After the Dance

This was a pretty poor B-movie--with a plot that makes little sense and a non-existent ending. George Murphy stars as a song and dance man who is wrongly convicted of manslaughter--making this one of the very few films to combine singing, tap dancing and prison---a very strange genre melange indeed! The problem is that the stories just didn't mesh well at all. At one point, he's getting into fights in prison and going stir-crazy and the next he's in a white tux doing a second-rate imitation of Fred Astaire!!! It's rather surreal and mind-numbing, so after a while I found myself fast-forwarding through the song and dance numbers. I'd have much preferred if they'd just made it a prison film--this was by far the best portion. If all this wasn't bad enough, the film just didn't make sense and by the end of the film it was hopelessly silly and unconvincing. By appearances, the studio must have felt the same way, since the movie just abruptly ended--with no real resolution. This was shown on Turner Classic Movies and they pride themselves for showing the most complete versions available. However, it sure looked like there was a huge chunk missing. Considering it was a B-film, I truly believe that at the one hour mark, they just edited out the ending to meet the usual time format for that style film. Regardless, it's very unsatisfying and hokey--not at all a pleasant or entertaining film.