Arson, Inc. is structured just as cheaply as any Lippert production. An actor (William Forrest) posing as a fire chief starts the film with a lengthy lecture illustrated with stock footage from the early 1930s. Later scenes save money by cutting in equally old, mismatched shots as well -- like one picture of a fire truck that shows a woman wearing a skirt down to her ankles.

Robert Lowery is a good-looking and inoffensive hero. His meeting-cute scene with Anne Gwynne ends with him watching her correct homework at a dining room table. She hands him a pile of history papers to work on! It's a rare scene in a thriller that actually relates to real life. For comic relief, Jane has a grandmother, also a babysitter, who hangs around the periphery acting strange. She's supposed to augment her income by babysitting as well, but it's never explained why she hangs out on dark street corners!

The arson plot is far-fetched but immensely enjoyable because of familiar actors Douglas Fowley and Edward Brophy. Fowley (the silent movie director who tears his hair out in Singin' in the Rain) goes wonderfully over the top barking out bad-guy orders as the crooked arson boss. Brophy (the knife thrower in Mad Love) is a riot as a pushy, emotional firebug Pete. He can act tough but goes goofy over secretary Bella. Pete proudly teaches Joe the A B C's of arson, like starting multiple fires to make the investigators think that a serial firebug is on the loose.

An amusing turn of events happens when Joe is invited to a lively party thrown by Fred. We expect some kind of criminal's rendezvous, but it turns out to be a bunch of people singing Little Brown Jug around a piano! Fred ogles Anne Gwynne's Jane like he's a wolf about to pounce, and nobody seems to notice!

The plotting is fairly cut and dried but we like the personalities, a plus that comes in handy when the supposedly formidable bad guys self-destruct at the conclusion. Naturally, all the bad guys come to a violent, final end, as everyone knows crime never pays. We're expected to believe that Fowley can drive his old clunker car down a mountain road at 120 mph. Director William Berke keeps things cooking and our young lovers interested in each other, no matter how silly the story gets. Our hero's big action at the end is to pull a fire alarm switch! At 63 swift minutes, Arson, Inc. hasn't time to become boring.

Forgotten Noir Volume 2 is a satisfactory pair of old-fashioned crime thrillers that aren't particularly noir. The transfers are clean and appropriately flat. Both titles come with original trailers (not to mention the posters for Lippert's HIghway 13 and I Shot Jesse James that show up in the background of shots.) Arson, Inc. has the first half of a text essay on Robert L. Lippert written by his son; Loan Shark has a dull commentary by Richard M. Roberts that mostly lists a lot of information from the IMDB. Roberts tells us that we're watching a man exiting a building, that a shot is a good one, etc. Roberts does say that the back lot rented to film the night scenes is Charlie Chaplin's studio up on La Brea Avenue, one of the few pieces of new information on the entire track.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Loan Shark rates:
Movie: Good -
Video: Very Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: Commentary, trailer

Arson, Inc. rates:
Movie: Good +
Video: Very Good
Sound: Very Good
Supplements: Essay on Robert L. Lippert, trailer

Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: October 21, 2006