The 13th Man

"The Thirteenth Man" is a reasonable B-Mystery with a decent plot and enough suspense to keep your attention most of the time. The cast and characters are mostly routine, but Weldon Heyburn does bring some life to the lead role.

The story starts when a tough D.A., who has recently put away 12 of the town's most notorious criminals, announces that he will soon target his 13th man. Before he can do so, he is murdered, and two reporters (Heyburn and Milburn Stone, later of "Gunsmoke") decide to investigate, although there are many possible suspects and few clues. While the production itself is strictly low-budget, the murder mystery plot is not bad, without any big holes, and it keeps you guessing to the end.

Overall, while nothing spectacular, this is probably better than average for a B-Mystery.

The district attorney is determined to clean up the town - he has so far arrested 12 miscreants, members of the underworld. And he announces he's about to arrest a 13th.

There are a lot of choices, and when the DA falls over dead due to a poison dart, an investigation begins as soon as it's revealed he did not die of a heart attack.

Among the most interested is Swifty Taylor (Weldon Heyburn), a radio journalist. He wants a scoop, so he does some investigating on his own. When his friend (Milburn Stone) runs into trouble, Swifty becomes more determined than ever to solve the case.

Fast-moving B movie.

A tough district attorney has been cleaning up the town, and has already imprisoned twelve dangerous criminals.

As he is about to name the target for his next investigation, he is murdered in the midst of a crowd. The police have many suspects and hardly any clues, so two reporters decide to investigate for themselves.

It's an OK movie but the public domain prints are pretty bad quality.

Not bad for a Saturday afternoon. Sort of mindless. Too bad the prints aren't better. Never really understand that. Guess the original negative are long gone and only bad dupes are available.

District Attorney William Gould is running for re-election. He has put a dozen men into prison in his efforts to clean up the city. He announces on the radio that tomorrow he will have the Grand Jury indict the thirteenth man, a man who controls all the city's rackets. Unfortunately for his plans, he drops dead while in the audience of a prize fight. It's thought at first that he died of a heart attack, but an autopsy turns up curare. He has been murdered! Newspapermen/broadcasters Weldon Heyburn and Milburn Stone start to investigate. Then Stone dies also. When looking through his pockets, a cigarette holder shows up. But Stone never smoked cigarettes!

After two years of dealing with Herbert Yates at Republic, Trem Carr and Ray Johnson left to reform Republic Pictures. They produced a score of movies in their first year, and this was the first released. It's fast, it's moves right along, it's a fair enough mystery, but despite lead Heyburn looking adequate, director William Nigh seems to be more interested in getting his picture in the can and under budget, which is probably why DP Paul Ivano shoots almost all his set-ups in medium two-shots and doesn't move the camera much. There's a lot of editing for Russell F. Schoengarth to do, and he does it very well, keeping this to a non-boring 78 minutes.

The story is not quite new: on the night before his almost sure re-election, a D.A. - the kind that 'cleans up' with crime and underworld activities - in a final radio speech announces that immediately after the elections he'll arrest the next underworld leader after the 12 he's already brought to jail; the 13th man... He even names some of the 'candidates': a gambling racket leader, a nightclub owner, a corrupt hospital manager, a newspaper publisher, and even his own political opponent. Not surprisingly, on the same night he's murdered by a poisoned dart in the middle of a prizefight event, and the two reporter friends Swifty and Jimmy set out at once following the trail of blood - and that's exactly where all the suspense and all the atmosphere of this really special 'Poverty Row' masterpiece starts...

It's simply a feast for every fan of the reporter movie genre: it gives detailed insight into radio and newspaper work as it was in the 1930s (not that it's TOTALLY changed now: being a journalist will ALWAYS be more or less the same - I'm speaking from experience...), it conveys to you the fascinating atmosphere of the broadcasting studio and the editors' office room; and most of all, it describes the reporter instinct, that driving force that leaves everything else second: when a reporter on a hot trail invites a girl out to an expensive dinner, chances are that the rendezvous will finally end up at a hamburger stand... So the movie tells you clearly what to expect if you fall in love with a reporter - man or woman, no matter; in fact, the protagonist himself explains how things are: "Of course you don't have to be crazy to be a newspaper man, but it does help..."

In the meantime, the film also has a unique way of going through literally ALL kinds of emotions: true love, dark tragedy, romance taken lightly until the real feelings break through - and then again covered up by sudden, unexpected jokes; like when the reporter's secretary who's secretly in love with him starts being REALLY alarmed by the many death threats he gets and begs him to lay off the case, grasping him by his jacket: "Oh Swifty, if anything would happen to you, I'd... I'd..." - "You'd what?", he only asks - and there she lets go of his jacket, turns away, shrugs her shoulders and just replies: "Well, I'd lose my job!" And he adds, equally unmoved: "Well, so would I!" ...

All in all, the movie is a REAL little gem that shows that a simple, cheap 'little' Monogram movie can be just equally moving and suspenseful as an expensive all-star film from one of the big studios; it's a first-class 'whodunit' that leaves us all puzzled until the end - we may have kind of an uneasy feeling from the beginning about who did it, but it just seems too fantastic, too cruel - so we'll have to wait until that dramatic midnight radio broadcast climax where our reporter hero will announce who the murderer is... Don't miss this one, and don't think it's just another 'assembly line product' - it's REALLY different from most of the rest of them!