Underplayed Gems

Escape from Crime (1942)

Escape from Crime poster
Directed by
D. Ross Lederman
Genre
crime film
Country
United States
Runtime
51 min
Rating
5.5 of 10 from 6 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

An ex-convict gets a job as a news photographer after being framed by a former associate. He takes pictures of his old gang in a bank robbery and then faces an assignment to secretly film the execution of one of them.

fast-pacedtensegrittysuspensefulmelodramaticnoirishbriskmoralistic

What happens

Escape from Crime is a 1942 American crime film directed by D. Ross Lederman. It has essentially the same plot as the earlier Picture Snatcher (1933). Red O'Hara serves a prison sentence after being framed by Dude Merrill. Once he is released, he gets a job as a news photographer. Red takes a mug shot of a big talking new inmate as he does his prison job. Minutes later Red is paroled for no apparent reason and is a free man. One of his old gang buddies picks him up and he finds out that the reason his wife hadn’t come to see him in prison is because she was pregnant with their son. Now he wants to put gang life behind him and get a job as a newspaper reporter. Although the newspaper is hesitant to hire an ex convict, he catches a break by taking pictures of his former gang members shooting their way out of a bank robbery. That leads to a good-paying regular job, but one that requires him to secretly film the electric chair-execution of his former gang friend, who, with others, was convicted of the bank robbery Red had photographed. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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