M, the American remake of the 1931 Fritz Lang classic from Germany, didn’t get much sympathy when it crept out twenty years later in 1951. Critical reaction coalesced around “Why?”, the Commie-crusaders saw it as not merely distasteful subject matter but loaded with a cast & crew whose politics they abhorred. Lang acidly commented that this version gave his original the best reviews of his career. And the public stayed away in droves; box office was just $1,200,000, an echo at 194th place. Yet while not in the league of the original, there is more than enough in this orphan offering to commend, chiefly in the supporting cast and definitely in the out-of-life-field lead performance from David Wayne.

Los Angeles. Some fiend is abducting and murdering children. The police (led by Howard Da Silva and Steve Brodie) are under pressure and their rattling of every available cage causes the city’s chief crime kingpin (Martin Gable) to push his venal underlings to find the culprit before the cops do and so take pressure off his racket roost. Meanwhile, nondescript nobody ‘Martin W. Harrow’ (Wayne) keeps doing what he can’t help doing.

Directed by soon-to-be-blacklisted Joseph Losey, the transplant from Lang’s deteriorating  Weimar Germany to sunny yet socially shadowy southern California made effective use of L.A. neighborhoods that have since been plowed under for ‘progress, and at 88 minutes is 32 shorter than the original. The supporting cast is stocked with soon-to-be-familiar faces, and while some of the acting has dated, there are standout bits from hulking Raymond Burr (using a throaty voice) and icky-creepy Glenn Anders (so beyond weird in The Lady From Shanghai) as two of Gabel’s verminous crew. Fortunately, though the original’s one-of-a-kind Peter Lorre cast a long shadow, Wayne acquits himself with distinction, and his final meltdown is magnificently done.

“When I think of the vile, horrible, ugly, cruel things I have to do in order to be punished I don’t want to do them, I don’t want to, but I can’t help myself, I can’t help myself, I CAN’T HELP MYSELF!”

Norman Reilly Raine, Waldo Salt and Leo Katcher parlayed the screenplay. Robert Aldrich was the assistant director. With Luther Adler, John Miljan, Norman Lloyd, Roy Engel, Jim Backus, Karen Morley, Walter Burke, William Schallert , Madge Blake, Sherry Jackson and Gregg Palmer.

* Right wing morals minders didn’t appreciate much of the picture of the USA presented that year. Suspect society scalds were present in Detective Story (brutal cops), His Kind Of Woman (extra vicious crooks), The Big Carnival (corrupt reporter), Death Of A Salesman (cracking under the strain of the economic system), The Prowler (creep alert, also directed by Losey), On Dangerous Ground (unhinged cop), plus The Racket, The Enforcer and The Mob (civic corruption and hoodlum power) and another child in peril story, this time with the addition of racial strife, The Well, a gem even fewer people saw than those who looked for M.

Along with Losey, the blacklist hit actors Da Silva, Adler, Lloyd and Morley and writer Salt.