You’re not seeing double. It’s the second consecutive movie post about a film starring Pat O’Brien with a hyphen in the title. Adding to the oddity: Pat O shot Crack-Up and Riff-Raff back to back, so they’re next to each other in his filmography. Is there anything supernatural going on? Hell no. It’s just film noir, Jake.

Another coincidence involves the name of Pat O’s shamus character, Dan Hammer. Around the same time, Mickey Spillane created Mike Hammer who pushed and shoved his way to the top of the crime fiction heap. Dan Hammer is only a half-assed bad ass. Mike Hammer is the sort of badass who gargles with razor blades. Dan Hammer prefers trading wisecracks to punches. That’s why I call Riff-Raff snark noir.

The film is set in Panama. Some exteriors were shot there by director Ted Tetzlaff, an eminent cinematographer making his directorial debut. You may have heard of his previous movie, Notorious.

Pat O is a shamus on the skids until clients begin falling in his lap. He’s enough of a hustler to play his clients off against each other. Is he clever enough to juggle them without dropping any balls? Stay tuned.

Walter Slezak plays yet another loquacious and witty villain. He talks O’Brien’s ears off and leaves the beating to his goons:

I’m getting ahead of myself. Before the ass whupping O’Brien encounters the lovely and talented Anne Jeffreys who sings at a local dive. You’ve heard of off-key canaries? She’s on-key. She’s also a stand-up broad who helps O’Brien when he’s flat on his back:

Pat O takes a beating in both his hyphenated movies. Perhaps it’s why he cracked-up and became riff-raff.

Anne J and Pat O spend a lot of time tooling around town with O’Brien’s driver played by Percy Kilbride. He’s best known for playing the bucolic bumpkin Pa Kettle:

Every movie back then needed comic relief; in Riff-Raff, Percy provided it. He comes off more as a Maine Yankee than a hillbilly like Pa Kettle. Percy is, however, tough enough to order milk in a bar.

The MacGuffin in Riff-Raff is an oil company map that Warner Brothers vet Jerome Cowan must have. In the big picture of this motion picture, the story isn’t as important as the banter, characters, or Pat O’s dog, Napoleon:

Woof. Arf.

Shorter Adrastos: This feature is called pulp fiction, not pulp spoilers so that’s all the plot I’m willing to share.

The original screenplay by Martin Rackin provides both thrills and laughs. Comedy was one of his strengths: He worked with Martin & Lewis as well as Red Skelton.

Riff-Raff looks great. Here’s why: It has two outstanding cinematographers, director Ted Tetzlaff and director of photography George Diskant. The latter would go on to shoot such noir classics as They Live By Night, Narrow Margin, and The Bigamist.

Grading Time: The grading was easy this time. I’ve only called one other film as snark noir, Johnny O’Clock. I asked myself if Riff-Raff is as good as that 3 1/2 star movie. It is not. I give Riff-Raff 3 stars and an Adrastos Grade of B.

Coda: There have been three other feature films titled Riff-Raff. Only one of them uses a hyphen. It’s okay: RKO was confused about it too. Dig this title card:

It’s time to stop riffing and raffing and look at the posters. There’s a paucity of Riff-Raff posters online, so these will have to do:

This quad poster makes me feel riff-raffish:

The Panama setting has me craving a tropical beverage. Let’s all go to the lobby and see what they have.

No Daiquiris, not even Hawaiian punch. I’m bummed. Oh well, what the hell.

Let’s lick our wounds and look at the lobby cards.

The trailer is nowhere to be found, so the last word goes to Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley intro and outro. He spends more time on the term riff-raff than I have. When in doubt, listen to the Noir Czar.