Jail Bait (USA, 1954)

(Trailer) (Spoilers) Probably one of the least satisfactory Edward Wood films, if only because Jail Bait, of all the films he ever made, comes the closest to actually being a normal, low budget crime film and lacks the general surreal weirdness of his best works. The basic idea for the film was stolen by the film’s co-writer Alex Gorden from a 1953 crime cheapie Let ‘Em Have It (a.k.a. False Faces), which was in turn was probably inspired by the worst film Bogart & Bacall ever starred in, Delmer Daves’ 1947 film Dark Passage (Trailer). The working title of Jail Bait, which cost roughly $22,000 to make, was The Hidden Face, an obviously less marketable name than that the film was finally given. Actually, contrary to the filmposter’s claim "Danger! These girls are hot!", Jail Bait refers to no hot underage nubiles leading some poor youth to a life of ruin, but is rather how Dolores Fuller (as Marilyn Gregor) describes the gun her brother removes from a hollowed out book at the film’s beginning.
Plot-wise, Jail Bait narrates the tale of a gangster Vic Brady (Timothy Farrell) forcing Dr. Boris Gregor (Herbert Rawlinson—who supposedly died the morning after his last scene was filmed), the plastic surgeon father of his partner Don Gregor (Clancy Malone) into giving him a "new" face after a robbery of a theater results in the shooting death of an ex-cop. Gregor, discovering that Brady has already killed his son, double crosses the gangster by giving him Don’s face, resulting in Vic’s taking the rap for the first murder.
If the direction itself seems almost too proficient for an Ed Wood film, the acting and story are still inanely incompetent. (Only Ed Wood would seriously present plastic surgery as an operation that can be performed at home on a living room couch.) The dialogue is without a doubt the work of the master of bad films, with Dr. Gregor delivering such zingers as "plastic surgery at times seems to me to be very very complicated" and "this afternoon we had a long telephone conversation earlier today." Likewise, while meant to depict the evening’s show at the theater the crooks mean to rob, the inserted footage of an attractive, big breasted stripper twirling her tassels as she literally walks back and forth on a stage generates more laughs than it does advance the story. (There seems to be two versions of Jail Bait, one including a black face vaudeville number taken from the film Yes Sir, Mr.Bones (1951), missing in the version being talked about here.) The scene in which Don Gregor, dead (and bloodless despite two bullets holes) falls out in front of his father from behind a curtain where his body had been hidden standing up is also a good laugh.
A further added attraction includes the music, composed by Hoyt Kurtain (or Curtin), which is a Dadaesque combination of Spanish guitar and discordant piano chords which previously graced the camp classic The Mesa of Lost Women (1953/Trailer). Though it seems 100% out of place in this film at first, one can’t help but wonder whether the music was forced upon Wood by the producers (or lack of funds), or if Wood appropriated the soundtrack with open arms, possibly as an allusion to Carol Reed’s use of inappropriate zither music in his masterpiece The Third Man (1949/Trailer), starring Wood’s hero, Orson Wells.
In addition to Wood’s regular cast of friends and bad actors, Jail Bait features the first film appearance of a young Steve Reeves (Mr. America, 1947 & Mr. Universe, 1950), who in one brief shirtless scene reveals the muscular, hairless chest that led both to his modeling for Bruce of Los Angeles and to his future success playing mythological heroes in lousy Italian sandal films.
All that aside, as an Ed Wood film Jail Bait is mildly entertaining, but as the most professional production of his oeuvre it never achieves the same level of artistically and bizarrely pure ineptitude of his better (worst) films. Nonetheless, Jail Bait does possess a certain entertainment level that will satisfy lovers of bad film. And, if nothing else, Steve Reeves is at least nice to look at.