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I've been on a film noir fix lately & finding these flicks on You Tube such as Private Hell 36, Crime Of Passion, The Killer Is Loose, Please Murder Me, Raw Deal, Black Angel etc. Most of these I enjoyed & I've watched them once but when I stumbled onto this one yesterday I watched it again today as it was a little more than what I expected. Follow Me Quietly is not really a film noir it's a crime drama & police procedural.

It's a bit experimental & unusual which makes it stand out from the others, the late 40's post war period was a time when filmmakers were trying out new gimmicks such as subjective first person camera like Lady In The Lake (1946) & Dark Passage (1947). The police create a dummy of the killer from what evidence & clues they have which is a little more than the usual routine bulletin description of a suspect.

Sometimes a person can be identified & recognized by the back of their head & ears & the size & shape of their body & physique. Since the police have never seen the killers face the dummy is faceless & startling. The scene where the killer replaces the dummy & sits in William Lundigan's office facing the window with it's back to him is clever but pointless & foolish. What if the detective was smart enough to notice it was really him ? Why would the killer take such a risk ? I think it was just a gimmick & for cinematic effect to satisfy the filmmakers & to give the audience a thrill. The silly trick worked & fooled me I thought it was the faceless dummy.

And when the killers face is revealed he's not what you expect, he's very insecure & nervous & seems incapable of doing anything right. How did he manage to kill 8 victims & get away with it ? The ending is similar to White Heat & this film isn't great but it's fun & interesting, different & memorable & worth watching. I've seen it twice & I may watch it again.

Normally lightweight William Lundigan is quite good as the hero cop of this quickie programmer. The rest of the cast is also quite good and the suspense remains high throughout. The plot is deceptively simple which is what makes the whole thing work in this atmospheric thriller. The only disappointment you'll have is that it's over so quickly.

Superb, little-known noir - from a story by Anthony Mann (reportedly, he even directed some of it)! - which is certainly Fleischer's best from the genre after THE NARROW MARGIN (1952). Although it took me a while to warm up to the two leads (especially William Lundigan, given his crucial role of an obsessive police detective who is virtually a mirror-image of the vicious killer, a concept done to death in subsequent thrillers), their relationship is nicely developed and the rest of the cast - particularly Jeff Corey as the hero's wise-cracking sidekick and Edwin Max as "The Judge", when finally unmasked (actually a meek little man, not unlike the Peter Lorre of M [1931]!) - also performs admirably.

However, where the film - a brisk, taut 60 minutes! - truly scores is in its brilliant direction of the suspense sequences: the startling revelatory zoom of the villain's blank-faced dummy is particularly striking, whereas the scene in which we realize that "The Judge" has effectively replaced the dummy in Lundigan's office is genuinely creepy; these two sequences, not to mention the 'look' of the dummy itself, uncannily predate the Italian giallo genre by about 15 years - and I just have to wonder whether Mario Bava had actually watched this film somewhere down the line, and was perhaps reminded of it, when making his own seminal thriller BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964)!! Besides, the climax by the huge water tanks is quite splendid, and rarely has the rain been so ominously used as in this film!

A classic of its kind and, in hindsight, an influential one which, hopefully, Warners will consider releasing on DVD soon - as it's actually better than some of the noirs which are out already or have been announced by them...

"Follow Me Quietly" is an atmospheric noir about a police detective on the hunt for a serial strangler.

The film's most memorable plot device is a dummy that the police department has made based on the limited information they've been able to capture about the killer. They know roughly his height, weight, hair color, the color of his suit, etc., and they construct a mannequin that approximates his appearance. They then wrangle up crooks and bring them into police lineups with the dummy to see if any of them look alike. It's actually pretty humorous and doesn't seem like the makings of crack detective work, but it does allow for some rather creepy scenes, and one in particular, when the police detective has an entire conversation with what he thinks is the mannequin, and which the audience finds out is the actual killer after the detective has left the room.

If you're a fan of rain-soaked streets and movies whose titles have nothing to do with what they're actually about, you'll like this one.

Grade: B+

I saw this film when I was 10 years old and it has haunted me all my life. At first I could only remember a guy waiting in a room for someone to come back, but then there was the idea of a crazy murderer who goes bizerk when it rains and then the memory of all these dummies in the police station and the murderer gets in there somehow, I don;t know how, but as he is in the room someone comes in, a policeman, just to check out the dummies and the murderer goes and sits in a chair so he won't be discovered because he looks like all the other dummies that are sitting there, and as he is sitting he is facing a window...and we see that it is beginning to rain...and there is a close up of his hand gripping the arm of the chair...all this is from my memory of the film as a 10-year old - when I managed to discover what the film was with the use of IMDb and got a video and looked at it - it all seemed pretty harmless stuff - I saw the film in a little cinema in Shaftesbury Dorset with my brother. My parents left us there and had no idea what the film was. The memory of the American streets, and the cars and the black and white quality have all stayed with me...

Interesting B movie starring William Lundigan and Dorothy Patrick about a police detective's search for a serial killer called "The Judge."

Gritty city scenes (although as one poster points out, it was probably an RKO set) enhance the atmosphere, and it's one of the things that makes "Follow Me Quietly" unusual.

Two more items of interest: A very exciting finale and the twist of having the police make a dummy model from everything they know about the perpetrator. In one scene, Lundigan is talking to the dummy's back, and it turns out to actually be the killer.

Lundigan was a good looking, poor man's Joel McCrea, perfect to be a detective in real life but not much of an actor. He doesn't exude much energy. Patrick, an attractive blonde, neither wildly glamorous or beautiful, gives a spirited performance as a tabloid reporter.

Follow Me Quietly is directed by Richard Fleischer (with uncredited help from Anthony Mann) and adapted to screenplay by Lillie Hayward from a story written by Mann and Francis Rosenwald. It stars William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, Jeff Corey, Nestor Paiva and Paul Guilfoyle. Music is by Leonid Raab and cinematography by Robert De Grasse.

A serial killer known as "The Judge" is stalking the city, his modus operandi is to strike when it rains and to kill by strangulation. The police have loads of little clues but nothing solid to go on. The strain is starting to weigh heavy on Lt. Harry Grant (Lundigan), but he comes up with a genius idea to help catch the killer - a mannequin!

Not widely known, but once released to MOD home format it got more noticed and has been keenly sought out by fans of the great Anthony Mann. It has proved a little divisive so this fawning review should be taken with a little context. Clocking in at just under an hour in length, Fleischer's film is by definition a compact RKO "B" picture, but the quality of story, and the little slices of noir craft, ensure it's got plenty of strengths going for it.

In essence it's an early police procedural dealing with the hunt for a serial killer. There's a babe in the mix, Dorothy Patrick as an intrepid reporter who announcers herself to the film wearing a see through mackintosh, which of course is splendid. She teams up with Grant, not as a fatale, but as a sort of wry cohort, suggestion is evident, sexual tension even, but nothing is shoe-horned in to the pic. The cops are all stoic types, splendidly attired for period delights, but it's with Lundigan's head of investigations where the film gets its pulse beat. He gets in deep with the psychological aspects of the case, thinking like the killer, talking to the faceless mannequin that has been constructed out of clues left by the killer, the mirror images of the killer and mannequin are not exactly a million miles away from Lundigan himself. Cheeky is that.

Mann's stamp is all over the film, but Fleischer's work is evident for sure, an economical purist meets the crafty auteur, a fine match. Robert De Grasse (The Body Snatcher/Born to Kill) is a key component, operating with angles and shades when required, there's a distinct uneasy feel to proceedings. A few scenes grab the attention with full effect, akin to a spider inviting a fly to dinner, which all builds to a head, culminating in a blunderbuss finale at an oil refinery - cum - power plant. Only where White Heat (also 1949) went nighttime for its coup de grace, Follow Me Quietly did it in daylight. Cheeky is that.

It's not perfect. Some logic holes are there as regards the water effect with the killer, which also leads us to lament a lack of reasoning and understanding with the perpetrator. There's also a couple of instances where the mannequin is played in a rear shot by a real actor, why? I have no idea. While the best scene in the film, as Lundigan chats to the dummy in a darkened room - and the rain falls hard on the windows - brings about a reveal that makes no sense what so ever. Especially once "The Judge" is revealed. However, this is easy to recommend to noir heads and fans of police procedurals, and I loved it. 8/10

Vigilante serial killer The Judge is terrorizing the city with his perverse judgements. Police Lt. Harry Grant is investigating the case and reporter Ann Gorman is eager to make a name for herself with the story. Harry fends off the relentless reporter and eventually allows her to follow him in his investigation.

It's a slow, old fashion police investigation. The hot reporter spices things up. There is one long chase through an industrial plant. It's a lot of running around with limited thrills. More notably, it's missing Ann. Couldn't the killer kidnap her forcing Lt. Harry to come to her rescue? This is functional. It has some appeal but it's not the class of the genre.

Follow Me Quietly casts William Lundigan in a B picture police drama out of RKO as a detective assigned to what we now would be calling a serial killer. A man who strangles his victims and then leaves cut out notes at the crime scenes saying he killed these individuals in some kind of retribution and signs himself the Judge.

When watching Follow Me Quietly it reminded me of the Agatha Christie story Ten Little Indians which has been filmed a few times and where the perpetrator is in fact a terminally ill judge gathering victims on an island and killing them one by one for crimes he feels that the normal justice system hasn't dealt with.

Which is the main problem with Follow Me Quietly, we are never given an answer as to how the Judge's victims are selected. All we do know is that rain somehow sets his psychosis off.

In one respect the film is quite modern. One of the tools that Lundigan and partner Jeff Corey use is to reconstruct a faceless dummy of the approximate height and weight of the Judge using whatever forensic clues have been found at crime scenes. This is years ahead of when that kind of forensic tool was used, it's like a three dimensional mugshot and it helps in bringing the judge down.

A little more work on the story and Follow Me Quietly could have been a classic noir.

The two movies I mention in my title were proofs positive that ,all that Fleischer threatened to do in the film noir field all the promises were fulfilled ."Follow me quietly" can be looked upon as a blueprint for these masterful works.

Its only flaw is its length: it's obviously too short,and we would like to know more about the Judge.This serial killer apparently "punishes": like in Agatha Christie's famous "And then there were none"(1939) ,a subject which was also that of the celebrated "Seven" .All the scenes which feature the dummy are extraordinary ,and Fleischer shows his brilliance when it comes to make us feel he is "alive".

Outside these three works,do not miss early efforts such as "the clay pigeon" (with a shoestring budget too) "the narrow margin" or later works such as "blind terror" and "Solyent green " (a sci fi classic with film noir accents);only Fleischer's final movies were mediocre ,the likes of "Amytiville" "Conan" and "Ashanti" which perhaps went against him and tarnished his image.Which was unfair.

Something about this doesn't seem to work. It has nice gritty location shots. The cast is good. William Lundigan is excellent. The scene in which he removes the top of his uniform, then showers, then gets into bed in his pajamas as the female yellow journalist sits in his apartment is erotic. It's a tough version of the sublime Joel McCrea/Jean Arthur scenes in "The More The Merrier." And is this THE Jeff Corey, the famous acting teacher? He has a nice, realistic feel. Him I totally believe. And what a pro at upstaging, moving his eyes ever so slightly as he stands behind the primary action! The plot involving the moralistic killer is intense.

There's really nothing wrong with this, although the romantic angle seems intrusive: Such subplots worked in many noirs and pre-noirs, the romantic crime programmers of the 1930s.

But I've seen it twice and it doesn't leave me with much.

It's been a long time since I last saw Richard Fleischer's "Follow Me Quietly" on TV with commercial breaks making it seem longer than its 60 minute running time.

Looking at it again last week via a Warner Archive DVD that sure looks a lot better than the copy I saw years ago, my first reaction was one of "style over substance" but that's hardly a knock, and actually common for me when it comes to noir. This is really a programmer showing the talent of a director with aspirations, or as Fleischer claimed "This is the film that, above all, increased my knowledge of the trade. I learned how to organize a film." One can see that he was handed a script that is fairly routine, despite Anthony Mann sharing the credit for story. But Fleischer manages to add a few touches here and there to make an impression. The bit in policeman William Lundigan's apartment with the female reporter trying to get some story leads is quite suggestive although the two don't even so much as get into a clinch.

Lundigan, along with partner Jeff Corey, are on the trail of a serial killer known only as "The Judge" and in piling up what few clues they have, they manage to create a dummy that is the killer's size and appropriately dressed based on thread samples found - it's just missing a face. One eerie segment has Lundigan talking to the dummy until Corey walks in and warns him that he's bordering on being as crazy as the killer. But the scene doesn't end there however you'll have to watch it without my spoilers. I will say that here Fleischer does demonstrate his awareness that a film can be more than the sum of its parts.

However that point is teased several times in the film - that Lundigan and the killer may be of the same ilk. Lundigan is so unhinged perhaps to even allow a suspect who is confessing to demonstrate the method of strangulation that he used on a victim. Douglas Spencer makes good use of his minimal screen time in this segment. Even a waitress comments on a pattern of behavior that the cop shares with the criminal.

As Howard Hawks has said, a good film should have three good scenes and no boring scenes. In that respect, Fleischer doesn't let us down, even if a few scenes are the clichéd montage bits of cops pursuing leads, interviewing and pounding the pavement. You have to move the action forward somehow, even in a film that runs only an hour.

There's a mix of location shots (especially good in the finale) and studio sets to represent what we can presume to be Los Angeles. I'm just about certain that "The Judge" lived on the same block that Peter Lorre terrorized in "Stranger on the Third Floor." Dorothy Patrick plays the plucky reporter, she's quite appealing and manages to stay out of the way when told and thus avoiding the need for the cop to rescue the clueless female. In fact she's quite helpful when Lundigan gets a new lead and it's he who struck me as clueless on this point. Jeff Corey shines as Lundigan's partner and walks away with the film with ease.

'Follow Me Quietly' is one of those films that immediately appealed to me. Absolutely love this genre and have done for a long time. There is also a good deal of talent involved, with the best known name to me being writer Anthony Mann. The reception it's gotten on here also was encouraging, with trusted reviewers finding a lot to recommend while also having problems with it. It looked good and eerie from the advertising and it is hard to resist such a title.

The film impressed me on the whole. It didn't bowl me over and had things that could have been done better, especially one crucial aspect that was sadly done pretty badly. It is though very atmospheric and well crafted, and is not near as typical as it sounds on paper (some creativity on display here). 'Follow Me Quietly' is not one of the greats or classics of its genre, but there is a lot to recommend. If asked whether it is worth a follow or worth watching, the answer would be an easy yes.

A major positive is the photography, which is incredibly atmospheric to a creepy degree and also with a lot of creative shots without being self indulgent or obvious. Very effective and ominous use of lighting. The music is not too stock or melodramatic and the film is efficiently and assuredly directed by Richard Fleischer.

Much of the script is taut, gritty and intriguing. The story is far from perfect, but it goes at a lively clip without feeling too hurried on the whole and is very suspenseful. The killer really does give off a sense of dread. 'Follow Me Quietly' is a very well acted film all round.

However there was room for improvement. The romance is intrusive and wasn't that interesting or fitted that well, the momentum slips when it appears as well. Occasionally the pace is on the busy side, which affects the coherence.

Worst of all is the ending, which is rushed, anti-climactic and nonsensical, complete with a practically last minute reveal. The murderer when revealed is a major disappointment, so much promising menacing build up revealed to be someone that is so far removed from what we know about the murderer beforehand and completely at odds with everything to the extent it's impossible to buy or take seriously.

Pretty good and well done film on the whole despite the underwhelming ending. 7/10.

Though RKO Radio had trouble turning out successful "A" pictures in the late 1940s-early 1950s, the studio's "B" productions were the best in the business. One of the best was 1949's strange, obsessive film noir Follow Me Quietly, which manages to pack more excitement and sheer entertainment value in 59 minutes than most big-budgeters can accomplish in twice that time. Detective Harry Grant (William Lundigan) is assigned to track down "The Judge," an unknown serial killer. With only a handful of sketchy clues, Grant constructs a faceless dummy to help his men conduct their investigation. The film's "money scene" finds the murderer quietly taking the dummy's place, right under the noses of the entire police force! Logic is not the film's strong suit, but Follow Me Quietly builds carefully to a dynamite finale filmed on location at an LA refinery (shades of White Heat!)

William Lundigan (Lt Harry Grant) is on the case of a killer who strangles his victims from behind but with the added curiosity that he only strikes when it rains. The victims seem random. Dorothy Patrick (Ann) plays a journalist who is likable enough but prone to sticking her nose everywhere in order to get a story.

There are memorable scenes that include Lundigan talking to a life-size dummy of the murderer, and the moment that the murderer suspects he has been rumbled, although I think it was a shame to make him start running at that moment. The film starts well with an opening scene of Dorothy Patrick waiting in the rain and we also have the anticipated face to face moment at the end of the film between Lundigan and the killer.

While Lundigan comes across at times as monotone and some of the dialogue between him and his police colleague Jeff Corey is rather wooden, it doesn't detract from the story, and the best acting comes from Paul Guilfoyle as the husband of a murder victim. Unfortunately, not enough is made of the role of Dorothy Patrick. I would have liked to see her more involved in the unravelling of the mystery and maybe have a confrontation between her and the murderer. As it is, she has a very fluffy role and is given an irritating, cutesy answer to everything when she repeats the word "connections".

This film runs its course but unfortunately lacks any real suspense. While there are many good moments, you feel that better use could have been made of them in the development of the story and ultimately, the film comes across as routine. Nice idea about having a psychopath whose trigger is rainfall, though.

This is the kind of thing that Hollywood hasn't made in decades - a solid, well written, well acted, well directed "B" Movie. With a running time just seconds under an hour there is no wasted time in this movie, and yet nothing feels rushed, either. The main plot is revealed very quickly, and a lengthy set up is not the least bit missed.

By going straight into the main story about 10 or 15 minutes of character introductions and set up for the plot are avoided. We get to know the characters right away, and we find out what the story is all about in the first 5 minutes. And what a creative story, too! Legendary director Anthony Mann had a hand in writing the story, and his flair for Noir shines through (or, maybe I should say his shadows fall on the story).

William Lundigan is well cast as the lead (a detective still trying to break a months old serial murder case), and Dorothy Patrick does an equally good job as a tabloid reporter trying to get a scoop. Jeff Corey is particularly good, too, as Lundigan's detective partner.

Bottom line? Follow Me Quietly is a very good, well made thriller on the outskirts of Film Noir that feels just right in it's one hour running time. It's not rushed, but absolutely nothing drags, either. And there aren't any unresolved plot points, either.

It's a shame that Hollywood doesn't make movies like this anymore (low budget, short run time, taut, well made thrillers). But I guess that kind of thing went to TV in series form. (But a 44 minute TV episode doesn't quite do as good a job of telling this kind of story as a 60 or 70 minute movie could.)

For the most part, a very believable movie. There is one silly exception in the middle (the killer sits in the dummy's chair). It is not quite a film noir. I always believe to be a true film noir you need a femme fatale. Follow Me Quietly does not have a femme fatale it has a femme as likeable as she can be. The movie is just the right length (which is very short) and it tells a story with hardly wasting a word.

Follow Me Quietly opens promisingly, with a night shot of high heels on wet pavement in pelting rain. How can you go wrong? But the film chooses to follow not the strangler who kills only in the rain but the love story between the detective and the tabloid reporter. The best scene in the movie, as another commentator pointed out, makes absolutely no sense, but works as a chilling little shocker involving a faceless "dummy" the police loonily use to impersonate the killer. It's good that this movie didn't run more than an hour; there's nothing lurking beneath the surface of the script.

Though they generally weren't required to do much, the cast members in "Follow Me Quietly" were great at what they did.

Bill Lundigan was a good-looking guy who could have got by just on his looks. In this movie, he got to take off his shirt, or perhaps had to take off his shirt, and it gave an obvious thrill to Dorothy Patrick, who was really attractive and handled her role quite well, too.

The great, and terribly under-appreciated, Jeff Corey had the number two male part – and as to "under-appreciated," well, yes, he had a long and busy career. He was the bad guy who started the action in "True Grit" and he played Abe Lincoln at least twice.

Still, a man with this much talent just could never have been thoroughly and properly appreciated, at least not enough to suit me.

There was a montage sequence that might be a staple of B films, but this one was done as well as any A picture could have done it.

It is interesting to watch the differences in police procedures, from this 1949 film to the latest films and TV shows.

A lot happens in this 60-minute run time, even the killing of a newspaper editor, the only murder in a string of seven that might earn any audience sympathy.

"Follow Me Quietly" is a good one to watch.