Author: Michael W Jackson

The Mysterious Intruder (1946)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 1 minute, rated 6.6 by 395 cinematizens.

Genre: Très noir

Verdict: Didn’t see that coming.  

It is fifth in The Whistler series but the eponymous Whistler figures only as an unbodied narrator at the start and finish.

Richard Dix is an unscrupulous PI (or is he?) who stumbles onto a significant opportunity.

When his loyal (god knows why) secretary chastens him to treat an ingénue nicely.  He says:  ‘When have I ever taken advantage of a client?’ To which she barks, ‘Whenever you could!’  In reply to which he shrugs and walks away.  This is our 1946 (anti-)hero.

Also rather noteworthy is the Brasher Doubloon surrogate: two wax cylinder recordings of Swedish opera soprano Jenny Lind (1820-1887).

The cylinders are unique in that Lind was never recorded, or so it was thought until this scriptwriter went work.  High culture in a second B feature is odd, indeed.  

Très noir, indeed.  Stay tuned for the last act to see why. No Spoiler here. 

This film series was a cross-over from the CBS radio series of The Whistler. 

Director William Castle imbues this film with atmosphere galore with low angle shots lit below from the front to add shadows as the characters face uncertainties. the shadows loom over all.  Then in contrast faces illuminated with a cigarette lighter are blank and cold.  The plot is full of twists and turns, betrayals and more with the body count to match all in just an hour, starting with the kindly old music store owner whom the ever reliable man-mountain Moose throttles.

In turn he is blasted later by parties to be known later.  But look out for Bernie Olds there.  

Charles Lane and Barton McLaine make a good pair of cops who, for once are no dummies, and they stir the pot to see who else gets it.  If the villains want to murder each other, that makes their lives easier.  N.B. Lane was one of Frank Capra’s character actors in many titles and he later tried to take the menace out of Dennis on television. Wesleyan University graduate, the bulky Barton MacLaine was the bad cop in The Maltese Falcon (1941), but also the romantic lead in the five of the nine Torchy Blane films playing second fiddle to Glenda Farrell from 1937-1939. 

MacLaine, Moose, and Olds were all Philip Marlowe’s friends and enemies.   

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.  

The Secret of the Whistler (1946)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 5 minutes run time, rated 6.5 by 326 cinematizens.

Genre: Noir

Verdict: Twisted

Middle aged man (MAM) meets Blonde Ice. Shiver! He’s loaded with his wife’s money which he is free to spend these days since Wife is off-camera bedridden. Blonde Ice plays him like a fish and he doesn’t know it, but his first friend does.  

MAM pays Blonde Ice to stand around skimpily clad while he pretends to paint her. The fraternity brothers found all this standing around fascinating.  

It comes to the MAM that when Wife croaks — fingers crossed —  in the near future, he and Blonde Ice will make two. What a genius to think of that all by himself with his first friend. Blonde Ice continues to play him.  

Then thanks to the miracle of modern screenwriting, Wife recovers.  Hubbie’s plan B involves poison.  Spoiler: Then there is the O’Henry twist at the end.  He didn’t do it but then he did do it. For that to make sense, watch the movie on You Tube. 

Virginia Leslie Gettman from Lincoln Nebraska took the nom de theatre of Leslie Brooks.  She plays Blonde Ice perfectly, never once indicating by word, deed, or look her gold-digging ways, yet the viewer knows it from the get-go. Nicely understated. She starred in Blonde Ice (1948), hence the sobriquet above, which does not view up to its arresting title. 

Director George Sherman turned out ten B features a year in his heyday.  He started in the film business as a mailroom sorter at Warners and was always there, ready and willing to do what had to be done.

Richard Dix as MAM is, as always, superb in the transformations from dutiful husband to puppy lover to wannabe adulterer to attempted murderer to the real thing.  In this role in particular he is well cast as he looks older than his years, and Blonde Ice, if not his first chance at lust, will certainly be his last. Ravaged by the bottle, Dix only lasted two more years.  

Midnight Limited 1940

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 1 minute runtime, rated 5.0 by 128 cinematizens.

Genre: mystery

Verdict: Oh hum.

A series of robberies on the Midnight Limited train from New York City’s Grand Central Station have plod mystified.  It is so dire that the Railroad is in danger of having to offer compensation to the victims.  Rather than admit liability the company sends in the comatose John ‘Dusty’ King who reads his lines off cue cards without inflection.  

Marjorie Reynolds is one of the victims, and she lights up the screen, casting Dusty into the shade.  Gratuitous racial stereotypes recur.  Dusty lays a trap. By means unfathomable it works.  The end.

There are some nice touches.  The method by which the villain gets on and off the train is neat though I have seen it done better in Terror by Night (1946).  I. Stanford Jolley is, as always, a greasy villain.

He had 370+ credits on the IMDb, the last in 1974.  

Reynolds never quite made the A list but she stole the show in Ministry of Fear (1944) directed by Fritz Lang.  She also had the female lead in Holiday Inn (1942), her only other A film lead. Tant pis.

Seven Doors to Death (1944)

IMDb mea-data is 1 hour and 4 minutes, rated 4.6 by 135 cinematizens.

Genre: Mystery

Verdict:  Droll

It starts with a bang! A shot rings out and a woman with a gat flees the nocturnal scene, accosting a passing motorist who is so flustered to have a pistol poking in his neck that he drives into a wall and wakes up suspected of murder.  Yikes!  

Note. Keep back door locked when driving through movie sets. We always do.

To clear himself he has to find the frail, which he does right where she picked him up, and they join…forces to clear each other.  There is much banter on the way to the inevitable.

Mustachioed plod is so low key that he becomes a chorus merely content to observe and comment, but at least he is not a flat-footed oaf as police are usually portrayed in these B films despite the injunction in the Hayes Code that required respect for law and order.  In 1944 movie I was somewhat surprised to see that mo’ at a time when the clean-shaved army look was the patriotic norm. 

‘What about the seven doors?’ asked the fraternity brothers when they regained consciousness.  The murder occurred in a small shopping mall with seven shops each with a door around a sunny courtyard. That makes seven doors. Got it?

The frail sells hats, there is a silversmith, an art dealer, a furrier, a photograph, an antiquarian, and a forgotten.  While the mall is well lit, airy, and open, there is a basement which is dark, dank, and creepy where much of the action occurs.  Well, it may have occurred there but the print I watched on You Tube was so poor all the basement scenes were either inky or murky, and in either case muddy.  

The specialism of each merchant figures in the story. Ditto what they might have in the basement. Nice and neat.  

Chick Chandler stars, an accomplished second banana, and this is one of a few leading roles in his 185 IMDb credits.  As with the other players, this unknown film is one of the three he is ‘Best Known For.’   

It opened on 16 August as the Canadian First Army broke through the Falaise Gap in Normandy while in the Pacific the Seventh US Army Air Force, including my dad, set up in Guam, despite the continued combat with Japanese left on the island, for long range missions over Japan.

Fly-by-Night (1942)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 14 minutes, rated 6.8/10.0 by 148 cinematizens.

Genre: Mystery, Sy Fy

Verdict:  Easy viewing.

The set-up:  Everyman Richard Carlson stops for gasoline on a rainy night and when he gets back in the car, there is a drenched, bug-eyed Martin Kosleck (on whom more below) cowering in the back seat.  Carlson is persuaded to give Bug-eyes a lift and a room at the first hotel they find in the storm.  

The plot thickens when Bug-eyes is murdered in the room while Carlson is doing his nails or something.  The plods arrive on cue and clamp him in irons, well they try to, but he escapes and takes the redoubtable Nancy Kelly hostage, sort of.  It is all Stockholm Syndrome thereafter.

To clear himself with the law Carlson must crack the case by tracing the path of Bug-eyes back to the asylum from which he escaped.  The nuthouse is full of nuts to be sure, and there are some Keystone Kops involved.  Bug-eyes passed the word to Carlson before he croaked: ‘G 47!’  It is open sesame when he says that…. but the door slams shut behind him! 

There is one very nice stunt when Carlson leaps from a speeding car onto an auto transporter and then later rolls a vehicle off the back of it at highway speed.  Not sure I have seen that before, and certainly not in a film made in late 1941 without any CGI.  Most of all there is Nancy the hostage who dominates the screen with her sass and feisty temper. Yet somehow they become unintentionally married! ‘Go girl,’ yelled the fraternity brothers! 

The reference to patriotic panties got the attention of the bros, ever so briefly.  A sales lady spruiks them with a V for Victory embroidered on the article and she refers to ‘fine silk for Uncle Sam.’  Stop!  The silk would have been Japanese, and by 1939 many manufacturers had substituted rayon for Japanese silk because customers were boycotting Japanese products, and the rayon was cheaper and more readily available.  

There is a nice plot twist at the end, which surprised this jaded viewer. That is what gets the Sy Fy tick above. The 19 January release implies production in November of 1941, leading to the conclusion that the nefarious Nazis were a late add to the script after Hitler declared war on the United States on 9 December 1941.  (Why did he do that? I have always wondered. Send five box tops with the answer.)

Martin Kosleck (a Polish Jew refugee) made a Hollywood career playing Nazis, Göbbels alone five times.  

Nancy Kelly (1921-1995)  appeared on camera for the first time 1926 and for the last time in 1977.   She was one of the few cute child actors to make the transition to maturity, albeit with a ten-year hiatus in the early 1930s.  She gets top billing here in the credits, and rightly so. In addition to film, she also acted on radio and Broadway.  Her good sense is evidenced in that she quit in 1977.  

Siodmak directed, in this case not Kurt or Curt or Curtis, but Robert Siodmak, no relation to Kurt or Curt or Curtis. 

Though how they co-existed in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s is a puzzle.  I am sure the one was often confused for the other, but their biographies on IMDb make no reference to the other.  Despite the name and the techniques of German Expressionism this Siodmak was from Memphis Tennessee, born and bred, albeit in German Town (been there).  He did specialise in Noir and visited Germany to learn techniques in the 1930s. The highpoint of his career might have been the mysterious The Killers (1946).  

The Ghost Walks (1934) 

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour 9 minutes runtime, rated 5.8 by 378 cinematizens.

Genre: ODH ( = Old Dark House)

Verdict: Curve balls two. 

A playwright and his producer with a comic irritant assistant are driving through a storm when they come to downed tree blocking the road while behind them flood waters are rising.  They seek shelter in a conveniently located nearby Old Dark House.  

The owner reluctantly bids them enter and offers a meagre hospitality to these strangers.  They join a tuxedoed party of five or six, the fraternity brothers were in charge of counting.  The travellers change out of their wet clothes into tuxedoes, what else.  

One of the resident ladies appears walking in a trance, and there is talk of a ghost. Doors open and close by themselves.  Furniture moves.  Creaks and bumps are heard. Producer and assistant get shivery.  

Then Madame Trance turns up dead.  Dead!  

Spoiler One.

It turns out all the ODH residents are actors hired by motoring playwright to put on this show to convince the accompanying producer to fund a new play.  He arranged for the tree to be down (tough cookies for other drivers)  while the storm was a lucky coincidence.  

However, the death of Madame Trance was NOT in the script!  The charade is revealed.  

The tables now turn themselves. Producer and Assistant, once tricked, now stubbornly persistent in supposing the death is faked as part of the play, while the players and writer are alarmed at this ad libbing. 

Get it?  If not go back over the previous two paragraphs with your finger and read it again word-by-word to yourself.  

Then after much loud knocking a uniformed guard from the inconveniently located nearby booby-hatch appears to announce that a homicidal maniac has been returned to the care of the community. He proceeds to search the house.  Meanwhile, alert observers have noticed the eyes of painting above the fireplace moving and fingers on door handles.  Get it? If not, repeat as above. 

More members of the house party fall down dead, and in the ensuing consternation their cadavers disappear.  The body count of missing bodies increases.  Needless to say the telephone line was cut.  The automobiles disabled.  

Spoiler Two.  

More pounding at the front door yields two more booby-hatch guards who say that the escaped maniac dressed as a guard.  Gulp!  Get it?

First Guard (FG) is the nut job and he has been roaming around the house for hours, during which he found the hidden chambers, sliding panels, concealed passageways, torture chamber, and cobwebs.  Behind the eyes on the painting they find secret passages and rooms.  At last!  

We cut away to FG with an audience of the disappeared all trussed up.  None were killed but drugged to simulate death to the others upstairs.  Now FG proclaims his genius and prepares to operate on the host with his many knives, scalpels, and wire cutters that he carried off from the loony bin. Sure.

In the nick (get it?) of time the other two guards with playwright et al. arrive and dis-knife him.  

The End.

I liked the double twist but I wanted more spooky ODH stuff.  It lacks atmosphere and tension.  Some of the dialogue is sharp but these quips do not propel the story.  Madame Trance was convincing in her limited screen time but the insipid female lead was….   Just about absent. 

Panama Patrol (20 March 1939)  

IMDb metadata is runtime of 1 hour and 7 minutes, rated 5.1/10.0  by 49 cinematizens 

Genre:  mystery

Verdict:  Oh hum

Stanley Banks before he retired and became the Father of the Bride heads the code breakers in DC whose main interest seems to be lunch.  Everyone has military ranks apart from the secretary whom Stanley aims to make Mother of the Bride just as soon as this case is over.  (Psst! Though a Mrs Ames is already on the scene.) Wait, what case is that?  The Coors Silver Bullets? No, then the fraternity brothers lost intent in right there. 

Some Asians are up to no good.  Before the code can be broken it has to be translated from the Kanji characters into Indiana English.  Every time the code breakers get a break the Asians get a fast-break ahead again.  How do the devils do it?  

Spoiler.  No red blooded, white skinned code breaker can read those chicken scratches so they hire off the street a translator named Arlie.  He comes and goes as he pleases in their top secret super hush-hush headquarters guarded by a watchman who cannot see over his open mouth on the rare occasions when he is awake. It turns out Arlie is one of the code makers and he doctors his translations to throw off the code breakers!  He disguises himself by wearing glasses. What a devil!

It takes the top notch code breakers an hour and several deaths to figure out that someone — who could it be? — is reading their mail even before they do: They of unmatched wisdom.  

What is interesting is the romance between Arlie and fellow conspirator Lia (who is played by the aforementioned Mrs Ames).  The scenes between these two are genuinely touching and played superbly in this otherwise bland production from the brothers Warner.  I wanted to know more about Arlie and Lia, where they came from, how they met, what motivated them, what they hoped to achieve, where would they go in the future, what cellphone plan did they have?  So many questions. Gerald Mohr also does a nice turn as the traitorous Republican pilot.  

No such interest was sparked by Stanley and his crew.   There are, by the way, no scenes in Panama. In contrast see Charlie Chan in Panama (1942).

Some of the simis on the IMDb suppose the villains are Chinese.  Oh hum.  Japan had invaded China in 1937 and many Chinese got help and encouragement from Americans.  Much more likely the intention was to make the audience, if such there was, think they were Japanese, but nothing explicit was noticed by this auditor during occasional periods of attention.   

Black Dragons (1942)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 4 minutes, rated  4.3/10.0 by 907 cinematizens

Genre: Confusion.  

Verdict: Monogram quality. (Say no more.)

The set-up: a room full of portly American men with svelte molls congratulate themselves as the war rages.  Strangely they are celebrating, strikes, slowdowns, sabotage, arson, and destruction of their factories, rolling stock, warehouses, and ships.  Though they look like the usual cast of B-movie extras they are no patriots!  Are they Republicans?  They are traitors!  

Into their midst intrudes Bela Lugosi to whom no one ever says no.  With the help of an ever handy hypodermic, he manipulates the host. Thereafter the industrialists play ten little Indians as one after another is found dead on the doorstep of the Japanese embassy in Washington DC.  How they died and got delivered C.O.D. is left off stage.  Perhaps Lugosi has a bulk contract with USPS for corpse deliveries.  After the second or third, foul play is suspected.  

As always Lugosi appears and disappears by script magic. He sneaks up behind each victim and….   

As the pile of corpses on the Japanese embassy doormat mounts the Lone Ranger, constantly flipping open his wallet looking for his mask, appears to investigate – the host’s niece.  Nice.  

SPOILER.  In the last few minutes we discover that the industrialists had all been replaced by doppelgängers made to order by plastic surgery, the miserable scriptwriters crutch.  The substitutes are nefarious Japanese who talk just like Ohio but are members of the dreaded Black Dragon Society.  Where all those molls who were likewise celebrating American setbacks came from is left to the viewer’s imagination. 

The surgeon who altered the men was …. [Go on, guess] the dedicated Nazi doctor Lugosi.  Ah ha.  To show their gratitude the Black Dragons threw Lugosi into a prison cell, so that he would not blow the cover of the agents he had created. Sounds like McKinsey management at its best: Save on the surgeon’s fees.  

Black Dragons may be mean but smart they are not.  Of all the prison cells in all the worlds, they put him in one with an exact look-alike due to be released.  With a flick of his cape, Lugosi swaps with the look-alike and goes free to seek his revenge by travelling as a Nazi from Japan to the USA during the war.  Sure.  Why not.  Book that berth and sail away across the Pacific, Manila, Guam, Wake, Honolulu all the way.   

Moreover, this dedicated Nazi’s revenge helps the American war effort.  Sure that adds up.  

The substitution explains why a saboteur can have a nice niece.  It does not explain why she does not notice any difference in her favourite uncle. (The script gives her some outs but they are lame, to say the least.)  Still less does it explain why anyone would care.

It was released on 6 March 1942. The opening credits feature a rising sun flag in the frame. 

The film would have been made in a fortnight in early February just after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when the threat of other attacks or even an invasion was in the air.  

Insightful observations follow. Buckle up. Everyone smokes.  Everyone.  That surprised me because I thought smoking became general after World War II, because the mass production of cigarettes for the Army spread the habit and made it cheap.  But in the opening scene at the dinner party the air is thick with smoke and every actor has a cigarette, pipe, or cigar.  Now, perhaps in that scene the smokes are being used to indicate how rich and decadent they are, but that seems far too subtle for anything from a Monogram production, though the smoking is less distracting thereafter.