Tonight's Movie: The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival

One of the most enjoyable screenings at last weekend's Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival was THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE (1947).

THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE is a dark and dirty 62-minute thriller from RKO. It's been tangled up in rights issues but Alan K. Rode was able to work out a complicated deal enabling him to show the film at the festival as an early morning "bonus film."

As Alan and Eddie Muller explained in their joint introduction (seen at right), they could not sell individual tickets to see the film, so it was only available to passholders already attending the festival as a free "extra" screening. A nice crowd turned out to see the beautifully restored 35mm print held by the Library of Congress. The restoration was partly funded by the Film Noir Foundation.

Eddie commented that for a movie which starts out with a fair amount of humor, the film certainly takes a dark turn partway through. I found the (offscreen) fate of one of the characters particularly shocking, once again proving that less shown in a movie can be more. Much more.

I loved the festival program's description: "A breakneck chase from San Diego to Los Angeles is part camp cinema and all nightmare with a fearsome Lawrence Tierney as the diabolical back seat driver from hell." Noir fans must see Tierney in this; my husband said it's pretty rare that an entire audience wants a character to die less than a minute after his character first appears.

Steve Morgan (Tierney), having just committed a murder during a gas station robbery, hitches a ride in San Diego with tipsy, not-too-bright Jimmy Ferguson (Ted North).

As the men head north towards Los Angeles, they pick up a pair of female passengers, Carol (Nan Leslie, INDIAN AGENT) and Agnes (Betty Lawford, cousin of Peter).

Jack (Glen Vernon), a gas station attendant, recognizes Steve and reports the sighting to the police, then convinces Detective Owens (Harry Shannon) to let him tag along as they attempt to hunt down the car.

Not long after Steve takes over driving from the inebriated Jimmy he runs down a motorcycle cop, causing police to shoot at the car -- yet he manages to convince the other three passengers he's just a poor misunderstood soul. Inexplicably none of them are very concerned about the fact they've been riding in a car with police shooting at them, and they all end up taking a driving break at a Newport Beach beach house.

The movie is just over an hour long but quite a bit more happens than described above. It's entertaining from start to finish and totally worthwhile to see Tierney at his best (worst?); watching this, one can easily understand why many report that he was also fearsome off the screen.

As a lifelong Orange County resident one of the things I really appreciated about the movie was the mention of a number of towns in the county, such as San Clemente, Newport Beach, and Santa Ana. It's fairly unusual for '40s films to mention Southern California towns outside Los Angeles County, especially several in the same film. There are a handful, such as the Balboa Island setting of THE RECKLESS MOMENT (1949), but not many.

THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE was written and directed by Felix Feist based on a novel by Robert C. Du Soe. It was filmed in black and white by filmed by J. Roy Hunt.

This film is available in a Spanish boxed set of Tierney's films, but as far as I know it's not otherwise available. I very much hope that at some point the rights can be cleared up so this film can be exhibited more widely and perhaps even released on Blu-ray, but in the meantime I feel fortunate to have seen it.

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