Andrew Goss
As far as it goes, this film is well made, well acted, and atmospheric. But that's about all. It is as if the film was mistakenly based on an early draft of the script, still full of holes and redundancies.We have a murderer who goes out in the rain and kills people "to rid the world of evil" or similar. What is supposed to be evil about the victims we don't know, and the police never ask. How the victims are selected and tracked, we don't know, the police don't care. The romantic interest is clumsily inserted and serves no dramatic purpose.The climax is standard stuff, though very well done, but it did raise a doubt in my mind - was this really the guilty party? We never learn much about the killer, but we do know one thing for certain, and what happens at the climax seems in contradiction to it.But nobody cares.
robert-temple-1
Between its video release in 1990 and its DVD release at last in 2011, this film was unavailable in the English-speaking world. Knowing it to be a well-known noir of the period, I searched for it and discovered its availability only in France, from Editions Montparnasse, in their series 'Collection RKO'. There its French title is ASSASSIN SANS VISAGE (KILLER WITHOUT A FACE). The French RKO series is very good, and has many fine titles. Each disc contains both the original without subtitles and the French subtitled version, so this series is a good place to turn (through French Amazon) for old RKO movies, and one does not have to watch the French subtitles at all. Some of the French film titles are extremely amusing, such as LA FÉLINE (THE (FEMININE) FELINE) for CAT PEOPLE and PANIQUE A L'HOTEL (PANIC AT THE HOTEL) for the Marx Brothers' ROOM SERVICE. If you want Katherine Hepburn in MARY OF Scotland (1936) without having to buy a John Ford box set, then you can get it in France on its own as MARIA STUART. It is thus worth checking out all the titles in the French RKO series for 'ones that got away' in the USA. This is the third feature film directed by Dick Fleischer. His first was BODYGUARD (1948, see my review), a good noir with Lawrence Tierney. In this year, 1949, he directed no less than four films. He did a very good job of this one, and on a low B film budget made something with some snap and sparkle. There are several good one-liners in the dialogue that raise a laugh. Anthony Mann was the main screenwriter, showing his stuff as a writer in between directing. In 1947 he had directed the excellent noir, T-MEN (see my review), and in 1948 the even better, and what I like to consider the perfect, classic noir film, RAW DEAL (see my review). Anyone interested in Anthony Mann thus needs to see this as well. It stars the highly congenial William Lundigan as the police detective trying to solve a series of murders by a psychopath who calls himself 'the Judge'. It is thus a very early 'serial killer' film, though that terminology was, of course, not yet in use. The film has many fine touches. One is that the mysterious killer's appearance is known in every way except for a missing description of his face, so Lundigan orders a life-sized dummy to be made, but which has a blank face. He then shows this to people to try to stimulate their memories, and this has a useful result. But there is one incredibly eerie scene where the seated dummy, with its back turned towards him in his office, is addressed by the frustrated Lundigan, who then goes out in search of the killer. After he leaves, we see the dummy, silhouetted against the office window at night, suddenly move. It has been 'the Judge', not the dummy! He then replaces the dummy in its spot, leaves the police station unobserved, and goes out and kills another victim. There is a weird psychological twist to 'the Judge', which is that he only kills when it is raining. Heavy rain excites him and makes him want to kill. This rain-fixation comes out in an unexpected form when he is being chased through a huge chemical factory. The police fire at him and make holes in a tank, from which water or other liquids pour in several streams, simulating rain. In the chase sequence, when he encounters this, which reminds him of heavy rain, he goes berserk and become violent. 'The girl' in the film is played by an amusing Dorothy Patrick, who is 'kinda a cute kid', and makes something of the part. This is a worthy noir, and now at last available from American Amazon, so that you don't have to turn in desperation to Paris if you don't want to.
GManfred
It's always a treat to find a good picture where you least expect to. "Follow Me Quietly" is a taut, suspenseful B picture which is almost good enough to be an A. Good cast of Almosts and Never Was's, headed by William Lundigan who was better than his usual bland self. Hadn't seen Dorothy Patrick before but she came off well. And not to mention the dependable Jeff Corey in one of his innumerable very competent support roles.Production values were better than average for this type of picture, as was the plot line. It was more of a Whodunnit than a Cat-and-Mouse scenario, as the murderer was unknown to us until the end of the picture. Personally I like the Whodunnits more, but this was a previously unseen character. Hats off to Turner Classic Movies for dusting off some good forgotten oldies.
idcook
I have to rate this one pretty low. It has a certain charm in that the script, direction, characters, acting, all feels just a shade above a television program during the 50s. Just longer by about an hour. I mean this baby is about low budget as they came. The only thing cheesier would have to be the cheapie monster flicks from the same period. The texture never rises not drops no matter what's going on. It relies heavily on music for this to no avail.The only thing it has going for it is a stream of classic character actors all over it.Good if you don't really need to pay attention.
