So many B films I have seen were poor prints on VHS tapes. How very nice it was to see such an excellent print on TCM. I listened to many episodes of The Whistler and found them engaging. In this, the first of the series, Richard Dix as businessman Earl Conrad has suffered from serious depression over the accidental death of his wife three years earlier. His friends seem to to blame him for not saving her from drowning. Extremely despondent he contracts with a killer's middleman to kill him. After sending the contract money and a message to the killer, the middleman is shot to death by police. Soon thereafter Conrad is notified that his wife did not die but has been in a Japanese internment camp for the past three years. Oops - now he doesn't want to die but doesn't know who the killer is and sets out to find someone who knows the middleman and perhaps then the killer. He returns to the bar where he made the deal with the middleman and a woman (played by the always capable Joan Woodbury). As they are driving to the place the middleman hung out she tells Conrad that she was the middleman's wife and accuses Conrad of setting up her husband for the police to kill. Proving that even the most nasty characters have someone who loves them, she tries to kill Conrad by running the car down a cliff. Didn't work - she dies, he lives. But the real threat is the killer, played by the wonderful J. Carroll Naish who, as a matter of twisted honor, decides to fulfill his contract to kill Conrad although it is now pointless to do so. The killer decides he wants to frighten Conrad to death by following him and making him fearful. Naish plays the psychotic killer to a tee. Specially interesting in this film are the scenes in the flop house and those with a security guard at the docks. There were many familiar faces in this movie including Billy Benedict, Cy Kendall, Woodbury and Kermit Maynard. Gloria Stuart did a good job in the thankless role of faithful secretary. Not as impressive is Richard Dix. He's OK but really kind of bland and weak in the role. This is a superior B film more interesting than many a so called A film.
Review of The Whistler
