Fingers at the Window

This is a swell little mystery thriller that reunites Lew Ayres and Laraine Day, who played Dr. Kildare and Nurse Lamont respectively in the Dr. Kildare series of movies (which were great, by the way). However, the characters they play here are much different. Ayres plays an easygoing actor turned amateur sleuth and Day plays a pretty, sweet airhead of a woman targeted by a killer or killers. Also starring is the legendary Basil Rathbone, who never did a bad job in a film in his career (prove me wrong!).

This film is a great treat, especially for fans of the Dr. Kildare series and fans of Rathbone. The cast is pleasant and have lots of fun. The story is crisp and moves along at a nice pace. Director Charles Lederer smoothly juggles the mystery, humor, and romance. It's a real pleasure to find such underrated treasures as this.

That opening is a grabber, straight out of noir classics and Val Lewton's haunted city streets. Too bad that the rest of the movie fails to match this impressive setup. The premise of a mysterious axe murderer striking at seeming random is chilling, especially when we find out there may be more than one. Plus it's the innocent young Edwina (Day) who's being stalked, with only the wise-cracking actor Duffy (Ayres) there to help. And that's part of the movie's unfortunate drop off in impact— Duffy's light-hearted attitude tends to undercut the movie's somber visuals.

Then too, as the story evolves, the plot threads spread out too much, getting murky in the process. Too bad, because some of the lighting compositions anticipate post-war noir in striking effect. And get a load of the sepulchral Milton Parsons as the mute nutcase. His spooky appearance remains one of the glories of '40's movies. Too bad his is just a bit part. And speaking of brief appearances, I could have used more of the great Rathbone than what we get. He always lent such dramatic weight to whatever he was in, including his few minutes here.

All in all, it's a somewhat erratic little programmer whose best features belong to the lighting and staging departments. Happily, Day remains an appealing presence.

I hesitate to call this film a mystery, because the nature of the murders that are plaguing Chicago is known to the viewer from the very beginning. And although it has some traits common to noir, I found the tone of this film to be too light to firmly place it in that genre.

Lew Ayres (as Oliver Duffy) plays an out of work actor who stumbles into a murder plot aimed at Laraine Day (Edwina Brown). She is rather kooky and he seems unable to string two serious lines together. With his help, they capture the axe murderer who attempts to end Laraine's day.

Ayres develops a theory about the nature of the murders, but the police won't listen. They are buffaloed by the hypothesizing of a psychologist--a common theme in the 40s and 50s when audiences seemed intrigued by the mysteries of the human mind and the simple "explanations" that science seemed to offer. For a superior example of this, see "The Bad Seed" from 1956. Hitchcock liked to dabble in these kinds of stories, as in "Spellbound" in 1945.

But this film does have some appeal. And Basil Rathbone, in his role, provides the intensity that was his hallmark.

Lew Ayres' career at MGM was destroyed because he was a conscientious objector to WWII. He actually wanted to be admitted into the service as a medic, but because the Army could not guarantee he would not end up a regular soldier, he chose the objector status. Ultimately he was admitted as a medic, but the publicity hurt him and ended his role in the popular Dr. Kildare series of B movies.

MGM decided to try the popular screen team of Ayres and Lorraine Day in an atmospheric murder mystery in completely different roles with Day as dancer Edwina Brown and Ayres as unemployed actor Oliver Duffy.

In Chicago there have been a series of ax murders. In each case the murderer is an insane person and does not know the victim. Police interrogation gets them nowhere. Oliver Duffy sees Edwina walking home late at night and somebody stalking her. At first she thinks Duffy is a masher, but when it is proven she is being followed he escorts her home and stakes out her fire escape. Duffy sees the guy stalking her approach the fire escape but scares him off. The following night he sets a trap and catches the man, with an ax, who like all of the other perpetrators is insane.

The police put Edwina up in a hotel, and as Duffy is saying his goodbyes, notices that an axe used for fires is missing and chases yet another guy with an axe down the stairs. This proves that somebody is deliberately trying to kill Edwina, and that this is no random attack. But the police don't want to listen to Duffy. From the police he learns that all of the attackers have last names that start with the letter B. In the meantime, Edwina seems to be hiding some deep dark secret from Duffy. So what is the motive of whoever it is going to all of this trouble to kill such a seemingly ordinary girl as Edwina by dispatching seemingly random maniacs to kill seemingly random victims? Watch and find out.

This film was extremely well done. I think I would have believed the immediate chemistry between Day and Ayres even if I had not seen any of the Kildare films. It also has some humor in it as Ayres impersonates an insane person to help catch the killer. Unfortunately his rendition is a bit too authentic for one psychiatrist. It's rare to see a film released and made in 1942 not discuss the war at all, yet this one doesn't. It is a pure murder mystery with lots of twists and turns and maybe it stayed out of mentioning the war to help the film since Ayres was out of favor with the public over his draft status.

I highly recommend this one. Not up to the very end do you really understand everything that is going on. What a shame it is not in the Warner Archive so I can buy a copy and see this whenever I want.

Laraine Day and Lew Ayers always seemed to have great chemistry between them and this picture carries on that tradition. Ayers is an out of work actor who happens to see Day being followed by a man who is carrying an axe. He manages to save her and capture the would-be killer but it's obvious that there will be further attempts on her life. Ayers tries to solve the mystery of why she is being stalked and manages to get himself in trouble both with the law and with the mastermind of the killings. Basil Rathbone does his usual top job in a role that calls for someone who is both suave and has ice water in his veins. The cast is rounded out with many familiar faces of MGM contract players. All in all, a very good mystery with Ayers and Day providing just the right amount of light interplay.