DOA Review

DOA (1950)

One of Hollywood’s most gifted character actors, Edmond O‘Brien, played the lead in Rudolph Mate’s DOA.

DOA means Dead On Arrival, and the movie begins as O’Brien arrives at the police station and announces his murder to the detective. He begins his tale and the story flashes back to a few days before.

Small town accountant Frank Bigelow (O’Brien) is going alone on a vacation to San Francisco.  He gets an earful from fiancée Paula Gibson (Pamela Britton) who is also his secretary; you can't help thinking perhaps it’s because of her he is going alone.   

Once in San Francisco, he goes to a waterfront jazz club where someone slips him a mickey.  The next morning he wakes up at his hotel with the jazz still pounding in his head and is sick to his stomach.  A stop at a doctor’s office and he is quickly going elsewhere to get a second opinion, which he does.  Nope, he has been poisoned and has no idea why.  The doctors want to keep him in the hospital because he has only a day, or maybe as long as a week until the poison kills him.  But O’Brien sets out to find who the killer is, uncovering a chain of events that form a complicated story that keeps moving through the brief 83-minute running time of the film.

Director Rudolph Maté started out as a cinematographer and his great eye for camera angles and lighting is apparent from his work in DOA. The jazz club scene with the musicians jamming really is admirable and gets you into the crazy world they inhabit.

The story is great but some of the dialog is really laughable especially in O'Brien's encounters with women. There is a wolf whistle that briefly appears as he ogles some good looking babes when he first gets in San Francisco.  Supporting Cast includes Beverly Garland, Neville Brand, and Luther Adler all of whom do a good job with their parts, with Neville Brand probably taking the prize for his psycho hit man character. 

The DVD is from Alpha Video or other publishers of public domain content, and is usually available for a low price. The format is 4x3 and the black and white film runs 83 minutes. DOA is a film noir classic.