RKO contract director Benjamin Stoloff’s B-movie quickie “Don’t Turn ’em Loose” (1936) capitalized on the ‘crime doesn’t pay’ theme that M-G-M had already embarked on a year earlier with its own “Crime Does Not Pay”(1935-1947) franchise that consisted of 20-minute short subjects shown before the feature picture. Mind you, the 1930s were rift with cautionary films about the scourge of crime and the rise of gangsters. Gangland movies had become a staple for Warner Brothers, the studio that released “Little Caeser” (1931) with Edward G. Robinson and “The Public Enemy” (1931) with James Cagney. Stoloff’s “Don’t Turn ‘em Loose” scrutinized the parole racket and focused on a parole board that was releasing career criminals as swiftly as the courts convicted them. Although scenarists Harry Segall, Ferdinand Reyher, and Thomas Walsh do not come outright and accuse the parole board in “Don’t Turn ‘em Loose” of graft and complicity, you have to suspect the Hays Office must have drawn the line of implicating the system since it usually gave the Hollywood studios little leeway in pointing fingers. Suffice it to say, “Don’t Turn’em Loose” provides hints about the graft and corruption inherent in the system by labeling the job as a ‘political’ function, with the law exerting little pressure on them. Every one of these natty fellows on the board give their silent assent to virtually every case that comes before them. In the case of a notorious felon named Bat William, this bloodthirsty murderer who robs and kills the innocent to line his pockets with his ill-gotten gains, they all too readily release him back into society after his shyster attorney moves them to sympathy with Bat’s wife and infant child appearing before the board. No sooner than Bat has been released than his mouthpiece pays off the dame and shuffled off the infant without a shred of remorse.
Naturally, Detective Daniels (James Gleason of “Night of the Hunter”) complains that the parole board isn’t doing society any favors by turning these hardened criminals loose to commit more crimes. Eventually, the governor of the state contacts a high regarded educator, John Webster (Lewis Stone of M-G-M’s later “Andy Hardy” franchise), an implores this speech teacher to take a seat on the board. The revelation in “Don’t Turn’em Loose” is the Bat Williams is in truth named Robert Webster, the educator’s own son! Of course, John the father has no idea what he is getting himself into when he complies with the governor’s request. John complains to his wife, Helen Webster (Nella Walker of “Sabrina”), that he prefers to shun politics. Later, the governor asks him again, and John takes the assignment with great misgivings. Meanwhile, Bat/Robert has been on a crime spree, robbing and killing, but since the methods of identification back then were primitive in comparison because photographs were not on driver’s licenses, Robert has gotten away with his crimes. Basically, Robert has fooled his family into believing that he is an engineer who takes time off his job from South America to visit them and then leave once he has either lined up a job or has already carried one out.
Detective Daniels gets the drop on Bat’s mistress and leverages a confession out of her that sends him back to prison. It just so happens that when Bat takes his case before the same parole board, he is shocked to find his father on board. John is floored by this surprise of all surprises. Reluctantly, he agrees to let his ‘no-good’ son loose as long as the dastard leaves both the town and the state and never comes back. Not surprisingly, Bat decides to stage one final robbery, but he realizes too late he has been caught in a trap from which he cannot extricate himself. Daniels is lying in wait for him at a construction office with a big, fat safe awaits Bat’s pleasure. Although he gets the drop on Bat initially, Daniels gets too close to the felon who simply knocks his revolver out of his fist and they struggle. Meantime, his father has gone to see his son off at the railway depot. When he doesn’t find him at the depot, some sixth sense sends him to the construction office and he intervenes on behalf of Detective Daniels. Indeed, he shoots his own son, but Daniels sends John home with mum’s the word and takes the fatally wounded Bat out of town to die instead of alerting he coroner and damaging John’s scholarly reputation.
“Don’t Turn ‘em Loose” is a snappy little B-picture. There is a lot of violence, but the Hays Office forced RKO to keep from showing Bat’s heartless crimes in gratuitous detail. At one point, Bat confront his moll who turned him in, and he breaks out of prison and murders her at point blank range. Afterward, his accomplices with a lumber company who delivers wood to the prison picks him up to take him back. Bat leaves a lunch box in the crawlspace between the truck’s cab and its bed. Later, as the driver is cruising along a road that hugs the side of a cliff, the lunchbox bomb detonates and the driver is killed when his vehicle plunges into a ravine. The robbery at a milk company is violent, too. As the villainous Bat/Robert Webster, Bruce Cabot grins sadistically and takes advantage of everybody he deals with in both his criminal affairs and his family affairs. Seems that John never believed he could raise a ‘bad’ child, but in retrospect, he realizes that all the petty crimes that happened in their household were engineered by his rogue son. Clocking in at 65 lean and mean minutes, “Don’t Turn ‘em Loose” is a good movie that moves at a fast clip.
