Rent Lured (1947)

Detective Thriller. - Lured review by Steve

Entertaining comedy thriller set in what seems to be 1940s England, but is more identifiable as a fantasy Hollywood London of cobbled streets and gaslight. A wisecracking American taxi dancer (Lucille Ball) gets entangled in a Scotland Yard investigation into a serial killer who contacts his victims through personal columns while taunting the Inspector (Charles Coburn) with provocative verses.

So Lucy is recruited by the investigation into the Poet Killer to meet oddball lonely hearts. Ball may be a bit lacking in the glamour her character is assumed to possess, but she's fine at this broad comedy. As she closes in on her dangerous quarry, the film actually becomes effectively suspenseful. Douglas Sirk makes an exciting whodunit aided by beautiful expressionist lighting, even if the plot gets a little crazy.

There's a wonderful cast of British expats in support, with George Zucco enjoyable in a rare comedy role. Poor old Boris Karloff plays a whispering nutcase who meets Lucille in order to feature her in a fantasy fashion show located in his deranged imagination. George Sanders contributes his droll, cynical libertine to good effect.

When Sanders gets banged up by mistake, it's possible to wonder if Lured is making a modest point about the unreliability of circumstantial evidence. But it never gets that serious. This isn't a major Sirk film, but it is the sort of hugely enjoyable froth that the major studios of the golden age produced so reliably.