Dangerous Partners could be the title of almost any film noir, or indeed almost any crime film. In this one James Craig (the poor man's Clark Gable) and Signe Hasson (the poor woman's Greta Garbo) team up in a plot even more complicated than The Big Sleep, novel or film. The film starts at the site of a plane crash where Hasson discovers an unconscious man with a briefcase chained to his wrist; she frisks him, finds the key and discovers four wills, with different testators, with one Albert Kingby as the beneficiary of all four. She writes down the information of the testators and plans with her husband (John Warburton) to track them down, joining with Craig when her husband is killed by Kingby, One testator, Miles Kemper (Warner Anderson) has recently died after trying to change his will beneficiary from Kingby to benefit Lili Roegan, a nightclub singer played by Audrey Totter (who sings "Glad to be His" in the nightclub scene). Hasson and Craig seek out other testators -- they have the secret passwords from the briefcase, "plum torte, roast beef, pea soup" and manage to stay one step ahead of Kingby (Edmund Gwenn), until he catches them on an island only accessible by ferry.
This swiftly-moving B film uses the MGM (where the film was made) sound stages and character actors (Mabel Paige, Felix Bressart , et al.) quite effectively and much of the film takes place in downscale greasy spoons, hot dog stands and boarding houses. Veteran cinematographer Karl Freund, who worked with F.W. Murnau in Germany, does a superb job of capturing the atmospheric shadows and dark rooms where confrontations and torture take place; Gwenn is a Nazi supporter who has been laundering the money from the wills to use for highly-placed Nazis and he and his fellow thugs will stop at nothing to discover what Craig and Hasson know. The script is by veteran Marion Parsonnet and director Edward Cahn does his usual workmanlike and efficient job.
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