Crime Doctor's Man Hunt

Crime Doctor's Man Hunt (1946)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

William Castle returns as director in this sixth entry. A man returns home from the war suffering from amnesia so he goes to the Crime Doctor (Warner Baxter) for help. Within days the man is found dead and all fingers point to his fiancé but there might be more behind his death. Once again director Castle is able to build some nice atmosphere in some moody scenes but overall this is on par with the rest of the series. This one here manages to become one of the better entries due in large part to the screenplay giving Baxter some nice supporting characters and actors to play them. Ellen Drew, Frank Sully and William Frawley are all good in their roles. The mystery is also laid out pretty well as this film features a different screenwriter than the previous five films.

Warner Baxter is again the "Crime Doctor" in "Crime Doctor's Man Hant," a 1946 entry into the series, this one directed by William Castle.

In this one, Dr. Ordway (Baxter) deals with a returning serviceman who seems to be blacking out at times and winding up in an unfamiliar place in town. Ordway actually goes to this area and discovers the man murdered. The man's fiancée (Ellen Drew) has a sister who completely disappeared three years ago but once dominated her life.

This is a pretty good Crime Doctor mystery, given style by Castle. What brings it down is the lousy acting by Ellen Drew and other characters introduced and not fleshed out. William Frawley plays a smart police inspector.

As usual, Baxter, who early in his career was so hyper, is very relaxed and natural in his performance. Sometimes he's a little too relaxed, but the actor had suffered a nervous breakdown. He actually creates quite a likable character.

Nice twist ending that I figured out. Recommended.

Building on the now well trammelled theme of these "Crime Doctor" films, this time "Dr. Ordway" (Warner Baxter) is engaged by a man who is finding himself in strange parts of town with no idea how he got there. It's whilst investigating that the doctor discovers that this fellow has been slain. Things get more complicated when he meets the despondent fiancée "Irene" (Ellen Drew) who is from a wealthy and dysfunctional family and who also proves to be somewhat enigmatic. Meantime, there are also two goons hanging around too. What can they want with her sister "Natalie"? Loads to challenge the little grey cells here and this largely spares us the psycho-babble and just presents us with a mystery that the audience knows about for most of the film, but it's still enjoyable enough watching Baxter pick up the clues and solve the conundrum. No, it's not great - it's procedural low-budget stuff, but Drew is rather better than most of the damsels in these films and it's amongst the best of the series,

... because they usually have nothing to do with the actual subject of the film. You also have to make sure you don't blink during these short fast-paced films or else you'll miss something important. Here the film opens on a young man stumbling around an amusement park in a fog of amnesia. He's had several of these spells lately and goes to Dr. Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter in the title role) for help. Ordway goes to the place where the young man says he found himself stumbling about. After walking around awhile what does he see but a couple of men coming out of a boarding house carrying the body of the young amnesiac man who came to see him that day, a bullet wound to his head. The bad guys spot Ordway so he has to feign drunkenness and pretend that he thinks the dead body they are carrying is actually another drunk or he's afraid that he'll share the young man's fate. The henchmen buy the act and let Ordway go. Ordway goes straight to the police and together they raid the boarding house. Nobody has ever seen the men Ordway saw, nobody every heard a shot, and no sign of violence is to be found anywhere in the boarding house. Police Inspector Harry B. Manning (William Frawley) obviously respects Ordway from his past help in solving crimes, but this time thinks maybe the good doctor is imagining things.

Ordway knows that he saw what he thought he saw, so he first has to prove there was a crime then find the criminals. In the process Ordway runs across the young man's fiancée, a mousy and wealthy girl who's so meek she's almost invisible, a boarded up old mansion that for some reason has a master bedroom that is still completely furnished, and the dead bodies of the two henchmen Ordway saw carrying the young man's body. They've been asphyxiated in their sleep by gas, only they're not in their own apartment at the time of their deaths. Who is going about causing all of this mayhem? Watch and find out.

William Castle directed several Crime Doctor films, and they always have that touch of the macabre. Thus this film has not only the well constructed mystery typical of the Crime Doctor films, it has lots of atmosphere as well. Highly recommended.

While this isn't the best B-detective film ever made, it is different enough from the usual style that it's well worth watching. Warner Baxter's detective is a psychiatrist and instead of following the usual formula employed by Boston Blackie, The Falcon and MANY other film detectives, his films are a little more cerebral as well as more believable. There is also a real plus because the usual cop investigating the case isn't a total idiot, so I am very thankful for the role William Frawley played. The film itself is well-paced (being only 61 minutes long), interesting and offers a fun twist ending (though psychologically speaking, it was VERY far-fetched). Not a great film, but a welcome film since it is different enough that it doesn't just blend in with the crowd.