Bad Guy is a brisk (64 minutes) B-film about the working classes and technology. "Lucky" Walden (played by a charming Bruce Cabot, with a name that is possibly a reference to Thoreau in a film about technology) is a power lineman who meets a girl when he fixes the lights at a carnival. He takes his wrench with him to a gambling house, where he kills a card sharp who cheats him. He is convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair, which he helps to get working properly a week before his execution, but he saves some other convicts from a live wire in the prison yard and his sentence is commuted to life. He gets a friend to bribe a witness and he is paroled and finds another job as a lineman, during which he punches a father who lets his kid fly a kite near the power lines and his parole is revoked. His lineman partner Steve (Edward Norris) and girlfriend Kitty (Virginia Grey) remain loyal to him and help him use the electricity on the roof of the jail to break through the bars of his cell, though when he is escaping on the dead wires the electricity is turned back on and "Lucky" is electrocuted.
There is much irony in this complex, modest film, with electricity an agent of both life and death. "Lucky" is a complex character, hard-working and personable but impulsive, which his friend, girlfriend and parole officer (an effective Charlie Grapewin, stepping away from his usual codger characters) are powerless (play on words intended) to stop. Cahn's style is swift and efficient, with characters and relationships precisely defined. See my other posts about Cahn's films on Nov 21, 2014; March 26, 2015; Oct. 31, 2016; Sept. 5, 2017.
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