The Mark of the Whistler

I don't know exactly why, But I prefer the series thru TV stuff, made in the fifties. Different stories but also lead characters each time, much gloomy and surprising too. I commented many of them in the past. This one, made for big screen release, I discovered it thirty years ago, before I knew the TV show. I liked it because it was made by William Castle, in his early years, before he went to direct westerns and adventure yarns for the infamous Sam Katzman at Columbia. Later he went to Universal for some crime films, then he found his best style in horror movies, but with his own trademark, very special trademark. He will remain famous for those horror features. So this movie is not the best of the whole, as far as I remember, and Richard Dix is surely the best help. The topic is intelligent, above average, in a way surprising, at least not the usual grade Z common junk. Only the ending is a disappointment. That's it, in the episodes of this series, there were more twists than in the long length movies. The audiences were not the same: home for TV and movie theaters for those who paid their tickets. And that explains many many things.

The mark of the whistler 1944

Film noir, by definition, deals with crime and that too in a stylised way. These films galore in Hollywood in the 40s to 60s period. One such film is this.

The story is narrated by an incognito narrator (the whistler) and is about a stone broke man who gets into the hotseat due to his greed for easy money. The storyline is simple, characters are very few and the filming is seamless. The suspense is kept intact, though it isn't a 'whodunit'. The protagonist gets his share for his part on the day of reckoning and there is one major suprise in the end too. Roughly an hour long, this drama is worth watching and you wouldn't regret it.

Like all but the final installment of the Whistler films, this one stars Richard Dix...and just like in several others, he's a bit of a scum-bag. When the film begins, he is a drifter and happens upon an interesting con. He's just learned about a tragic fire back in 1912 and a surviving boy was left without a family following this. A few years later, this Lee Nugent disappeared from his foster home...and no one's seen him since. However, there is a dormant bank account and armed with some inside information, the drifter decides to impersonate Nugent and collect. But how much? And, is it possible without any documentation that he'll be able to pull off this scam?! And, might he be walking into a deadly situation by claiming to be Nugent? Well, like in "Date Night", the anti-hero in this film learns the hard way that taking another's identity is not all it's cracked up to be!

All in all, this is an exciting installment...though what occurs to 'Nugent' isn't exactly a surprise...even the surprise twist at the end. However, the acting is nice and the direction likewise. Because of this, it makes for a diverting B movie. Not one of the best in the series but still quite good...and worth seeing.

A drifter claims money held in an old bank account for a namesake of his. Soon he finds himself the target of two men who turn out to be the sons of the man's old partner, who was sent to prison because of a conflict with him over the money in that account.

The second in the low budget Whistler series from Columbia but, at just under an hour's running time, this is a surprisingly watchable film. The storyline flows and there are several twists along the way. Stars Richard Dix.

Lee Selfridge Nugent (Richard Dix) is introduced as someone who once had power and wealth, but has lost that over time, and due to bad health cannot hold a job and has become a homeless hobo. He looks at a newspaper left on a park bench and sees an ad for unclaimed money at a local bank. The accounts are all said to be over a hundred dollars (about 2000 dollars in 2021 money), and one of the people who has a dormant account left it in trust for her son, who is also named Lee Nugent.

So Lee does some reconnaissance and gets enough backstory on Lee Nugent that he feels he can impersonate him and get his mother's money. But nobody seems to know what happened to the actual Lee Nugent past fifteen years of age. Lee does pull it off. A brief investigation by the bank and the money is his. But it is thirty thousand dollars not just one hundred. In 2021 that would be about 600K.

But Lee's conscience bugs him because he KNOWS the money is not his. Before he gets the money he thinks every cop or guard who stares at him must know about his fraud. But after he gets the money he is a bit too confident. And then he starts noticing strangers staring at him who are not cops or guards. Is he imagining things, or are they wanting to rob him, or is it something more? Watch and find out.

Well directed by William Castle, the camera gets good close ups of the people involved, detracting from the somewhat cheap sets that poverty row Columbia could afford, and allowing the viewer to feel the claustrophobia that Lee is feeling.

This Whistler entry has some great plot twists, as do most of them. Plus The Whistler himself narrates more of the story than he does in later entries. I'd highly recommend this one.