John Carroll was a kind of poor man's Clark Gable. Tall, handsome with a cookie-duster moustache, he never quite connected to make it the top. The 'big one' seemed to elude him. This film about a man with a dark past who becomes involved in a Mexican village centers about a return to virtue. When the bad guys from his past appear to force our hero into an exploitive, criminal scam, he is rescued by his pretense of being witness to a vision during an outbreak of disease. The bad guys are done in and our ex-bad guy finds his soul. Quite typical 40s fare in terms of story and acting and a step up from the stock "B" flicks that were used for second features back then. Some stock studio character actors include: the lovely heroine, doe-eyed Adele Mara, Thomas Gomez, Paul Fix, Ian Wolfe and perennial bad guy, Barton MacLaine-- and the great but short-lived Mexican character actor, Alfonso Bedoya who uttered the immortal lines, "We don' gotta chow you no stinkin' Batches!" Check it out, if it comes on the late show as there's no video.
Review of Angel in Exile
