THE MOVIEGOER

As any one who has spent any time around a hospital knows, D.O.A. means Dead on Arrival. It is, of course, a medical term, and serves as the title for a so-called mystery drama.

The plot of this new Popkin Production is fantastically complicated. It concerns a notary public who has unwittingly signed a bill of sale for some stolen merchandise, an innocent man who tries to clear himself by finding the bill and the notary, and the thief. The innocent is murdered and the notary poisoned. In the last few hours of the notary's life a search for the poisoner ensues; it is here that the film finds its motif.

The acting is incredible. Pamela Britton, who plays the female lead, may well receive the award for the worst performance of the year. The greatest part of her role is accomplished in telephone conversation, and it seems that she is unfamiliar with the use of the instrument. She shouts, grimmaces, and whispers while her indifferent lover is miles away, and when she finally follows him to San Francisco she partakes in the most revolting love scene that I have ever seen.

Edmund O'Brien is slightly better, but he is at a disadvantage because he is poisoned early in the picture, and in most of the important scenes his hands are busy holding his stomach.

The picture is contrived to the greatest extreme, as when O'Brien is running away from a group of desperate criminals. A bus with the doors open appears out of nowhere to pick him up; when he gets off the bus, a cop is standing outside the door. The bus just happens to be heading where he is going.

Perhaps the most notable event in this picture is the appearance of a man called Chester. Chester, someone explains, delights in giving people pain. He hits O'Brien in his poisoned stomach and then chuckles, "he's soft in the belly, can't take it in the belly," and then Chester punches him again. Reminiscent of Richard Widmark in his earliest performance (when he tied an old woman to her wheelchair and pushed her down the stairs), Neville Brand gives the most polished performance of the picture.

The re-release of "Destination Tokyo," a story of a submarine and its crew, is the second big hit. Cary Grant is the head man on a submarine which must get into Tokyo harbor and land men to get "vital data," John Garfield appears in the cast also.

The story of sixty men (or more) working together for one great purpose is naturally inspiring. The cruise is a little more than routine and therefore the events too are just a little more than routine. Slipping under destroyers and other Japanese ships, the sub makes its destination and gets the stuff. There is also an operation performed by a pharmacist's mate under the sea with kitchen knives, the sinking of an aircraft carrier and a destroyer, the U.S. air force in its first raid on Japan, and the stabbing of a crew member by a Japanese.