Decoy 1946

A tense noir thriller unfolds from a rural gas station in California to a crowded San Francisco apartment, where a mysterious man—later revealed to be Dr. Lloyd Craig [Herbert Rudley]—hitches a ride and suddenly opens fire on a young woman. Police Detective Joe Portugal [Sheldon Leonard] arrives at the scene to find the man dead and the woman mortally wounded, setting off a meticulous interrogation that unpacks a web of motive, betrayal, and an extraordinary crime.

The woman is Margot Shelby [Jean Gillie], the former lover of Frankie Olins [Robert Armstrong], a man already on death row for a brazen armored-car robbery that yielded $400,000 and vanished without a trace. The missing money haunts the case, and investigators suspect Frankie hid the fortune somewhere known only to him. As the confession unfolds, Margot reveals she no longer loves Frankie and has teamed up with a new ally, Jim Vincent [Edward Norris], to locate the stash. The two hatch plans that swing between legal maneuvering and outright deception, driven by the promise of wealth and a dangerous romance.

At first, Margot and Jim attempt to overturn Frankie’s conviction through an appeal. When that path proves fruitless, they pivot to a much more audacious scheme: Margot intends to see Frankie executed by lethal hydrogen cyanide gas, then revive him with a chemical she vaguely recalls from a long-forgotten source—methylene blue. She ensnares the prison physician, Dr. Lloyd Craig [Herbert Rudley], into helping her carry out the plan. The double-edged plot hinges on timing, secrecy, and a physician’s fragile ethics in a setting where every breath could seal a fate.

The execution is carried out, and Frankie’s body is removed from the prison without an autopsy. Margot employs hired help to murder the hearse driver, ensuring the process remains clandestine and providing a decoy for cremation. Frankie’s body ends up at Dr. Craig’s office, where the doctor administers methylene blue through a breathing mask. The revived man wakes briefly, disoriented but coherent enough to reveal a hand-drawn map that supposedly points to the location of his stolen money. Before the map can be used to its fullest, Jim Vincent shoots Frankie dead, cutting the thread of Frankie’s potential redemption.

With the map obtained, Margot, Jim, and Dr. Craig speed toward the burial site to recover the loot. Along the way, Margot makes the grim decision to murder Jim by running him down when his tire gives out, leaving Dr. Craig to shoulder the dangerous recon of the treasure alone. Reaching the burial ground, a coerced Dr. Craig digs at gunpoint and uncovers a wooden strongbox. Margot takes the prize, and in a final, merciless act, she shoots Dr. Craig twice while she laughs with chilling glee.

The film returns to the present, where the audience learns the true motive behind Dr. Craig’s earlier shooting: a tangled web of greed and jealousy driving the killers. As Margot’s tale winds to a close, she pleads with Detective Portugal to open the strongbox so she can touch the money one last time. She purrs a taunting line to “Jo-Jo,” inviting him to descend to her level for once and kiss her. > Jo-Jo

Portugal finally opens the box, only to find it filled not with riches but with scrap paper and a single envelope. Inside is a one-dollar bill and a note addressed to “you who double crossed me,” a chilling reminder of a plan that collapsed into a catastrophe of ambition and murder.

In the final image, the story’s threads tighten into a dark moral: the loot remains elusive, the victims many, and the price of deceit paid in life and memory.

• Frankie Olins [Robert Armstrong]

• Margot Shelby [Jean Gillie]

• Jim Vincent [Edward Norris]

• Dr. Lloyd Craig [Herbert Rudley]

• Sergeant Joe Portugal [Sheldon Leonard]