BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

MartinHafer While this is far from the best entry in the Whistler movie series, it is still a decent and very watchable B-movie. The Whistler series was popular on film and radio and was in many ways an anthology series like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". Each episode was totally self-contained and had all new characters, and in an unusual twist, Richard Dix starred in almost every film as a different character--some of them nice, some awful and many which possessed both good and bad traits. He was not in the final film, RETURN OF THE WHISTLER due to his ill health.Here, Dix plays a guy you initially feel for, as his wife is very sickly and Dix is quite lonely as a result. When he meets a sexy young model, you could understand (though not excuse) his actions--after all, it isn't much fun having an ill wife who is expected to soon die and is too weak to see except for brief moments. However, when this rather innocent relationship with the new lady changes and becomes very serious, the film takes some very interesting twists. In fact, while I could describe the plot in detail, one other reviewer already did this very well--plus I'd rather not include the spoilers because enjoying the film depends greatly on all the surprises, though as usual for the series, the film ends with a very ironic twist.Very good writing, an engaging story and good acting all result in a better than average B-movie. While not as good an entry in the series as THE WHISTLER or MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER, it is very good and well worth a look--and is light years better than the low-point in the series, THE POWER OF THE WHISTLER (which, frankly, isn't worth watching since it so poorly written).

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Edith Harrison, Mary Currie, has been told by her doctors, getting a second third and even forth opinion, that she doesn't have long to live. Suffering from a weak heart Edith is preparing for the enviable by buying herself an expensive marble monument as her gravestone. Edith has everything engraved on the headstone but her date of death.While Edith is on the way to the graveyard her partying and carousing husband Ralph, Rchard Dix, the artist is getting very friendly with his latest model blond bombshell Kay Morrell, Leslie Brooks, whom he met at one of his many parties that he's always throwing. Kay herself is anything but interested in the middle-aged, he's 53 and she's 24, Romeo but the fact that he's loaded, with cash as well as booze, makes her overlook that fact.Told by Ralph that the old lady, Edith, hasn't long to go Key sees the end of the rainbow, with the pot of gold, within her reach and agrees to marry Ralph as soon, after a proper period of mourning, as his wife checks out for good. It's turns out that Edith, in a way, double-crossed Ralph by miraculously getting better where she gets as healthy as she was when she married Ralph some ten years ago.Out of bed and up on her feet Edith decides to pay Ralph a surprise visit at his studio not realizing that he just about gave her up for dead and is having an affair with his model Kay. Hiding in a room at the studio Edith's expects to surprise Ralph when he shows up but is shocked to see him, as she's hiding behind a screen, show up with Kay telling her that she's,not Edith, his one and only love. Mad as hell Edith decides to cut the cheating Ralph out of her will and puts that in writing in her diary. Later after Edith confronted Ralph, who was shocked to see her back in the pink of health, with the evidence of his infidelity he decides to do the job that her heart failed to do; kill her by spiking her heart medication with poison. Edith in fact dies, more from a broken heart then anything else, a few days later but Ralph feels that it was the tampered with, on Ralph's part, heart medication that did her in. ****SPOILERS**** Unknowing to Ralph Edith pretended to be fast asleep and saw that heel of a husband of hers Ralph sneak into her bedroom planting the poison and was to later use that evidence, the heart medication, in having him indited in attempting to murder her.With Edith now gone Ralph and Kay soon tie the knot but things don't go as smoothly as Ralph expected them to go. Ralph is guilt-ridden over Edith's death and feels, reading about a similar murder case in the newspaper, that soon the truth will come out about it in that he poisoned or murdered her. It's when Kay has a long talk with Ralph and the late Edith's maid Laura, Clair De Brey, that she realizes that Edith's death was anything but natural which in fact it was! Finding hidden in the attic both Edith's diary and medication, that Ralph spiked with poison, Kay now feels that he's a wife murderer and if he murdered once he'll surly murder again and she's the wife that he'll murder!Even though Ralph wasn't a murder he sure as hell acted like one and later his screwed up mind would in fact lead him to commit a murder in order to cover a murder that he didn't commit! The movie shows that even thinking about trying to murder someone and going through the motions will only lead that person to eventually commit murder. Ralph found out only too late that he was in fact home free, to marry Kay and collect his deceased wife's millions, but his guilty conscience took over and in the end drove him mad. Mad to the point of having him do the unthinkable that would in the end lead him straight to the electric chair.

David (Handlinghandel) I was eager to see the "Whistler" movies because of William Castle's involvement in some. He was a fine director ion the forties. (He was OK later, too. But in the forties his films were very elegant and subtle. His later horror outings were anything but subtle.) This one is not directed by Castle but it works really well. It was near the end of Richard Dix's run in the series. He was not a great actor, at least not at this point. But he had a very solid presence. And he is plausible as good guys and not so hot ones as well.Here he plays a less than admirable character. He is a painter. Amazingly, the painting of his that we first see is pretty decent. So often, even in the toniest of A-pictures, paintings by supposedly great artists looked like the work of quick-sketch artists or Sunday painters.The film opens with a stylishly noirish woman buying her own tombstone. Everything bout this film has the marvelous dark look of a film noir. Or of an Edward Hopper paintings. The scenes look especially like book jackets from the time.And the female lead looks right off the cover of some true-crime book. Wow, she looks both right and beautiful! And she -- Leslie Brooks -- is a fine actress too. (Intriguingly, she looks like the same studio's biggest star ten years hence: Kim Novak.)The whole series is entertaining, even the final film, which does not have Dix in it.One problem I encountered and others may as well: Clearly the movies were based on a radio program of their time. I have never heard that program, though. I get the idea that the Whistler is an omniscient criminologist who either has no bodily image or, like Lamont Cranston of "The Shadow," can make himself invisible.Guess I will try to track some tapes of the series down. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and search out these films. They're all good. A couple, like this one, are very good.

whpratt1 Always enjoy the wonderful performance that Richard Dix would present in this old time Radio favorite and his on the big screen appearance in the 1940's. In this film Dix plays the role of an artist (Ralph Harrison) who is married to a very rich woman Edith Marie Harrison,(Mary Currier) who has been very ill for many years and it puts a strain on their relationship. Ralph meets up with a blonde model, Kay Morrell, (Leslie Brooks) and he paints all kinds of pictures of Leslie. A relationship develops, however, Kay does not love Ralph and knows he is married, but she does wrap him around her little finger and manages to get all kinds of expensive jewelry and clothes. Mrs. Edith Harrison starts feeling well and visits her husband's studio and from that point on the story gets very interesting and creates a great mystery story. Enjoy a good B Classic film from 1946.