Joe Palooka in Triple Cross

By the time the final installment of the Joe Palooka series debuted here with "Joe Palooka in Triple Cross", the series had seen better days. What's worse, it also saw a lot of cast changes...something that is never good. In the last film, Leon Errol was replaces as Knobby Walsh and here James Gleason returns in this role. Additionally, Anne is now played by another actress who looks little like the original (her hair is even a different color)...which is odd since she's supposed to be Joe's wife! Clearly the series had seen better days.

When the story begins, some desperate characters are evading the police and one is dressed as a lady in order to fool people. After all, they are looking for three guys who are murderers. Not surprisingly, Joe, Knobby and Anne pick up these three strangers and are taken prisoner. Much of this works, but when the killers are about to kill the trio, things get hard to believe. Instead of killing them, Knobby suggests they hold them and then let Joe fight in his next fight...and they'll give the killers the $100,000 purse. While this sounds illogical, it only gets worse through the course of the movie. I'd say more but I don't want to spoil the picture.

The bottom line is that this one is watchable but the series clearly had seen better days. Cast changes and plot problems make this a sad finale to a decent film series. Fortunately, although very strange, the finale does end well...which is why I could at least score the film a 5....meaning it's a decent time-passer.