Redada criminal

Dr Ordway wants to get far away from his work in this installment of the Crime Doctor series. So he takes a hunting vacation in West Virginia where he will not be disturbed. Some vacation! He is embroiled in a typhoid epidemic and murder straight away. Instead of out of season hunting he ends up hunting for clues.

He stays at Sam and Amy Millerson's place. Sam is a country medicine herbalist who gets accused of murder when one of the deaths turns out to be a poisoning. Dr Ordway has to investigate the mountain folk with their petty jealousies to find a murderer among them. But first he has to get busy vaccinating the local population against the typhoid. Later he gets to attempt his hypnotizing skills and a bit of psychological trickery to uncover the murderer and the state of their mind.

Warner Baxter is playing the Crime Doctor for the eighth time in this one. This is a fair mystery in the series. Luke the Sheriff is the pick of the mountain folk. Clem Bevans plays him in his own authentic way to convince us he really lives in such a community.

I found this film fascinating, mainly because of the setting of Dr. Ordway's case. Dr. Robert Ordway, eminent New York City psychiatrist, is taking his first vacation in years, and decides to go hunting and fishing for a month. The name of the town Ordway stays in is mentioned - Brook Falls - but the state is not. And there is good reason. Whatever state that was named as the location would have been up in arms about the backwards depiction of its residents.

Several townspeople get ill with "summer complaint" as it is named, and many often die. The town doctor turns out to not really be an M.D. at all, instead, as Ordway finds out by looking at the doc's office wall, the "squire" of the town just gave him a certificate to practice medicine in Brook Falls 30 years before, and he's been feeling his way through ever since! "Doctor" Millerson is more of an herbalist than anything, and doesn't even understand basic chemistry, microbiology, or that a wound needs to be sterilized! Millerson is also resentful of anybody going to the new county clinic for treatment rather than himself. Town barber Ward Beachy becomes very ill and, even though he's been going to the county clinic, Millerson agrees to a house call and gives him some of his "complaint bitters", which is actually a useless yet harmless concoction of herbs.

Now Ordway is boarding with the Millersons since apparently there is no hotel in town, and he has just arrived when the state police and health officials arrive and quarantine the town. Apparently what Millerson calls "summer complaint" is actually typhoid. Once the state officials realize they have the famous Dr. Ordway in their midst they ask him to help out, and of course he agrees. Three people ultimately die during the epidemic, one of them being Beachy. However, a post-mortum shows Beachy did not die of typhoid, instead he was poisoned. Suspicion immediately falls on "Doc" Millerson, since Millerson did treat Beachy and was known to harbor a grudge about Beachy going to the county clinic.

But Ordway just isn't buying it. He figures Millerson may not be a real doctor, but he doesn't figure he's a killer either. Further probing by the good doctor reveals that the married Beachy was a real lady's man, giving possible motives to Beachy's girlfriends, their husbands, maybe even Beachy's own wife. I'll let you watch and see how this all shakes out.

Someone wrote here that the setting is the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is never stated in the film. However, if so, there is even a bigger mystery to solve here. Why would Ordway drive such a long distance for hunting and fishing when upstate New York has the same thing? One possible motive - there appear to be no phones in the town, so nobody back at the office could possibly bother him. Watch this one not just for the mystery, which is engaging, but to see how the urbane Ordway is able to get along with and relate to all kinds of people - a real talent in itself if you think about it.

(Some Spoilers) With him being in such great demand by both the the local, as well as out of town, police department in solving so many of it's unsolvable crimes the obviously burnt out "Crime Doctor" Dr. Robert Ordway, Warner Baxter decides to finally take his first vacation in over five years. Dr. Ordway drives upstate to the little quite town of Brookfall to do some hunting fishing and most of all relaxing. Sadly for the good doctor it did't turn out that way.

As soon as Dr.Ordway got to Brookhill it was quarantined because of a typhoid epidemic with him being recruited by the state troopers and local medical clinic to help in the inoculation of the towns population. Doing the best he can Dr. Ordway examining the blood samples of those who succumb to the deadly disease finds that the towns barber as well as it's smooth talking and handsome womanizer Ward Beachey, Trevor Bardette,did't die from typhoid at all! It turns out that Benchey was poisoned and made to look by his killer like he died of that disease.

Being that Dr. Ordway's friend Dr. Sam Millerson, Griff Barnett, who's house he staying at last treated Benchey with his home-made brew or potion of bark roots berries and bitters he's the prime suspect in his murder. It's also reviled that Dr.Sam was very angry with Benchey for not going to him for medical treatment over the last year. Benchey was going to the newly opened county medical clinic that's taking business away from him. All this suspicion of Dr. Sam being Benchey's killer becomes moot later on when Dr. Sam himself is murdered! It now becomes very clear, especially to Dr. Ordway, that Bencheys murder had nothing to do with business matters between him and his killer! There's something far more deeper in Benchely's death and closer to home. Benchy's sexual exploits with the ladies in town may well have caused one of those ladies outraged and vindictive husbands or boyfriends to murder him.

It's the murder of Dr. Sam that rings a bell in the "Crime Doctors" head when it's reveled that he, Dr. Sam, got a note to meet him, his killer, outside the summer carnival or fair. It was at the fair that he and everyone in town, including Dr. Ordway, were at. Finding the note on the murdered Dr. Sam with his killer in to much of a hurry to get away, or just too absent-minded to grab and destroy it, turned out to be the evidence that in the end hung him! Not that Dr. Sam's killer wrote it but*****SPOILERS*****that he needed someone else to write it for him.

Dr. Ordway take his life in his hands in this murder mystery by getting both Dr. Sam & Beacheys killer in a position where he can make Dr. Ordway his next victim. The "Crime Doctor" was more then ready for mysterious killer in alerting to towns sheriff old man Akers, Clem Bevans, and the local townspeople to come to his rescue. Dr. Ordway slug-fest with the crazed killer, after failing to poison Dr. Ordway, just about to split Dr. Ordway's head open with a shovel.

Arrested and facing life or even the electric chair, if convicted in both Dr. Sam & Bencheys murder, the killer tries to be real cute by faking that he's nuts. The killer acts as if he's trying to catch or swat invisible flies or horseflies in his cell thinking that would get him off on an insanity defense. It just happened that the "Crime Doctor" got his number and then tricks him into showing everyone watching that he's indeed sane. Dr. Ordway does this by showing that the killer thinking that he's acting insane is in fact really thinking and rational, in trying to show that he's indeed crazy, by falling right into the clever trap that Dr. Odway's set for him.

On a hunting vacation in remote upstate New York, criminologist Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter) gets caught up in what appears at first to be a typhoid outbreak. The disease causes a culture clash between the town's only doctor, folk-remedy-espousing Sam Millerson (Griff Barnett), and modern county health officer Dr. Wickersham (Addison Richards). But, when Ordway looks into the illness of barber Ward Beechy (Trevor Bardette), he begins to suspect that the sick man may have been poisoned.

Rather unusual but entertaining Murder mystery where the crime Doctor, excellently played by Warner Baxter, gets involved in typhoid cases and murder. What makes this mystery interesting is the location, the hillbilly characters and traditional medical methods vs herbal medicine - there's some light humour and fine detective work, though the pace can be slow at times and the plot drags a little.

Greatly enjoy these classic films which featured Dr. Robert Ordway,(Warner Baxter) who plays the role of doctor and also a detective who always manages to catch the killer. In this story, Dr. Ordway cancels all his appointments at his office in New York City and hands all his cases over to his assistant and tells everyone he is going on a vacation way out in the country for some good fishing and hunting and he will not involve himself with anything else, because he has not taken a rest for a very long time. Dr. Ordway no sooner gets to his location that the local town becomes sick with a Typhoid epidemic and everyone is getting sick and some people are dying. There is a local doctor who mixes all kinds of herbs and way out contents and Dr. Ordway has to take matters into his own hands. Dr. Ordway runs some tests with the state health department and discovers that someone has been poisoned and then the story takes on a different twist and Dr. Ordway stops enjoying any kind of vacation and tries to find out who the killer is. This is a great look back at films in 1947 and is lots of fun to watch.