mark.waltz Review of Convict's Code

Convict's Code (1939)

Finding freedom, paying the penalty for somebody else's crime.

[5/10 · 17 April 2013]

Parole ends up being its own prison on the outside, that's what Robert Kent finds when he is let out for a crime he claims he didn't commit. Everything would be O.K. except the guilty party is determined to send him back and tries to manipulate his parole officer into thinking the worst about him. He falls in love with the villain's sister (Anne Nagel) while trying to find out the truth, but that is impossible because somehow a gun is planted in his single room. Emulating Beaulah Bondi, "B" character actress Maude Eburne is hysterically funny as his elderly landlady, getting more scenes than landladies usually do and stealing every one of them. "You're lucky I don't make you wait outside", she tells one of Kent's visitors, also re-iterating she don't ask her tenant questions and he don't ask her none. Sidney Blackmer is appropriately smarmy as the villain, Victor Kilian rather dour, and Pat Flaherty very funny as "Sniffy". Not a film that will require much thought or concentration, but certainly an above average "B" film, and very fast moving.