"Can you hear me? Or am I talking to myself?" - Chris Squire (RIP)
In these two killer films from Poverty Row, the folks availing themselves of Ma Bell's services surely aren't talking via satellite (or Verizon), but can still hear each other just fine.
Little do they know, though, that an eavesdropping third party is listening in close to get the information right.
In these two killer films from Poverty Row, the folks availing themselves of Ma Bell's services surely aren't talking via satellite (or Verizon), but can still hear each other just fine.
Little do they know, though, that an eavesdropping third party is listening in close to get the information right.
Grade: C+
Anyone who's seen enough Poverty Row crime flicks has seen the devices of I Killed That Man a dozen times over already, like the spunky female reporter (Joan Woodbury) who just so happens to be dating the A.D.A. (Roger Phillips).
Or the opening sequence that depicts the final moments of a condemned man before his execution...
...until he decides to admit that he is indeed guilty (yay, justice system!), but also had a secret partner in crime -- all revealed in a long speech that, for dramatic effect, saves the identity of his collaborator for last. And what's that? Why, it's a blowgun dart that kills him instantly, just as he's about to name names!
So next we get one of those "Nobody leaves this room!" numbers, which results in a whole lot of nekkid middle-aged men (mostly implied, so no luck if you're into that sort of thing). At least they get it out of the way upfront, vs. the absurd formal contortions we saw in Midnight Phantom.
I Killed That Man also does the "the culprit can't possibly be this guy, so of course it's this guy" bit that a New York Times reviewer skewered so well in A Shot in the Dark. TVTropes calls that sort of thing "hanging a lampshade on it", but for a murder mystery it's not such a wise idea.
Around now, you're probably wondering: "So, why the C+?" Well, it's amazing how much a brisk pace, a couple of clever set-pieces, and some good one-liners can do to salvage even the most familiar plot. And that certainly applies to I Killed That Man, which somehow manages to entertain throughout its 70 minutes.
For instance, when the gentlemen are putting their clothes back on post-inspection, we get this exchange:
Reed: "Never have I been so humiliated."
Lanning: "Felt kinda foolish myself. I guess I'll have to go on a diet."
Reed (bitterly): "So I noticed."
It doesn't really come off in print, but it's a sick burn in execution.
Returning to the subject of this post, we get a bumper crop of telephone-related plot points, including mysterious numbers, ice cream sodas, and a seldom-seen 3-way split-screen shot.
Is I Killed That Man a must-watch? Hardly. But it's one of those films that pops its head above the sea of Poverty Row mediocrity, rewarding the persistent viewer who wades through this stuff in hopes of turning up a hidden gem -- or, in the present context, simply something that's competent and entertaining. And that's exactly what we have here, so let's not press our luck by demanding more than that.
The Invisible Killer (1939)
Mill Creek's print of The Invisible Killer has one of the lousiest and most muffled soundtracks of any film on this boxset -- not to mention a series of nasty cuts and splices near its midpoint. Half the time we struggled to make out what was being said, but that's not necessarily a dealbreaker for us: after all, we liked The Ghost Walks.
What is damn near a dealbreaker, though, is this lady right here, Ms. Sue Walker:
Played by Grace Bradley, she's a relentlessly self-interested, Machiavellian journalist who goes well past "spunky" to the point that we nearly had to introduce a "nasty female reporter" tag. There's nothing wrong with amoral characters, of course, but Walker is so irritating and pointlessly difficult, we found ourselves wishing her love interest Lt. Jerry Brown (Roland Drew) would finally make good on his repeated threat to wring her neck.
It seriously detracts from a movie that isn't so hot to begin with. Maybe it's telling that so many sources seem to misunderstand the plot of The Invisible Killer, from the Mill Creek blurb saying "an eager female reporter...ends up partnering with a homicide detective assigned to the case" (misleading) to the IMDb claim that "a fiendish killer uses sound waves to commit his murders" (flat-out wrong).
What is the means of murder? Well, that would be blabbing.
The first two-thirds of The Invisible Killer drag like hell, in part because of the perennial 1930s "too many indistinguishable white guys in hats" problem. The presence of a secondary female character, attractive socialite Gloria Cunningham (Jean Brooks), does help a bit by allowing us to triangulate the identities of the IWGIH relative to her.
Ms. Cunningham is also the fiancée of the D.A., Richard Sutton (Crane Whitley), who's trying to rein in a wave of gambling-related crime...
...so it's very embarrassing when she's nearly caught up in an investigation: only Ms. Walker's forbearance keeps her from ending up on page one.
Worse yet is the fate of her father (Boyd Irwin), who fights on the side of right and justice, but discovers to his chagrin that he owns multiple properties used as gambling dens -- and once your hands are dirtied, it can be very hard to get clean.
Anyway, you can probably imagine much of the rest, but The Invisible Killer throws some weird curveballs. For example, there's Sutton's valet Worcester (David Oliver), a drunkard who spends his downtime slowly typing broadsides against "The Evils of Alcohol". We spend such a shockingly long time watching Worcester and his two-fingered technique that (we assume) he must be intended to serve as a key component of the film's comic relief -- or, perhaps, as a sardonic commentary on the hypocrisy of reformers.
But his scenes are so cut to ribbons by bad splices, and his typescript so hard to read in this print, that whatever impact the scene is meant to have is replaced instead by ennui and confusion.
Which, now that we think about it, is a pretty good description of what it's like to watch The Invisible Killer -- at least in its Mill Creek iteration.
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