Fingerprints Don't Lie

The sad thing about Fingerprints Don't Lie is that it has a very good plot premise. Over the past several years we've seen an explosion of stories dealing with forensic evidence. The idea of planting fingerprints at the scene of a crime to frame someone is good. But the general shoddiness of production of this Lippert Picture makes it no better than the worst episode of CSI.

Richard Travis plays a crime scene investigator specializing in fingerprints though during the course of this short film shows he has an eye for other types of forensics. The prospective son-in-law of the current mayor of this small city Richard Emory is arrested for the murder of the mayor, his fiancé Sheila Ryan believes he's innocent and her earnestness persuades Travis to reexamine the evidence.

Sure enough Travis convinces himself he was wrong and the rest of the film is his reappraisal of the evidence and the bringing to justice of the real guilty parties.

Lippert Pictures perennial Sid Melton is in this and his comedy relief as an idiot news photographer is both grafted in and quite unfunny in this one. That seems to be a running criticism in the Lippert Pictures I've seen Melton in. But in this case it really is true.

I think had this story been done at a major studio you might have seen a decent film.

When the mayor is bumped off, the local police force conclude that it must have been "Moody" (Richard Emory) because all the fingerprint evidence points to him. He, of course, protests his innocence and luckily local journalist "Evans" (Rory Mallinson) takes up the cudgels creating just enough doubt in the forensic expert's mind to have him think twice. "Stover" (Richard Travis) has every faith in his science but gradually, working with "Carolyn" (Sheila Ryan) - the daughter of the murdered man - he is faced with the prospect that there has been some manipulation going on. Back to square one? Who is the real culprit? This is a perfectly watchable crime drama that tries to develop the role of new technology in policing, and one that also points out that the infallible is rarely that. It can't have had much of a budget, so neither the acting nor the writing is particularly noteworthy, and I found the ending to be just a little too convenient, but it passes an hour effortlessly enough.

A forged signature...fingerprints that are just too perfect on a murder weapon...a dead crusading mayor...a fingerprint expert who decides to find out how he was fooled into making a mistake that convicted an innocent man. And let's not forget what really makes this murder mystery memorable: A pipe organ playing melodramatic background music, augmented by a groaning chorus of singers.

Fingerprints Don't Lie is an awkward, amateurish movie. It lasts 57 minutes. It was shot on a miniscule budget. It tells us a lot about fingerprints. If you watch this dog, look for two things. First is the credit line for the director. The name is Sam Newfield. Between 1926 and 1956 he directed nearly 300 movies, and I suspect they all were as bad as this one. The other is Syra Marty. She plays Syra, a blonde artist's model. She only made three movies. She can't act. But she sure looks provocatively overbalanced in a bathing suit.

This film, Fingerprints Don't Lie, ran a little over an hour. Yet somehow I felt as if it was longer than Gone with the Wind.

What a horror. A man sits in prison, convicted of murder, insisting he didn't do it. Yet his fingerprints are on the murder weapon, a telephone. His fiancée believes him innocent and begs the man who helped put him away with his fingerprint evidence (Richard Travis) to investigate the case further.

The music in this movie -- the organ -- sounded like what they used to play on the old soap operas. It was APPALLING. When someone was knocked off and came to, a choir of angels sang.

I thought the two lead women looked alike, which made things even more confusing.

Imagine - Lyle Talbot was in this and even he didn't come off that well. Lyle Talbot - a 56-year career, never out of work - I guess he must have owed someone a favor.

Richard Travis wasn't a bad actor, at least. He did very well in television.

I always liked Sid Melton. After this I may hate him. He played a doofus photographer whose flashbulb never went off. Kind of like this movie. I can only assume he was in the film to pad the script.

If someone told me this was a television drama, I would have bought it. I assume it was a B movie. I'd have been gone from the theater by then.

This movie from director Sam Newfield belongs to one of his lasts. It is not that bad but lousy enough to avoid it if you have something else to do. The plot sounds like those B flicks from the thirties and forties. So imagine in the fifties, and not for TV industry but big screen cinemas....oh, it is agreeable to watch, I repeat: not that bad but forgettable at the most with many nearly comedy lines. The quality of the copy I watched is tremendous, and I admit that helps a lot to appreciate the film. So, if you are a Sam Newfield's filmography explorer, you can try this one without any problem.