The Devil Diamond (1937)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Not bad for what it is, this B crime thriller with lots of moments of comedy is fast and furious and includes the right amount of ingredients to make it satisfactory B movie fare. It all concerns a cut up diamond stolen and prepared to be sold and the chase to find the culprits. Diminutive Darro (at 5'3" one of the smallest leading men outside of Alan Ladd and Mickey Rooney) poses as a prize fighter in order to infiltrate the den of thieves and works along side special agent Kane Richmond. He also has to deal with the constant cloying attentions of perky teen June Gale whose schtick gets a little tired after a while. There's plenty of action though and a nice car chase finale, but most of the film I had pretty much forgotten about outside Darro's temperament, Gale's clinging onto him and a few of the more powerful action scenes. As directed by Leslie Goodwin (equal to William Beaudine and Samuel Katzman as a fast moving quota quickie director), this isn't something I'd push onto film classic aficionados other than to take a look at the career of the extremely likable Darro, a Bowery Boy type without all the bad malapropisms and certainly an actor of some note who has a cult following but isn't as well remembered as he should be.

I'm on record as a Frankie Darro fan, but whoever had the idea of portraying him as a boxer probably never saw a real athlete. Darro's character is about the most uncoordinated guy trying to perform his scenes I've ever seen. Like when he's doing his training run or working the speed bag. Working the speed bag - there's a misnomer. One punch at a time was the best he could do to keep up with it.So the battling messenger boy is used as a cover by a bunch of hoodlums to steal an expensive, but seemingly cursed diamond with a history of bad luck for it's owner. I'm trying to understand why once the deal was made with Stevens (Edward Earle), Moreland (Robert Fiske) needed the other four thugs to hang around and make a nuisance of themselves. And really, couldn't the writers have come up with two different cover stories for Moreland and Jerry Carter (Kane Richmond)? Did they both have to be researching the exact same story about Joaquin Murietta? Another eye roller if you ask me.When I see pictures like this, I have to wonder what audiences of the time really thought about them. The character dialog is totally unnatural, and the situations are so forced they don't make any sense at all. Like Darro's character picking fights with the henchmen at the drop of a hat and usually for no reason. And the brawl at the restaurant where the guy gets his nose in a piece of toast not once, but three times! What are the odds? But I can't stop. I have a Mill Creek Entertainment collection with two hundred fifty of these gems on sixty DVD's. It's their Mystery Collection, and if you're a fan of stuff like this, it's about the best value you can find for the money. Frankie Darro's in there a bunch of times, including another boxing flick with Kane Richmond as his fight manager in 1936's "Born to Fight". Darro wasn't too coordinated in that one either.

I was never a great fan of Frankie Darro until I realized that this feisty kid always did his own daring stunts. "The Devil Diamond" proves no exception. The rest of the players are also quite interesting, because (1) this is the last film made by the lovely Joan Gale, and (2) it's the only movie of Rosita Baker. Joan Gale's twin sister, June Gale, had a longer career but played mostly bit parts. Maybe Joan decided to quit which she was ahead. She's a most attractive and charming lass here. Then there's Rosita Baker who gives a very spirited, but entirely "natural" performance as a lovelorn pest who keeps annoying our little hero. Oddly, despite the fact that she virtually steals the movie, this is Miss Baker's only film appearance! Also deserving our attention are Jack Ingram, as the most prominent of the henchmen, and Byron Foulger in an early film role which he quite convincingly plays with a Swedish accent! Admittedly, the story is not much to get excited about, but it packs in an occasional bit of "B"-grade action and is very nicely photographed in SepiaTone.

Devil's Diamond is one heck of a curio of a movie, that leaves everything dangling and nothing resolved. After a "cursed" diamond is shipped off by a jewelry company to get cut by a master cutter, a cunning employee of the company gathers a bunch of bad guys together to snap up the diamonds once they're cut. Bur wait a sec, how are they going to act natural at the hostel where the cutter is? Thanks to a sharp-fisted delivery boy, they create a front that they're training the kid to box, and that will keep everyone fooled! When they get there, there's another suspicious chap who is also looking at the diamond. Is it another bad guy? We're led to BELIEVE that, but of course it isn't, because after all, we need a hero for the story! So yes, it DOES turn out (DUH!) he's only keeping an eye out on the diamond, and starts getting suspicious about the gang hanging out. The boxer-in-training gets suspicious too, not when he's tiredly fighting off some girly amour that keeps pawing him. The end I won't spoil for you, but this left me with my shoulders shrugging, as it really didn't achieve anything. Didn't leave me rooting for the main characters, nuttin.