Linda and Estelle Mitchell are twins who get involved with two ex-Army buddies who room together, Mike Carr and Johnny Dixon. Estelle, unfortunately, wants both men and she plays them off against each other, until murder ensues and her sister Linda is found in a barrel on the roof. Both men are suspects, but it takes a number of extreme plot twists before police detective Heller (Regis Toomey) identifies the actual killer. Produced as a low-budget film noir at Monogram by Jack Wrather, whose wife, Bonita Granville, plays a dual role as the twins, The Guilty was actually a cheap knock-off of Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror (1946).
Based on a short story by hard-boiled mystery writer Cornell Woolrich, “He Looked Like Murder,” and directed by John Reinhardt, who would go on to helm the severely underrated noir, Chicago Calling (1951), The Guilty gives evidence of numerous noir conventions: Johnny as the slightly cracked war veteran, Estelle as the spider woman, a flashback structure narrated by one of her victims, an extremely brutal murder (offscreen but described in detail by the detective), dark dingy sets and a convoluted plot full of depravity and false leads. In fact, even though the budget of the film was increased by $100,000 midway through the production, the film was shot on only three sets: the bar and the respective rooming houses of the male and female leads.
Bonita Granville had been a child star in the late 1930s, known especially for a series of Nancy Drew mysteries she made at Warner Bros., but had trouble transitioning to adult roles; as late as 1946 she was still playing a juvenile opposite Mickey Rooney in Love Laughs at Andy Hardy. After marrying oil millionaire Wrather, she finally got to play a grown-up, first in The Guilty, then in Strike it Rich (1948), Guilty of Treason (1950) and The Lone Ranger (1956)—all of them financed by Wrather before both of them became the producers of the Lassie television show reboot in 1956. —Jan-Christopher Horak
Director: John Reinhardt. Production: Wrather Productions Inc., Monogram Pictures Corp. Distribution: Monogram Pictures Corp. Producer: Jack Wrather. Screenwriter: Robert Presnell, Sr. Based on the short story “He Looked Like Murder” by Cornell Woolrich. Cinematographer: Henry Sharp. Art Direction: Oscar Yerge. Editor: Jodie Caplan. Music: Rudy Schrager. Cast: Bonita Granville, Don Castle, Regis Toomey, John Litel, Wally Cassell. 35mm, b/w, 71 min.
Restored from a 35mm nitrate composite fine grain master. Laboratory services by The Cinemalab, Audio Mechanics, DJ Audio, Simon Daniel Sound. Special thanks to: the British Film Institute; Raymond G. Cabana Jr.—The Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
