The Unknown

The dominant matron of a wealthy southern family prevents her daughter Rachel (Karen Morley) from running off with the man (Robert Wilcox) she has secretly married. There's an argument; there's a struggle for a revolver; the girl's father is accidentally killed; the groom flees and the girl is stuck—to spend the next many years alone in the decaying mansion with her mother, her two bitter brothers, and a butler whose devotion to the mother runs dark and deep. So begins The Unknown—in a lengthy introductory scene narrated years later in ghostly tones by the finally deceased mother.

Jumping to the present day, we see Jim Bannon and Barton Yarborough arriving on the scene with another young woman—Jeff Donnell as Nita, the now grown daughter of the cruelly separated couple of the opening scene. Bannon and Yarborough are, of course, Jack Packard and Doc Long, back for a third and final appearance as the detectives from I Love a Mystery.

The mystery this time around involves strange baby cries from behind the walls, the unbalanced Rachel (played by a sufficiently disturbed Morley), a family crypt and house full of busy secret passages, and our detectives' efforts to present Nita as a legitimate heir to the place—efforts that are quickly expanded to include keeping her safe and sane.

The suspense develops nicely; the atmosphere crawls with sinister shadows and inscrutable, furtive glances and creepy noises; suspicion is cast cleverly over an assortment of possible villains.

Short and sweet, The Unknown is hardly nightmare-inducing, but it's certainly a fast-moving and entertaining little picture. –Call me a sucker, but I'll admit to goose bumps running up my spine in at least one scene.

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.

Back in 1946, A trio of films was made from the "I Love a Mystery" radio programs; this was one of them. (The other 2 were the "Devils' Mask" and the "Decapitation of Jefferson Monk"). This film is about the 2nd best of the series (with "Monk" being the best).

Someone had told me that this film was based on the "ILAM" pgm, "The Thing That Cries in the Night", but it ISN"T! (The only thing it has in common is the sound of a baby crying).

FAR too much time is given to the "history" and "family skeletons" of a Southern family (in fact, the film reminded me of "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte"!). Jack & Doc were added almost as an afterthought!

And, unbelieveable as it seems, some of those Civil War people were STILL alive in 1946; this is stretching the imagination a bit TOO far!

Carleton E. Morse had (potentially) great material to work with; this is one of his (very few) failures.

Norm

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.

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