The Millerson Case

Dr Ordway wants to get far away from his work in this installment of the Crime Doctor series. So he takes a hunting vacation in West Virginia where he will not be disturbed. Some vacation! He is embroiled in a typhoid epidemic and murder straight away. Instead of out of season hunting he ends up hunting for clues.

He stays at Sam and Amy Millerson's place. Sam is a country medicine herbalist who gets accused of murder when one of the deaths turns out to be a poisoning. Dr Ordway has to investigate the mountain folk with their petty jealousies to find a murderer among them. But first he has to get busy vaccinating the local population against the typhoid. Later he gets to attempt his hypnotizing skills and a bit of psychological trickery to uncover the murderer and the state of their mind.

Warner Baxter is playing the Crime Doctor for the eighth time in this one. This is a fair mystery in the series. Luke the Sheriff is the pick of the mountain folk. Clem Bevans plays him in his own authentic way to convince us he really lives in such a community.

(Some Spoilers) With him being in such great demand by both the the local, as well as out of town, police department in solving so many of it's unsolvable crimes the obviously burnt out "Crime Doctor" Dr. Robert Ordway, Warner Baxter decides to finally take his first vacation in over five years. Dr. Ordway drives upstate to the little quite town of Brookfall to do some hunting fishing and most of all relaxing. Sadly for the good doctor it did't turn out that way.

As soon as Dr.Ordway got to Brookhill it was quarantined because of a typhoid epidemic with him being recruited by the state troopers and local medical clinic to help in the inoculation of the towns population. Doing the best he can Dr. Ordway examining the blood samples of those who succumb to the deadly disease finds that the towns barber as well as it's smooth talking and handsome womanizer Ward Beachey, Trevor Bardette,did't die from typhoid at all! It turns out that Benchey was poisoned and made to look by his killer like he died of that disease.

Being that Dr. Ordway's friend Dr. Sam Millerson, Griff Barnett, who's house he staying at last treated Benchey with his home-made brew or potion of bark roots berries and bitters he's the prime suspect in his murder. It's also reviled that Dr.Sam was very angry with Benchey for not going to him for medical treatment over the last year. Benchey was going to the newly opened county medical clinic that's taking business away from him. All this suspicion of Dr. Sam being Benchey's killer becomes moot later on when Dr. Sam himself is murdered! It now becomes very clear, especially to Dr. Ordway, that Bencheys murder had nothing to do with business matters between him and his killer! There's something far more deeper in Benchely's death and closer to home. Benchy's sexual exploits with the ladies in town may well have caused one of those ladies outraged and vindictive husbands or boyfriends to murder him.

It's the murder of Dr. Sam that rings a bell in the "Crime Doctors" head when it's reveled that he, Dr. Sam, got a note to meet him, his killer, outside the summer carnival or fair. It was at the fair that he and everyone in town, including Dr. Ordway, were at. Finding the note on the murdered Dr. Sam with his killer in to much of a hurry to get away, or just too absent-minded to grab and destroy it, turned out to be the evidence that in the end hung him! Not that Dr. Sam's killer wrote it but*****SPOILERS*****that he needed someone else to write it for him.

Dr. Ordway take his life in his hands in this murder mystery by getting both Dr. Sam & Beacheys killer in a position where he can make Dr. Ordway his next victim. The "Crime Doctor" was more then ready for mysterious killer in alerting to towns sheriff old man Akers, Clem Bevans, and the local townspeople to come to his rescue. Dr. Ordway slug-fest with the crazed killer, after failing to poison Dr. Ordway, just about to split Dr. Ordway's head open with a shovel.

Arrested and facing life or even the electric chair, if convicted in both Dr. Sam & Bencheys murder, the killer tries to be real cute by faking that he's nuts. The killer acts as if he's trying to catch or swat invisible flies or horseflies in his cell thinking that would get him off on an insanity defense. It just happened that the "Crime Doctor" got his number and then tricks him into showing everyone watching that he's indeed sane. Dr. Ordway does this by showing that the killer thinking that he's acting insane is in fact really thinking and rational, in trying to show that he's indeed crazy, by falling right into the clever trap that Dr. Odway's set for him.

As fine a collection of players who are cast as rustics is in The Millerson Case as Warner Baxter goes to the Piedmont area of North Carolina for some hunting and fishing. Instead he gets involved in solving two murders.

At first it's only an epidemic of typhoid where three deaths have occurred. But Baxter proves one of these deaths was not typhoid but a poisoning. The deceased was Trevor Bardette the local barber who pursues half the married woman around. Makes for a town full of suspects. Later the locsal doctor is also killed when he suspects something.

Another in Columbia's Crime doctor series wrapped in good economical style. est in the cast is Clem Bevans as the sheriff. It's almost mandatory that he be in rustic film settings.

WARNER BAXTER was approaching the last few "Crime Doctor" films when he made THE MILLERSON CASE, about an epidemic of typhoid that's tainted by a slight case of murder. Seems that while trying to have a vacation in the country, Dr. Ordway is pressured to join other doctors in helping out when typhoid strikes the townspeople.

A gruff country doctor (GRIFF BARNETT) opposes the notion that the epidemic is anything more than "summer complaint". But a microscopic examination of bacilii proves that one of the victims was not dead from typhoid, but poison.

As usual, there are a number of suspects and Sheriff CLEM BEVANS has his hands full arresting first one, then another, each time fooled into suspecting the wrong culprits. The only quibble I have with the story is that when the denouement does come and the mystery is solved, it turns out to be the least interesting character that did it.

The sleuthing is interesting in all of these "Crime Doctor" stories, and as usual, at the end there's a little extra surprise thrown in at the last moment.

Reliable character actor GRIFF BARNETT, as Dr. Millerson, was a busy character actor throughout the '40s and '50s, most memorable as Olivia de Havilland's druggist father in TO EACH HIS OWN ('46). He played a much more likable character in that one.

This is a bit of a shambles of a film, mixing just about every genre imaginable, but it's still quite a watchable outing for the psychiatric doctor "Ordway" (Warner Baxter). Determined to get away from it all and spend some time fishing, he arrives at a town where the local doctor "Sam" (Griff Barnett) is still prescribing unctions from "ye olde book of primitive root medicines". No sooner has "Ordway" arrived than the town is locked down amidst an outbreak of typhoid and murder! Can he find out who's be doing the poisoning and why, before there are more victims in this place riddled with grudges and axes to grind. There's a bit too much dialogue and as usual with this series, there is also a simplistic underpinning message of scientific advancement being the answer to many problems these people face - not least with their own reluctance to believe in and accept new things in the first place. The acting is all adequate and it passes seventy minutes easily enough before a denouement that offers us a slightly fiery twist - and that's not just the cider!