The Monogram library is divided among several movie distributors today, and surviving film elements are mostly in poor shape, but Warner Archive's transfer is good.

The 65-minute film opens with disbarred attorney Arthur Brennan (Paul Maxey), mouthpiece of gangster Jeffrey Hilton (George Meeker) being warned by rival racketeer Oney Kessel (Philip Van Zandt) to lay off of his gambling operations, which Hilton recklessly tries to muscle in on.

Hilton ignores the threats, only to be murdered in a hit witnessed by his gold-digger fiancée, Vivian Saunders (Jan Wiley). Joe Hilton (Warren Douglas), Jeff's estranged younger brother and a World War II veteran, turns up to inherit Jeff's operation. He quickly proves his moxie by ruthlessly beating up an underling who had planned on taking over, then by strong-arming a casino owner to immediately pay up on a $5,000 debt. These impress Brennan and especially Pinky (John Harmon), the firm's genial accountant/ex-safecracker. Vivian none-too-subtly tries to worm her way into Joe's life, but he's more interested in Lynn Turner (Ramsay Ames), a dealer at one of Joe's casinos.

The film takes an interesting turn with two unexpected plot developments. In the first, reformist mayoral candidate Vail (George Eldridge), a wounded vet himself, asks Joe for his support while urging him to move into a legitimate business, pointing to Joe's use of underage girls at his casinos. Checking into this, Joe learns that Lynn is, at 19, underage. In the second, an old army buddy, Sam Austin (Bruce Edwards), turns up, asking Joe to partner with him in a proposed air transport business. Meanwhile, Kessel, seeing Joe moving in on him even more fiercely and confidently than Jeffrey did, sends in his gorillas.

The script, by Harvey Gates (Hell Divers, Black Dragons) and Forrest Judd (whose few credits include assisting Jean Renoir on The River!), from a story by Ivan Tors (The Magnetic Monster, Gog), neatly fashions Joe as a kind of existential gangster. He regards most of his colleagues and competitors with total disdain. After nearly beating to death the would-be usurper he tells another, "You better call a doctor for that guy. He might die and smell up the place."

Joe considers them all "soft" and his own brother's death meaningless. "Seeing real men die" during the war, fighting for the common good - that made sense, not this. Money and power don't interest him. Joe mainly seems concerned with gaining the upper hand fighting his own demons. When Joe accuses Vail of being a desk-jockey during the war, the mayoral candidate responds by showing Joe what's left of a leg he lost fighting in the Pacific.

"Maybe I didn't lose a leg, but I lost something inside of me," counters Joe.

Below the Deadline's no-star cast is nonetheless populated with familiar character actors. Warren Douglas toiled away as a leading man in cheap pictures before becoming a prolific TV writer and occasional producer, perhaps best known for the film Night of the Grizzly (1966). Ramsay Ames was a B-picture starlet, mildly famous as the ingénue in The Mummy's Ghost (1944). Van Zandt played the newsreel producer in Citizen Kane (1941), but is better known for playing villains in innumerable Three Stooges shorts. Fat Paul Maxey played slippery characters like this one here, a kind of poor man's Sydney Greenstreet.

Though the climax looks rushed, as if the production suddenly ran out of money, early scenes of violence are well staged and unusually brutal. But why is it called Below the Deadline?

Video & Audio

The black-and-white film is presented in its original 1.37 aspect ratio, sourced from film elements superior most Monogram titles from this period, with the image almost par with the average in-house Warner Bros. Studio title. The mono audio is also noticeably better. No subtitle or alternate audio options but the disc is region-free. No Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Expectations always run low with a Monogram title, but Below the Deadline is above average for its type and Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His credits include film history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features.