(There are Spoilers) In an almost empty bar on the city docks businessman Earl C. Conrad, Richard Dix, has a prearranged meeting with this stranger who's to get a "job" done for him. The stranger a local hoodlum named Lefty Vigran, Don Costello, is to set up a hit on someone that Conrad want's iced by no later that Friday. What Lefty doesn't know, since everything between the two is done on a no name basis, is that the person that Conrad want's to be hit is non other then himself!
Dark creepy and unnerving suspense drama that has a man wanting to commit suicide but not having the guts to do it himself. Hiring a hit-man to do him in Conrad's contact Lefty, who it turns out is a fugitive cop killer, ends up getting gunned down by the police resisting arrest moments after he leaves Conrad drinking away his troubles in the bar. Lefty having his runner the deft mute, who reads only Superman comic books, William Benedict get the message, with the $5,000.00 fee, to the hit man's, J. Carrol Naish, hotel room put everything into motion to get Earl C. Conrad the wish that he's been hoping for. A death wish Conrad had since he, in his confused and disturbed mind, left his wife Claire to drown in a boating accident in the Pacific Ocean.
It's later that a shocked Conrad gets the "good news" from his secretary, who's secretly in love with him, Alice Walker( Gloria Stuart) that the Red Cross had found that his wife in fact survived and is interned in a Japanese internment camp ; the film takes place during WWII. Conrad now not waning to have his life snuffed is in a dilemma in not being able to contact Lefty, who's dead, and not knowing who the hit-man, J. Carrol Naish, is! This all leaves Conrad, if he wasn't already, to become a paranoid individual suspecting anyone he runs into to be the man who's out to take his life! The man that he in fact paid to do it!
Excellent performance by former silent film and cowboy star Richard Dix as a man, Earl C. Conrad, who screwed himself by overreacting to a tragedy that he in fact had nothing to do with. In fact Conrad heroically saved a number of passengers from the sinking cruise ship that he and Claire were on but had her slip out of his hands at the last moment. The insane hit that Conrad arranged on himself was in fact far worse that any conceived notion of guilt that he had about his wife's death. Arranging a mob hit, even on oneself, is murder and knowingly wanting and paying to murder someone, even himself, is far worse then even letting, which Conrad didn't, someone purposely drown!
The movie has a really good double surprise ending that, even though it's very contrived, ties all the loose ends together. The ending not only rights all the wrongs of what Conrad crazily did to himself, and those like Alice who loved him, but shows the audience that "The Whistler" was right all alone in his assertion that a curtain individual's destiny was to die tonight.
Dark creepy and unnerving suspense drama that has a man wanting to commit suicide but not having the guts to do it himself. Hiring a hit-man to do him in Conrad's contact Lefty, who it turns out is a fugitive cop killer, ends up getting gunned down by the police resisting arrest moments after he leaves Conrad drinking away his troubles in the bar. Lefty having his runner the deft mute, who reads only Superman comic books, William Benedict get the message, with the $5,000.00 fee, to the hit man's, J. Carrol Naish, hotel room put everything into motion to get Earl C. Conrad the wish that he's been hoping for. A death wish Conrad had since he, in his confused and disturbed mind, left his wife Claire to drown in a boating accident in the Pacific Ocean.
It's later that a shocked Conrad gets the "good news" from his secretary, who's secretly in love with him, Alice Walker( Gloria Stuart) that the Red Cross had found that his wife in fact survived and is interned in a Japanese internment camp ; the film takes place during WWII. Conrad now not waning to have his life snuffed is in a dilemma in not being able to contact Lefty, who's dead, and not knowing who the hit-man, J. Carrol Naish, is! This all leaves Conrad, if he wasn't already, to become a paranoid individual suspecting anyone he runs into to be the man who's out to take his life! The man that he in fact paid to do it!
Excellent performance by former silent film and cowboy star Richard Dix as a man, Earl C. Conrad, who screwed himself by overreacting to a tragedy that he in fact had nothing to do with. In fact Conrad heroically saved a number of passengers from the sinking cruise ship that he and Claire were on but had her slip out of his hands at the last moment. The insane hit that Conrad arranged on himself was in fact far worse that any conceived notion of guilt that he had about his wife's death. Arranging a mob hit, even on oneself, is murder and knowingly wanting and paying to murder someone, even himself, is far worse then even letting, which Conrad didn't, someone purposely drown!
The movie has a really good double surprise ending that, even though it's very contrived, ties all the loose ends together. The ending not only rights all the wrongs of what Conrad crazily did to himself, and those like Alice who loved him, but shows the audience that "The Whistler" was right all alone in his assertion that a curtain individual's destiny was to die tonight.