MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER
US, 1946, 61 minutes, Black-and-white.
Richard Dix, Barton Mac Lane, Nina Vale, Regis Toomey, Helen Mowery, Mike Mazurki, Pamela Blake, Charles Lane, Paul E. Burns, Kathleen Howard.
Directed by William Castle.
The Whistler was originally a radio program on CBS, from 1942 to 1955.
A series of eight films began in 1944, small supporting features at Columbia. Four of the films were directed by William Castle who, during the 1950s, directed small budget action adventures like Slaves of Babylon, Saracen Blade. From 1958 to 1968 he made a number of exploitative horror films with all kinds of gimmicks to scare audiences, House on Haunted Hill, I Saw What you Did. He also produced Rosemary’s Baby.
• The Whistler - 1944, directed by William Castle
• The Mark of the Whistler - 1944, directed by William Castle
• The Power of the Whistler – 1945, directed by Lew Landers
• Voice of the Whistler – 1945, directed by William Castle
• Mysterious Intruder – 1946, directed by William Castle
• The Secret of the Whistler – 1946, directed by George Sherman
• The Thirteenth Hour – 1947, directed by William Clemens
• The Return of the Whistler – 1948, directed by D. Ross Lederman
As with the radio program, the films are introduced by a shadowy figure walking across the screen, with his signature whistling, which sometimes recurs throughout the film is. He begins to speak, is a narrator of stories about crime, sometimes intervening with narration during the action of the films.
The star of seven of the eight of the films was Richard Dix who had begun his silent film career in 1917, was a popular star for the next 30 years, appearing in the 1931 Academy Award winning Cimarron.
The interesting point about Richard Dix’s presence is that he portrayed a different character in each film. Most of the characters are not entirely sympathetic, ambiguous in their moral attitudes, sometimes swinging between the law and working outside the law.
The fifth film in the Whistler series. It was directed by William Castle who directed three others.
This time Richard Dix is a private detective, on the shady side, with The Whistler making comments on his moral stances throughout the film. He takes on a case with an elderly gentleman who is trying to track down a young woman whom he knew in the past. He has something from her mother, cylinder records of singer Jenny Lind from the late 19th century.
As with the other films, there are quite a number of interesting brief cameos for a range of characters. The private detective has a very disapproving secretary. He also hires a young woman to impersonate the woman being searched for – who is convincing for the moment, is apprehended by a criminal, Mike Mazurki, who abducts her but lets her go when he is she is not the genuine woman. He has murdered the old man who is commissioned the search.
The real young woman is found in a sanatorium having been involved in a car accident. She approaches the detective, is suspicious of him, but he puts her in charge of a formidable woman until he tracks down the recordings. In the meantime, the fictitious stand-in is also murdered with the private detective under suspicion. Her landlord, rather prim, has discovered her body.
The police are in pursuit, led by Barton Mac Lane, the detective tracks down a friend of the murdered man – and then he is murdered – and discovers that the landlord and an associate are responsible for the crimes. There is a shootout with him – but he does not realise the police are close by and there is another shootout in which he is killed – with the irony that the bullet has gone through the box with the recordings in them and destroyed them!
On to the next Whistler film.
