Nick Carter,
Master Detective (1939) - 6.0
It feels odd seeing the very respected actor and winner of two Academy Awards Walter Pidgeon in this B film series as Nick Carter. But they were made right before he was to make it big. Pidgeon came down from Canada where he was born in 1897 and had been working as a banker to get into show biz. First theater and then silent films. Once the talkies came along, he was in a few now obscure musicals with a good singing voice but then fell into supporting roles and B films. But right after these three films as Nick Carter he was in How Green was My Valley and Mrs. Miniver and his career was set. Always a solid dignified serious presence with his resonant voice and good upper class looks.
MGM chose Nick Carter to make this series about and ended up with the rights to over 1,000 stories! The character of Nick Carter goes way back - I mean way back - to the 1880's. He was first a basic detective in a series of pulp short stories, then had his own magazine until the 1920's when it folded. But he came back in the 1930's as a tough talking hard boiled detective and that ended in the 1940's. He had one last comeback in him though - in the 1960's he turned into a super cool spy - The Kill Master - which was very popular and there were over 200 of them (of which the literary merit is dubious but they sold well). By different authors. Going all the way back to the beginning the Carter books and stories have had numerous authors though hard to know which belong to which because they were not credited.
These films take place during the second phase of Carter's versions - an adventurous global detective who goes after crooks and spies. There were only three of these and they were apparently not very popular as they ended the series rather abruptly - though it might have been the success of Pidgeon in How Green was My Valley that made MGM realize he was being wasted in B films. Having seen a lot of these B crime film series, this one strikes me as comparable to most of them - not that exciting - rushed at 60 minutes - but in my world good enough. This one is directed by Jacques Tourneur (born in France) in only his second feature film after a number of shorts. His father was Maurice Tourneur, a well-known director who started off in France but moved to America. Jacques of course went on to make the classic horror films with Val Lewton.
In this one Carter is brought in to look for spies in an airplane manufacturing plant. Blueprints are being smuggled out and sabotage is causing problems. This was 1939 and the spies are clearly if not said Germans. It is fairly straightforward with a nice scene near the end in which Carter machine guns the escaping boat from a two-seater plane. There is of course an attractive girl (Rita Johnson - who had been in Jacques first feature film - They All Come Out) in the mix as well as one of my favorite character actors, Donald Meek.
One has to wonder if Meek lived up to his name or whether his name begat his characters because he is nearly always a nervous little skittish man that people hardly notice. This one is a bit different as he plays a bee-keeper and has them in his pockets and under his hat - and he wants to be an amateur detective and partners up with Carter, much to Carter's dismay. He shows up in the next two films as well. And Tourneur directs the next one, Phantom Raiders.
Phantom Raiders (1940) - 6.5
Nick Carter is back in the his second film in the three part series. This is a solid B film with Walter Pidgeon breezing through it and getting able assistance from a supporting cast of well-known character actors. Though MGM purchased the rights to over 1,000 Nick Carter stories, they never used any of them but came up with their own. This one was based on a story by Jonathan Latimer who wrote some fine crime novels in the 1930s. It is again directed by the future famous director Jacques Tourneur and it is a smooth ride with some suspense, humor and a tiny bit of the risqué that got by the censors.
Ships are being sunk off of Panama and everyone is assuming they are Nazi subs doing the dirty deed. But the insurance company that is losing a load of money search for detective Nick Carter to go investigate. In one quick clip a phone call goes to a young woman who picks up the phone, hears the other end asking for Nick Carter and asks the older man who she is linked to with a deep embrace "Are you Nick Carter?". And then the film shifts to Nick who is coincidentally taking his vacation in Panama and is in a low brow cantina in deep soulful conversation with a lady of the bar who speaks not a word of English. Not too difficult to figure out what profession these two women practice.
Carter is joined by his bee-keeping friend played by Donald Meek who is as close to crazy as you can get without being committed - and they narrow their search to the cantina owner (Joseph Schildkraut) and his bodyguard (Nat Pendleton) and a few others - Cecil Kellaway and Dwight Frye as a killer. It isn't subs blowing up the ships but an evil plan!
Sky Murder (1940) - 5.5
This is the third and last in the Nick Carter series. Interesting in that it is about Fifth Columnists in 1940. Like the first film in the series it is never mentioned that the bad guys are working for Germany but it is pretty obvious. Before we went to war Hollywood was very reluctant to name Germany as the villain because of the America First isolationists who did not want in any way to show bias towards either of the the combatants - and also because Germany was a large market for their films. From what I have seen B films seemed more inclined to hint strongly that the Germans were our soon to be enemies.
This is ok but contains too much silliness contributed by a ditzy blonde detective (Joyce Compton) who interjects herself into the film all the way through. There is also a lot of Donald Meek, again as Carter's wacky assistant. He cracks me up but I can easily see him irritating others. But unlike a lot of B film assistants he isn't an idiot - he is just strange but often saves the day and for me his antics save the film. This was directed by George Seitz, which may explain the overabundance of silliness - he was the go to director of the Andy Hardy series - directing twelve of them.
In this one Carter (Walter Pidgeon again) is brought in by a US Senator and his friend Cortland to find out who Mr. Big is behind an organized group of Fifth Columnists. Cortland is throwing a party for Washington big shots and they have flown down party girls from NYC to entertain them. Interesting. One of them is a former German citizen (played by Kaaren Verne, who in fact had just escaped from Germany two years previously) who a collaborator is trying to pressure to join the cause. She refuses. He is played by Tom Conway and quickly gets bumped off which surprised me - I mean he is the Falcon - but it turned out that this was his debut. Murders, Nazi meetings of the Bund, kidnappings and so on follow. If only they had left out the silly giggling female detective.
In the cast also are Chill Wills as the sheriff, Dorothy Tree from Brooklyn who was later blacklisted and then became a famous voice trainer - she is the villainess and Tom Neal as the babyface pilot. Neal is known to noir fans for Detour but his private life was just as scandalous - once beating up Franchot Tone very badly and then later murdering his wife.
It feels odd seeing the very respected actor and winner of two Academy Awards Walter Pidgeon in this B film series as Nick Carter. But they were made right before he was to make it big. Pidgeon came down from Canada where he was born in 1897 and had been working as a banker to get into show biz. First theater and then silent films. Once the talkies came along, he was in a few now obscure musicals with a good singing voice but then fell into supporting roles and B films. But right after these three films as Nick Carter he was in How Green was My Valley and Mrs. Miniver and his career was set. Always a solid dignified serious presence with his resonant voice and good upper class looks.
MGM chose Nick Carter to make this series about and ended up with the rights to over 1,000 stories! The character of Nick Carter goes way back - I mean way back - to the 1880's. He was first a basic detective in a series of pulp short stories, then had his own magazine until the 1920's when it folded. But he came back in the 1930's as a tough talking hard boiled detective and that ended in the 1940's. He had one last comeback in him though - in the 1960's he turned into a super cool spy - The Kill Master - which was very popular and there were over 200 of them (of which the literary merit is dubious but they sold well). By different authors. Going all the way back to the beginning the Carter books and stories have had numerous authors though hard to know which belong to which because they were not credited.
These films take place during the second phase of Carter's versions - an adventurous global detective who goes after crooks and spies. There were only three of these and they were apparently not very popular as they ended the series rather abruptly - though it might have been the success of Pidgeon in How Green was My Valley that made MGM realize he was being wasted in B films. Having seen a lot of these B crime film series, this one strikes me as comparable to most of them - not that exciting - rushed at 60 minutes - but in my world good enough. This one is directed by Jacques Tourneur (born in France) in only his second feature film after a number of shorts. His father was Maurice Tourneur, a well-known director who started off in France but moved to America. Jacques of course went on to make the classic horror films with Val Lewton.
In this one Carter is brought in to look for spies in an airplane manufacturing plant. Blueprints are being smuggled out and sabotage is causing problems. This was 1939 and the spies are clearly if not said Germans. It is fairly straightforward with a nice scene near the end in which Carter machine guns the escaping boat from a two-seater plane. There is of course an attractive girl (Rita Johnson - who had been in Jacques first feature film - They All Come Out) in the mix as well as one of my favorite character actors, Donald Meek.
One has to wonder if Meek lived up to his name or whether his name begat his characters because he is nearly always a nervous little skittish man that people hardly notice. This one is a bit different as he plays a bee-keeper and has them in his pockets and under his hat - and he wants to be an amateur detective and partners up with Carter, much to Carter's dismay. He shows up in the next two films as well. And Tourneur directs the next one, Phantom Raiders.
Phantom Raiders (1940) - 6.5
Nick Carter is back in the his second film in the three part series. This is a solid B film with Walter Pidgeon breezing through it and getting able assistance from a supporting cast of well-known character actors. Though MGM purchased the rights to over 1,000 Nick Carter stories, they never used any of them but came up with their own. This one was based on a story by Jonathan Latimer who wrote some fine crime novels in the 1930s. It is again directed by the future famous director Jacques Tourneur and it is a smooth ride with some suspense, humor and a tiny bit of the risqué that got by the censors.
Ships are being sunk off of Panama and everyone is assuming they are Nazi subs doing the dirty deed. But the insurance company that is losing a load of money search for detective Nick Carter to go investigate. In one quick clip a phone call goes to a young woman who picks up the phone, hears the other end asking for Nick Carter and asks the older man who she is linked to with a deep embrace "Are you Nick Carter?". And then the film shifts to Nick who is coincidentally taking his vacation in Panama and is in a low brow cantina in deep soulful conversation with a lady of the bar who speaks not a word of English. Not too difficult to figure out what profession these two women practice.
Carter is joined by his bee-keeping friend played by Donald Meek who is as close to crazy as you can get without being committed - and they narrow their search to the cantina owner (Joseph Schildkraut) and his bodyguard (Nat Pendleton) and a few others - Cecil Kellaway and Dwight Frye as a killer. It isn't subs blowing up the ships but an evil plan!
Sky Murder (1940) - 5.5
This is the third and last in the Nick Carter series. Interesting in that it is about Fifth Columnists in 1940. Like the first film in the series it is never mentioned that the bad guys are working for Germany but it is pretty obvious. Before we went to war Hollywood was very reluctant to name Germany as the villain because of the America First isolationists who did not want in any way to show bias towards either of the the combatants - and also because Germany was a large market for their films. From what I have seen B films seemed more inclined to hint strongly that the Germans were our soon to be enemies.
This is ok but contains too much silliness contributed by a ditzy blonde detective (Joyce Compton) who interjects herself into the film all the way through. There is also a lot of Donald Meek, again as Carter's wacky assistant. He cracks me up but I can easily see him irritating others. But unlike a lot of B film assistants he isn't an idiot - he is just strange but often saves the day and for me his antics save the film. This was directed by George Seitz, which may explain the overabundance of silliness - he was the go to director of the Andy Hardy series - directing twelve of them.
In this one Carter (Walter Pidgeon again) is brought in by a US Senator and his friend Cortland to find out who Mr. Big is behind an organized group of Fifth Columnists. Cortland is throwing a party for Washington big shots and they have flown down party girls from NYC to entertain them. Interesting. One of them is a former German citizen (played by Kaaren Verne, who in fact had just escaped from Germany two years previously) who a collaborator is trying to pressure to join the cause. She refuses. He is played by Tom Conway and quickly gets bumped off which surprised me - I mean he is the Falcon - but it turned out that this was his debut. Murders, Nazi meetings of the Bund, kidnappings and so on follow. If only they had left out the silly giggling female detective.
In the cast also are Chill Wills as the sheriff, Dorothy Tree from Brooklyn who was later blacklisted and then became a famous voice trainer - she is the villainess and Tom Neal as the babyface pilot. Neal is known to noir fans for Detour but his private life was just as scandalous - once beating up Franchot Tone very badly and then later murdering his wife.