TOMORROW WE LIVE

Jean Parker, Rose Anne Stevens, Emmett Lynn

TOMORROW WE LIVE (1942). Director: Edgar G. Ulmer. 

Julie Bronson (Jean Parker of Lady in the Death House) comes home to her father, "Pop" Bronson (Emmett Lynn), who runs a cafe but is actually working for a gangster known as The Ghost (Ricardo Cortez). When the Ghost meets Julie he instantly decides that he must have her, but although she gets a little weak in the knees, she is in love with handsome Lieutenant Bob Lord (William Marshall), who has just enlisted. Besides dealing with competition for Julie's affections, the Ghost -- so-called because he's managed to cheat death more than once -- also must contend with a rival, Big Charlie, who we never actually see because he sends his henchmen to do his dirty work. Bob proposes to Julie, but there's a hiccup when she learns that the Ghost has something on her father that could send him back to prison.

William Marshall

Although released in 1942, Tomorrow We Live comes off like a movie made ten years earlier. It's not just that it's a cheap PRC production that was probably shot in two days with a budget of 10 cents, but that its script is creaky and the musical score hokey as hell. Aside from Parker and Rose Anne Stevens as waitress Melba, the acting is so perfunctory that it's as if the performers were handed their scripts right before they stood in front of the cameras. Both Cortez and Marshall have given much better accounts of themselves, such as in the film they teamed for five years later, Blackmail. Director Edgar G. Ulmer, who has also done much better work, films a lengthy fist fight entirely in long shot! Ultimately this is pretty dull.

Verdict: One of Ulmer's worst movies. *.