The Final Four Whistler
Films
Mysterious Intruder (1946) – 6.0
The fifth film in the Whistler series that almost always stars Richard Dix
with most of them directed by William Castle. They are all different stories
and Dix plays a different character in each of them. They are enjoyable 60-minute
B films in which a mysterious character ala Rod Serling who calls himself
the Whistler stays in the shadows and introduces each film and wraps up each
film. He has a great radio type voice that upon hearing it one might think
it is Vincent Price but it isn't. Most of them have twisty endings where
fate plays a hand of death.
This one has an old man coming to see a private detective to have him look
for a woman he knew as a young girl. He tells the detective that he has something
to give her from her mother who died years ago that will make her a wealthy
woman. The detective Don Gale (Dix) is a bit dirty and finds a young woman
to impersonate the girl - but she is a bit dirty too and with the appearance
of Mike Mazurki who looked like he just stepped off the lot of Murder, My
Sweet and Barton MacLane playing like his police detective in The Maltese
Falcon, this turns into a decent B noir. Dix has this voice that is very
distinct - gruff - and charming when it needs to be or menacing when needed.
The film is hurt primarily by the three actresses in the film - none of them
are particularly good - this was the last film for Nina Vale the secretary,
the first film for Helen Mowery the femme fatale and one of loads of B films
for Pamela Blake.
Secret of the
Whistler (1947) – 5.5
The sixth in the series of Whistler films wasn't one of the best. It felt
too straightforward and conventional even if it does have that little twist
near the end that all of them seem to share. The director reins were handed
over to George Sherman for this one - a well experienced hand at B films.
His is a name you will come across often if you watch a lot of these old
B films - he had over 100 directing credits in his career.
Richard Dix though is back again, this time as Ralph Harrison, a poor painter
who married rich. His wife is very ill with a heart condition and he appears
quite concerned - but at the same time throws parties at his apartment in
the city where he invites people who have nothing nice to say about him when
he isn't around. But when he meets a blonde model (Leslie Brooks) who has
a resemblance to Lana Turner and falls for her you know where this one is
going especially when the wife appears to be getting better. Decent enough
with a good supporting cast but even at 64 minutes it felt slow going.
The Thirteenth
Hour (1947) – 6.0
This is the seventh in the Whistler film series and the last one that Richard
Dix was to appear in - with only one more that was made. In fact, it was
Dix's final film - he was a heavy drinker and health issues from that forced
him to retire. He was to die two years later at the age of 56. He had been
a big star for RKO even being nominated as Best Actor for Cimarron in 1931
- but in his final few years he was relegated to the Whistler films. He is
a fine actor in this series - always giving a balanced performance of a man
who can ethically go either way.
Here he runs a small trucking firm and has just become engaged to the owner
of a small roadside diner played by Karen Morley. Life is good and that of
course is when fate decides to intervene and change that. It takes only a
small thing - some lost time on the road and as The Whistler informs us,
that changes everything. He is run off the road by a car on the wrong side
of the road - the hitchhiker he had picked up vanishes - and his license
is suspended. That is only the beginning of the mess he gets in and that
he has to somehow dig himself out of with the help of his fiancée
and her son. He is on the run looking for a man who lost a thumb - hmmm -
sound familiar? This is fairly tense and suspenseful for its 60 minute running
time and is directed by William Clemens, who seems to have been stuck with
many of these B film series - some Falcon films, Nancy Drew, Philo Vance
and Torchy Blane. The rule was to bring it in cheap and at around an hour.
Karen Morley is one of my favorite actresses of the time for her political
stances. She had a reasonably successful career appearing in classic films
like Scarface, Pride and Prejudice and Dinner at Eight - married director
King Vidor - and then in 1947 refused to testify in front of HUAC and that
pretty much ended her career. She later ran for Lt. Governor of NY on the
American Labor Party.
The Return of
the Whistler (1948) – 6.0
And the Whistler whistles his last tune and fades into the shadows from where
he came. Columbia Pictures made one more Whistler film after Richard Dix
retired and then called it quits after this one. It isn't bad at all but
without Dix it misses his moral ambivalence. It is a softer film with not
even the usual twist at the end and a happy ending which many of these films
did not. The only actor I know in the film is Richard Lane who was in many
of the Boston Blackie films. The main character is played by Michael Duane
who had a small part in Secret of the Whistler and the girl is portrayed
by Lenore Aubert who went on to play in two Abbot & Costello films. Nobody
became famous.
A young couple are going off to get married but when they get to the Justice
of the Peace he is away and they are told to come back tomorrow. Not being
married they are not allowed to sleep in the same hotel room - the good old
days - but when he returns in the morning she has disappeared. And he has
no idea where she is gone. Mysterious plots are afoot and money is at the
end of the rainbow. It is a solid plot (based on a Cornell Woolrich story
the credits say) but it doesn't really fit with the cynicism of the earlier
films.
