Scandal Sheet (1952) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by JayShmoney ★★★★½ 1

  If I was around in the 50s I would have loved to be a sleazy newspaperman.

  The young head journalist looked like a 1950s Cooper from Twin Peaksand Donna Reed’s face reminds me of Christmas so… fantastic movie

• Review by Ian West ★★★½

  A tense, hard hitting noir featuring Broderick Crawford as a newspaper man who accidentally kills his ex-wife as she’s trying to blackmail him, after covering it up his newspapers stud reporter takes the case and starts unraveling clues, turning our lead into a sweaty mess as he tries to stay one step ahead.

  Great nyc atmosphere, lovely cinematography, an engaging story (I love “audience knows the murderer as they try to stay one foot ahead” plot), and solid performances all around elevate this nifty little potboiler noir… which was based off the novel The Dark Page by the great Samuel Fuller, who happened to be newspaper reporter before his film career.

  Cool stuff... and even though Fuller didn’t direct this, he definitely shines through in the source material.

• Review by Slig001 ★★★★ 1

  A nailbiting cat and mouse thriller based on a novel by Samuel Fuller. Scandal Sheet begins by exposing the dubious methods employed by the press to get their story and proceeds with a board meeting of The National Express, where several members complain about the sensationalist direction the paper is heading, which is cynically headed off against the benefits of the rising circulation. It's a rather slow start but it's all leading in to the main story - which sees the paper's editor kill a woman, only to find his protégé taking up the case. There's definite shades of 1948's The Big Clock, with the main conceit revolving around a man desperately trying to cover up his crime while trying…

• Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★★ 6

  Is there a more instantaneously attention grabbing thriller conceit, to the point of cheat-code level titillation and free interest in the development of the story, than the ‘man in charge of spearheading capture of murder perpetrator… that he himself committed’?

  Talk about a way to have your audience on the forever edge of mentally retracing this murderers shoes as they fight to remain one step at all times ahead of the same wagged finger that they’ve been counting on wagging all this time until it couldn’t wag no more. Well, now you’re getting wagged all the way to the hole if not wag hell itself.

  Figure in a Sam Fuller source novel (his soul runs rampant throughout) and one of the scummiest exposés of tabloid journalism this side of modern tabloid journalism and you’ve found yourself scooped to a tasty slice of lean, mean b-noir fried gold. Yum. I ate it up.

• Review by Will Sloan ★★★★½ 1

  When you spend the movie rooting for the reporter to catch the killer, and then all of a sudden you start feeling anxious on behalf of the killer... that's cinema, baby. Viva Karlson.

• Review by Lara Pop ★★★½ 4

  'How's business at the morgue, Nelly?'
  ...
  'Dead.'

  The first 20 minutes of Scandal Sheet are golden but it was the scene around the 30-minute mark where the above-mentioned conversation takes place that really made my day. Love this kind of humor.

• Review by sakana1 ★★★★ 6

  Spoilers ahead.

  When Scandal Sheet opens, the board of the New York Express is meeting, concerned about the sensationalistic direction being taken by Mark Chapman (Broderick Crawford), its new executive editor. Chapman, however, is not at the meeting. He's late because he's on the phone with his protege, Steve McCleary (John Derek and his logic-defying 14" eyelashes), celebrating the paper's latest scoop, a report on and photos of a bloody murder. Chapman is also late because, as he tells Steve, he's letting the board members "stew in their financial juices," dragging his feet to remind them of his authority.

  At the meeting, the expected argument is made — about the paper turning into a "cheap and depraved" publication, "a disgusting…

• Review by RetroHound ★★★½ 4

  Broderick Crawford is a newspaper editor who accidentally kills the wife he abandoned years ago when she finds him successful and tries to blackmail him. His ace reporter is on the case and keeps finding clues. He's worried, but can't kill the story.

  A tight little thriller based on a book, The Dark Page, written by Sam Fuller and directed by Phil Karlson. Karlson really had a knack for suspenseful B-pictures.

  I made a list of movies where a person is in charge of or oversees investigating a murder he committed.

• Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★★ 1

  This is newspaper noir from the Sam Fuller Cinematic Universe based on his novel The Dark Page about Fuller’s days as crime reporter in NYC turning over stones and seeing what lived underneath. Fuller dismissed the movie in his cigar-fumed memoir, but added, “It was a lesson in losing artistic control of my work that I wouldn't ever forget.”

  If Fuller had directed there’d be that raw strangeness he brings to his films, and also a tough talking older dame who’d steal the show. If you can’t get Fuller to direct, Phil Karlson is a great replacement (he directed Kansas City Confidential the same year) and make sure to get Burnett Guffey behind the camera.

  Donna Reed and Broadrick Crawford…

• Review by pirateneckbeard ★★★★ 3

  I'm glad I finally caught up with this big thanks to Jack Often for the recommend. Totally up my film noir alley with some really good tension and you spend a lot of time stewing in the bad guys shoes which was fun. Story wise very well crafted with some great smart dialogue. Donna Reed is really good here and Broderick Crawford gives such a strong performance that kept me invested maybe I'm a sad sack but I loved Henry O'Neill as the down on his luck former reporter Charlie and his speech by the docks felt like cinema heartbreak. So many smart awareness and angles given to the audience that it's an above average movie for it's genre. Hell it's a tight succinct thriller that has you demanding to know where it's going even though you have already seen the crime like a good Columbo episode and I love me some Columbo.

• Review by kuato_lives2001 ★★★

  Clever idea for a murder mystery, with some interesting aspects (despite their profession being so cynical, the sleazy journalists at The Express still take a perverse kind of pride in telling the tallest tales possible) though it's let down by a slow pace and more than a few contrivances. Think I'd like this a hell of a lot more if Henry O'Niell's washed up loser, Charlie had been the main character instead.

• Review by Gentry ★★★½

  “Twenty years you’ve covered the news. Seen the bright boys try this. It never works.”

  Broderick Crawford sweating, the movie. A mean newspaper noir based on the novel The Dark Page by Sam Fuller. Vice stories instead of UN stories have made the Express successful, but it’s all threatened when Mark Chapman’s (Crawford) past comes back to blackmail him. Always love a good Lonely Hearts Club side-plot, with the sad dupes agreeing to a quick radio-marriage for the promise of a bed with a television set attached. And I similarly love a good wino lineup—craggy faces and stumblebum quips.

  John Derek is a smooth-faced doofus, and it works for the plot, as he sees Chapman as a fatherly figure, and…