,as Decoy shows itself to be a marvelous Film Noir,that the viewer won't want to recoil from..
Jean Gillie, the British actress who makes her American film debut in this picture, is the ultimate femme fatale.
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.
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.
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.
Decoy - Jean Gillie is the ultimate femme fatale in this 1946 thriller- she wants her boyfriend revived from a state sanctioned cynanide nap so she find the loot he has hidden from a bank robbery.She does everything she can to seduce the men in her life to get her way.An opening on par with D.O.A. and an ending that feels like the evil universe ending to Wizard of Oz- the middle parts of the movie tend to drag some times- but it is all worth it.Sheldon Leonard plays Jo-Jo Portugal the local cop trying to clean up the town.This movie takes no prisoners- it is a brutal world driven by money and Maragaret Shelby intends to get hers.The DVD has a commentary track by the writer of the story and film historian Glen Erickson and a mini featurette- including comments from Dick Cavett.Since this is in a double feature DVD with Crime Wave I would suggest buying it- and if it were on it's own I would still suggest buying it.