Decoy

“How do you think I should use my face?” Wondering aloud how most effectively to deploy her beauty for personal gain, femme fatale Margot Shelby, played by Jean Gillie (who died of pneumonia a few years later), serves as the evil core of Jack Bernhard’s Decoy, one of the more notable (and strange)  productions of one of the poorest of Poverty Row studios, Monogram Pictures. Confessing to the police as she lies dying in her apartment from a gunshot wound, gangster moll Margot recalls how she made a habit of seducing and disposing of men simply to get her hands on the stolen loot hidden by her gangster boyfriend Frankie Olins (Robert Armstrong) on Death Row. Not to be thwarted, Margo seduces fellow gangster Jim Vincent (Edward Norris) into helping her steal Olins’ dead body fresh from his execution by hydrogen cyanide gas and revive him later through some medical intervention performed by Dr. Lloyd Craig (Herbert Rudley) that’s never quite explained. Suffice it to say Margot will come to grief, but not without some spectacular hysterics. With minimal budget to work with, Bernhard delivers a highly entertaining and completely over-the-top story with dark twists and delicious betrayals, while composer Kay, not well-known in noir circles, adds effective moodiness to key scenes through musical sound effects, like the unbroken hum of a bassoon or the unending cry of high strings.