The Unknown

Very odd to see someone state that Jeff Donnell is the biggest-name draw here, given that the star is Karen Morley. Granted, Morley wasn't the biggest movie star ever, but, I'd think that Dinner at Eight and Scarface alone would provide her a bigger profile than Donnell. And she also managed to appear in a few other special, noteworthy flicks, such as The Mask of Fu Manchu, Gabriel over the White House and Vidor's great, if flawed, Our Daily Bread. Even The Sin of Madelon Claudet and Mata Hari.

Plus, Morley's pretty boss in this film. She really anchors it and makes her character quite a sympathetic one. It really is her film.

As for the rest -- it's a fun, minor little B-mystery with nice horror touches. As are the other I Love a Mystery flicks. Nothing great, but certainly fun for mystery, horror and B-movie fans, the kind of small, old, and old-fashioned movie that deservedly endears itself to certain kinds fans (I'm one of them).

Plus, this one had really nice Southern Gothic atmosphere. I love it when a cheap film can effectively create and define a relatively small space and generate a real (especially spooky) atmosphere. (Can you tell that I'm a big-ass Val Lewton fan? Or that Horror Hotel/City of the Dead is one of my very favorite horror movies?)

I just saw all three of the ILaM flicks on TCM the other early AM and enjoyed the other two similarly. Fairly ambitious in ideas and plot twists, far less so in their makers' ability to turn those thoughts into fully-realized cinema – and fun, old-fashioned treats, all in all. Bannon is hardly a great actor, but he sure as heck is nice to look at, and Yarborough has his moments. And each film has a few special bonuses in its "case-specific" cast: I Love a Mystery has the great Nina (My Name is Julia Ross) Foch and legendary screen creep George Macready; The Devil's Mask has Anita ("Ginger's Mom") Louise and Frank Mayo, an actor who intrigued me greatly just a while back on TCM with his terrific starring performance in Vidor's keen silent melodrama, Wild Oranges (talk about creating and defining a small, atmospheric space!), making me wish he'd been given so much more to do in his career; The Unknown has not only has Morley and Donnell but also, for the Val Lewton fan, The Leopard Man's James Bell!

Matthew

"The Unknown" (1946) is a surprisingly entertaining and atmospheric mystery inspired by the "I LOVE A MYSTERY" radio program. It is actually one of three Republic B-movies based on the program, all featured straight arrow detective Jack Packard and his corn-pone partner Doc Long (Barton Yarborough).

In "The Unknown" Jack and Doc are hired to escort young Nina Arnold (Jeff Donnell) to her ancestral mansion in Kentucky for the reading of her grandmother's will. The twist is that Nina was placed in foster care as an infant and will be meeting her mother Rachel (Karen Morley) for the first time. The mansion is spooky with her grandfather's body buried behind the fireplace and a mausoleum full of seemingly restless ancestors located outside the house.

I was very surprised at how well written and nicely paced this film was. It's a good yarn with a lot of misdirection and some unexpected plot elements.

Although Bannon and Yarborough are the series regulars, top billing for "The Unknown" went to Morley. Deservedly so as it is clearly her film, she plays an addled woman who never recovered from the loss of her baby daughter. She keeps a baby crib in her bedroom and hears a baby crying throughout the film. The was probably Morley's best performance, shortly after she fell victim to the HUAC hearings and worked very little in the industry from that point.

The other two "I LOVE A MYSTERY" thrillers are also quite entertaining but neither has anything to match Morley's performance.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

The third and final entry in the I Love a Mystery series with Jack Packard (Jim Bannon) and Doc Long (Barton Yarborough). The story this time centers on a mystery at a spooky Southern mansion. Melodramatic acting from some but nobody stinks up the joint. Karen Morley stands out. Bannon is his typically bland but inoffensive self. Perhaps it's the Southern setting but Yarborough is even more Huckleberry Hound than usual ("Hey son, look a-yonder!"). Good time-killer. Better than the second film in the series, but not as good as the first. Overall, this series provided three B mystery films that were pretty good. Not without flaws, particularly with the lackluster detectives themselves. But the stories were interesting and enjoyable with lots of moody atmosphere.

Re: the review of the Unknown by the reviewer from Kentucky. Republic Studios did not produce the I Love A Mystery series. It was Columbia Pictures. I have the original lobby card from the first film, "I Love A Mystery" (adapted from the radio play "The Decapitation of Johnathen Monk) and probably the only film in the series that was faithful to the radio series. The other two films simply used the characters of Jack Packard and Doc Long. My friend, Carole Mathews appeared in the first film, and signed the lobby card for me. She also provided me with a DVD of the film. Columbia also produced the Whistler film series, which for some reasons lasted longer. There were only 3 films made in the I Love A Mystery series and why they were discontinued is anybody's guess. Probably box office appeal.

Although there's a little too much Southern exposition to set the stage for a present day story, THE UNKNOWN is a better than average programmer in the Columbia studio's "I Love A Mystery" series. Getting to the heart of the story takes up too much time at the start, but once the story starts dealing with the mysterious things going on in an old Southern mansion, it keeps building interest until the mystery is solved.

The cast is an interesting one, even though there are hardly any big names involved. KAREN MORLEY is the troubled woman on the brink of madness, ROBERT WILCOX is her lover who has been banished from the grounds, JIM BANNON is Jack Packard, the detective, and BARTON YARBOROUGH is again his partner. JEFF DONNELL is the lady who stands to win an inheritance and MARK ROBERTS is the young lawyer designated to read the will.

All of it is directed in nimble style by Henry Levin, an old hand at these sort of programmers and, despite the low budget, given some handsome settings.

Summing up: Gets off to a slow start but gradually builds interest.