At times director Landers shows imagination as in the sudden close-ups. Otherwise there's little snap to the proceedings, but at least he keeps things moving, along with a couple eye-catching car crashes. The crowded hours are more like a crowded and rather loose screenplay that fails to really engage. It's something about a newspaperman getting the goods on a rackets kingpin, but the narrative rolls around too much to establish itself. Actor Dix gets little chance to show his usual grit, while Lucy gets mainly five lines and twenty minutes of looking over Dix's shoulder. So for Lucy fans, it's like a teaser with no payoff. With McBride, Kendall, and Richards, the supporting cast features familiar faces from that era. Too bad they don't get a better chance to show their stuff. I wish there were something to recommend besides the clever twelve-hour bookends, but there isn't. All and all, it's a rather flat programmer despite the promising criminal elements.

I won't add much to the other comments about this little crime programmer. Like many others of this era, it mixes up comedy, romance and thriller. I am not very fond of all this, but a Lew Landers film is for me always Worth seeing, at least for my Library. I watched it for the second time and the thing that amazed me the most - you will laugh - is the hired killer sequences. The bull - ram - truck driver paid to kill some potential witnesses. The some sequences with him, such as this one, be called at home, when he is among his family, a poor family, is exquisite. Short but pleasant and so surprising. It seems very weird for me to focus on such details, but I am like this. Forget the scenes with Dix and all the gals, you certainly will forget them. The final action scenes are quite good for this kind of production.

Poor Lucy. It's a wonder she ever got any of the big breaks that came her way when you see how she was mistreated at RKO in a bunch of ingenue roles that required not even one-third of her talent.She's barely even visible in this trifle, a gangster movie that has RICHARD DIX getting most of the attention as a newspaper reporter on the heels of a rackets number gangster (CY KENDALL) while Lucy sits on the sidelines and pops up in only a few scenes. Even in the scenes she's in, she's hardly given more than a few lines to speak.The plot is nothing special, just a series of car chases and shootouts that make little sense since none of the characters are anything more than cardboard fixtures. Lucy's not the only one wasted here. ALLEN LANE as her kid brother has virtually nothing to do and DONALD MacBRIDE does his usual turn as an exasperated police officer.Trivia note: JOHN ARLEDGE, who plays "Red", and serves as the juvenile comedy relief, played a dying soldier this same year (1939) in GONE WITH THE WIND. And incidentally, Lucille Ball was sent to audition for David O. Selznick as a Scarlett O'Hara hopeful. Can you believe it???

Twelve Crowded Hours is a tidy, swift and enjoyable little "crime comedy". Richard Dix, who seemed much more at ease in these programmers than in "A" features, is good as the newspaper reporter trying to bring the mobster responsible for his editor's death to justice. He manages to temper the character's innate cockiness and make him likeable. Lucille Ball enthusiasts may be disappointed with her role here; even though she has a few funny lines, her Paula Sanders is drab. Coming off much better are Donald MacBride as the sour detective and Cy Kendall as the burly mob boss. (The type of higher-profile role he should have had more often.) A nice, breezy 64 minutes.