rsda0723 First of all, we all agree that George Raft was wooden and didn't have a clue what a good script looked like. He did turn down CASABLANCA, MALTESE FALCON and DOUBLE INDEMNITY. But this script produced and directed by Roy Del Ruth is bottom of the barrel. How Virginia mayo ever got tied up to this production is a mystery. A waste of her time and effort especially since she was in a flurry of excellent films like WHITE HEAT and Colorado TERRITORY.At least Raymond Burr and Henry Morgan bring some life to the proceedings. Dmitri Tiomkin's score hammers home every scene like a sledge hammer. He makes Max Steiner look subtle. He uses Ave Maria to the point of nausea. I can't imagine how this film could appeal to many folks looking for a good suspenseful film noir. A tepid try not worth your time.

blanche-2 George Raft stars in the 1949 "Red Light" with Virginia Mayo, Raymond Burr, Gene Lockhart, Arthur Franz, and a host of other familiar faces.Raft plays Johnny Torno, the head of the Torno Freight Company. When he caught Nick Cherney (Burr) embezzling from him, he had him put in prison.When Johnny's brother Jess, an army chaplain, is discharged, Nick sees a chance to get back at Johnny, who adores his brother. Jess is found dying in a hotel room, and all he can say to Johnny is, "Bible...in the Bible." Johnny believes that Jess means his own Bible. Eventually he realizes he meant the Gideon Bible in his hotel room. But the Gideon Bible is missing by the time Johnny gets back there.Johnny sets out to find the Bible by tracking down anyone who had stayed in the room since Jess, determined to find out who killed his brother and killing the murderer himself.The Bible plays an important part in the film, not just the physical Bible, but what's inside. And it isn't what Johnny thinks.I really liked this movie because of its interesting slant, and also, I don't know what it is, but I like George Raft. He normally stays in one range - he's dapper, he gets angry, he's tough -- and in this film, he's really tough. I mean, nobody gets to him, not even a blind man! One thing Raft had on screen was warmth, and here, you see Johnny's love for Jess, and his pain when his brother dies.The other thing about this movie that is wonderful is all the familiar faces - besides actors known primarily for films: Raft, Mayo, and Lockhart, we have TV star Burr, Harry Morgan (September Bride, Pete & Gladys, MASH), William Frawley (I Love Lucy), Victor Sen Young (Charlie Chan, Bonanza), Barton MacLane (I Dream of Jeannie), Arthur Franz, who was in everything, Philip Pine, who must have done every TV show ever, Ken Murray, known for his home movies of celebrities, Paul Frees, the "Man of a Thousand Voices" who was the voice of Boris on Rocky the Squirrel), Bob Jellison (Bobby the Bellboy when "I Love Lucy" was in Hollywood), and Marlon Brando's first wife Movita.Dmitri Tiomkin's music ranges from riffs on Ave Maria, Dies Irae, and some Tosca thrown in. Good movie.

sol1218 (Spoilers) It's when his kid brother US Army Chaplin Captain Jess Torno, Arthur Franz, was found shot at the hotel he was staying at that Johnny Torno, George Raft, owner of Torno Fraight Lines made it his first order of business to bring Jess' killer to justice. There was something that Jess with his last dying breath told Johnny who was at the murder scene that it's the bible in his hotel room, that disappeared from sight, that holds the answer to what happened and then kicked off for good.Determined to find Jess' murderer Johnny didn't realize that the person who was behind the crime was a lot closer to him at he could have ever imagined. As we all saw at the start of the movie Johnny's former book-keeper Rick Cherney played by a pre liposuction 300 plus pounds Raymond Burr, whom Johnny caught embezzling his business, who was behind Jess' murder. It was Cherney who hired ex-con Rocky, Harry Morgan, who was in the can, San Quentin Prison, together with him to gun Jess down as an act of revenge against Johnny. The big mystery in all this is what did Cherney use to pay Rocky to do the hit-job for him? In Cherney being dead broke, without a job or any other means of support, at the time to give Rocky the contract to knock off Jess?Looking for the Gideon Bible that was in the hotel-room with Jess at the time of his murder Johnny recruits pretty Carla North,Virginia Mayo, who needs the money and who was in the same hotel-room Jess was in after his death to track down anyone else who spent the night at hotel room #812 after Jess was killed and could have possibly taken the bible. Johnny's obsession with Jess' hotel bible gets more and more ridicules as the movie goes on in that it seemed to have some kinds of supernatural or Godly powers towards anyone who came in contact with it. The fact that everyone was stealing the bible from its rightful owner, the hotel, didn't seem to matter at all. All that mattered was that it changed the lives of those who stole it for the better even the hot headed and thug like Johnny Torno! As for Cherney he tries to and does, Johnny has a soft spot for him, to get his old job back at Johnny's freight lines trucking company. Which leads to Cherney getting the jump on Johnny's actions him in finding out who's his brother's killer. With everything going his way and as it turns out that Jess didn't implicated him in Jess' murder Cherney is still worried about Rocky, by not having any money to pay him off, fingering him for the crime. ****Major Major Spoiler*** This leads to one of the most outrageous and mind boggling scenes in the entire movie where after Cherney does Rocky in by throwing him off a speeding passenger train he, like Jason in the Friday the 13th movie series, comes back from the dead! With him barley alive and breathing Rocky after walking or staggering back to his hotel room, where both Johnny and Cherney as well as the police just happen to be at, miles from his accident site he's still able to finger Cherney as the person who paid him to do in Jess before he's finally, with a bullet from Cherney's gun, put out of his misery! This scene alone is worth the price of admission in not only having Rocky survived his near fatal accident but come back, black & blue with a number of broken bones ribs and a cracked skull, and be lucid enough to point Cherney out! And on top of all that with Cherney coincidentally just happening to be there and end up, after waiting for Rocky to point him out, not only kill him but also admit instead of keeping his mouth shut that he had paid Rocky to murder Jess! This reminded me of the Perry Mason TV series that Burr starred in where he-as defense attorney Perry Mason-had people admit to crimes that they by keeping quite could have easily gotten away with. In the end all turns out to be well and good in Johnny finally seeing the light and when he did have the chance not do in the fleeing Cherney a hesitant and Johnny instead let the supernatural or a bolt of electricity, as Jess advised him in the magic hotel Gideon Bible, do it for him.P.S Check out Johnny's and later Clara's Chinese house-boy at his San Francisco luxury suite Vincent played by former Charlie Chan's goofy #2 son Victor Sen Young.

bmacv Meticulously groomed George Raft was a notoriously one-note actor, but his monotone worked harmoniously in the flattened acoustic of film noir. In Roy Del Ruth's Red Light -- an unusual "religioso" thriller -- he owns a trucking empire; his brother, a priest and army chaplain, has just been gunned down in a hotel room. The clue to the assassin's identity is supposedly scrawled in the room's Gideon Bible, which has gone missing. Raft enlists the aid of Virginia Mayo to track down both Bible and killer. But when they succeed, Raft's plans for revenge are thwarted by the Deity, in the form of a huge electrical sign during a pelting rainstorm, underscoring the movie's moral: "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord." Raft's quest is jam-packed with every cinematic device that makes the noir cycle such delectable (if forbidden) fruit: flicked-away cigarette butts, rain-streaked windowpanes, grotesquely lit close-ups, San Francisco at its sleaziest. The film's heavies, Raymond Burr and Harry Morgan, win no congeniality awards; Burr's performance here may well be the nastiest in his impressive portfolio of thugs. Despite Dmitri Tiomkin's pietistic score, which lurches from the "Dies Irae" to the "Ave Maria" and back again, the spiritual side of the story seems clumsily overlaid, a late addition to the film's hard-core noir structure. And the title remains a puzzle. Is it meant as an injunction to "Stop" the cycle of bloodshed? A reference to the votive candle whose flame indicates that the Blessed Sacrament is in residence? Or to the electrocuting signage which ends the movie? No matter; it does little to dispel the deep, and deeply satisfying, thematic gloom.