cult film freak: DARREN MCGAVIN COPS OUT 'THE CASE AGAINST BROOKLYN'

Margaret Hayes & Darren McGavin THE CASE AGAINST BROOKLYN Year: 1958 Rates: ***1/2

"Maybe he's queer for widows who run garages" says a drunk and jilted Margaret Hayes to square-jawed (surreptitious to her) villain Warren Stevens, and she's talking about an undercover cop she'd uncovered in married Darren McGavin, having feigned a bachelor salesman type and whose best scenes are what led to up the poor dame being so ticked-off...

And she has other problems, much deeper... Her husband, owing a bundle to bookies in which Stevens was the thuggiest, fatally crashed his truck, purposefully looking like a Double Indemnity accident and leaving her to "run" the garage near a tavern where she's a wishbone between both good and bad guy... albeit both are manipulating liars...

Brian G. Hutton and Darren McGavin in THE CASE AGAINST BROOKLYN

And beyond the melodrama, the cop on dark street story includes McGavin's young spry partner Brian G. Hutton, eventually shot by crooked cop Robert Osterloh, which is what, no who, A CASE AGAINST BROOKLYN is really about... The "C" Word of Corruption...

Wherein the low-voiced phantom G-Man narration is more unnecessary than intrusive since McGavin does his smooth-talking routine like only he can, and needs no explaining, before his investigation starts crumbling far too soon in this Crooked City Noir that could have been even better than better-than-average. Both the audience, and McGavin, deserved an edgier/twistier CASE.