The Power of the Whistler (1945)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 6 minutes, rated 6.3 by 432 cinematizens.
Genre: Noir
Verdict: It had moments.
Richard Dix made six of the anthology films in The Whistler series and stars in this one as an amnesia victim who is assisted by a beautiful woman. (Feigning memory loss, well the fraternity brothers have never had to pretend to that, but it has never helped them with the ladies as it does Dix here.) The Whistler acts as narrator and occasionally as a Greek chorus.
Dix was hit by a car and bumped his head, leaving him dizzy and confused when Beauty comes along and takes pity on him. They soon arrive at a modus vivendi well within the Hayes code. He dons a frilly apron to make her breakfast. Why are some aprons frilly you may ask? I know I did. Send answers with five boxtops with answers someplace else.
When not playing house, the pair of them try to recover his identity by using the detritus in his pockets and on his person: a ring with engraved initials, a florist’s receipt, a torn page with a telephone number on it, a newspaper cutting of a opera review, an unidentified key. This forensic investigation was nicely done. No deus ex machina just sweat and shoe leather yields some results.
But each time Beauty leaves the scene, Dix’s face changes from sunny but confused increasingly to cunning and determined, then there is the trail of corpses he leaves behind, which Beauty does not notice – at first. The pet canary croaks in the night. The tabby cat on the stoop is left for dead. The squirrel in the park gets to close and – gone to the big acorn.
In time Dix blurts a few things, and becomes more controlling of her as they set off for the sticks, upstate. A few things are returning to his memory. None good. There is a marvellous Midsomer scene where she deals with him using a pitchfork. Didn’t see that coming, and neither did he. Loved his dialogue – later repeated almost word for word in some vampire films with that midget in the 1990s about how he was going to love her to death: Hers. Then came the pitchfork. The fraternity brothers cringed, and vowed to stay away from barns.
Plod arrives to clear things up thanks to the initiative of Beauty’s sister. The end.
There isn’t any atmosphere or pace. It sells on Dix’s unspoken changes and the forensic investigation in the early going, before he begins to recover his Killing Performance Indicators as a homicidal McKinsey maniac on the loose, frilly apron or not. Dix, by the way, dug The Trans-Atlantic Tunnel (1935) discussed elsewhere on this blog. Get clicking’. He had a Best Actor nomination for Cimarron (1931).
For those who missed The Whistler, here are his opening words of the 642 radio broadcasts: ’I…am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes… I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak!’
This latter is surely a reference to McKinsey management.