User Reviews

It had been many years since I had seen a Dr. Christian movie and this one didn't disappoint. Dr. Christian has become friends with a local music teacher (Mary Stanley) whose son, Billy, is a gifted violinist. Many years ago Mary divorced the now famous conductor Antoine Pirelle. Pirelle does not know that he and Mary had a son. In a coincidence that defies credibility, Pirelle ends up in a small plane that crashes in River's End (Dr. Christian's town) and Dr. Christian is called in to assess Pirelle's injuries, which are minor but do require a couple of days of bed rest. He recognizes Pirelle and calls Mary (who is also a nurse!) to look after Pirelle. The rest of the movie is spent with Dr. Christian trying to get Pirelle, Mary Stanley and their son, Billy, back together again. Irene Ryan does a good job as a pushy, irritating music teacher and Schuyler Standish was quite engaging as Billy. I enjoyed the movie but found it jarring when Christian's housekeeper (played by Maude Eburne) with great conviction and sincerity tells Christian "Women have no brains. They don't think, they feel, etc…" Christian must agree with this assessment because he just ups and takes Billy to Chicago to try and reunite him with his father. This scene is, however, offset by the a-stereotypical little girl who likes model airplanes, is a practical joker and tells Dr. Christian, when he asks what she would like him to bring her from Chicago replies: "A slingshot." I did enjoy the music and especially liked the tour of the radio station and the scene with the sound effects man telling the tour group how some sound effects are made.

This is not one of the better Dr. Christian films. While it isn't the worst of the six, it's probably second to worst. This does not mean I dislike the series--for B-movies they were often quite entertaining. The problem here, however, is that like the final Christian film they included superfluous entertainment that had absolutely nothing to do with the Dr. Christian character or the format of the rest of the films. The sixth one involved a girl who loved to sing and wanted to make it big with her operatic voice. Here, a young violinists and his mother have dreams of him being a big-time concert performer. Both films featured too much of this and not enough plot.

The film begins with Christian doing pretty much nothing--nothing whatsoever. A local lady (Fay Wray) makes money teaching violin lessons and her pride and joy is her ultra-talented son. When an airplane fortuitously crashes nearby, it just so happens that the man in the wreck is a very famous violist AND happens to be the kid's father!! Now considering the man had no idea where his wife ran off to and didn't know he had a son, his arrival in this piddly little town is patently ridiculous--talk about contrived! Later, the mother disappears and the meddling Dr. Christian takes the boy to meet the father he never knew he had. In the end, there is a heart-warming finale and the boy shows off his talent on a radio show.

The bottom line is that the plot is ridiculous and the story has little to do with medicine. Christian's only real role is to be a meddler near the end of the film--apart from that, he's pretty much irrelevant to the movie.

By the way, although she was not billed, Irene Ryan (Granny from "The Beverly Hillbillies") plays a rather large role as a rival music teacher. Also, I didn't see her in the credits at all, but wasn't that Imogene Coco in a tiny role in the film? I know she later appeared in the series--and I am pretty sure she's here as well.