I LOVE A MYSTERY
US, 1945, 69 minutes, Black-and-white.
Jim Bannon, George Macready, Nina Foch, Barton Yarborough, Carole Matthews, Lester Matthews.
Directed by Henry Levin.
This is a short feature based on a radio program of the same name written by Carlton E.Morse.
The film focuses on the detective, rather stolidly played by Jim Bannon, and his associate, nicknamed Doc, Barton Yarborough. They come across a case taken to the morgue, victim of a road accident, his head missing, who turns out to be a well-known socialite.
The film contains flashbacks (and flashbacks within flashbacks) featuring the murdered man and his story, Jefferson Monk. He is played in a familiarly sinister manner by George Macready (soon to be with Rita Hayworth in Gilda). He initially appears as a very nervous man in a club, getting into a fight, embarrassing his companion (Carole Matthews). He then tells his story to the detective.
He and his wife (Nina Foch) have toured the east but Jefferson has been accosted by a mysterious man who explains a secret society from ancient times and the resemblance of an ancient ancestor to Jefferson. There is talk of a ritual where he is to be decapitated and his head taken for ceremonies. He is conscious of a man with a wooden leg, carrying a black bag, following him.
The audience is not sure what to believe. The wife is in a wheelchair. There is a sinister doctor. There is an antiques dealer. As it turns out there is a plot against Jefferson because of a clause in a will – and its being necessary that he committ suicide in order that his wife inherit the fortune. She has set up the group – but, the mysterious wooden legged man and the mysterious woman, his daughter, are killed.
The detective persuades the police to blame him for the crimes, imprison him, that he will escape, work out a system to unmask the killer. Jefferson also then confronts his wife whom he finds standing at the window.
The twist in this plot, quite ingenious in its way, is that the initial victim of the car accident turns out to be the killer himself, maddened, paying off the doctor and his plot, getting rid of the other members of the plot and, finally escaping after confronting the detective and Doc, only to be killed in a car crash (and his head disappearing).
Director Henry Levin was to go on to a long series of commercial films with the major studios.
