Sombras da Noite

This film is the tenth and last of the Crime Doctor films that I've tracked down. It's the hardest to see for reasons I don't know. The other films have screened on TCM over the past few years since TCM picked up the old Columbia catalog, but this one stubbornly refuses to show up.

Well, I'm glad to say Dr. Ordway saved the best for last for me. The film's generic-sounding title is a little off-putting. It has plenty of shadows and in fact, even has a little bit of a horror film feel in a few moments. That's helped out by the presence of George Zucco, most welcome here as a mysterious chemist. Warner Baxter is terrific in his role as the Crime Doctor. I used to not like him so much based on some of his early films that I had seen, but he has totally won me over as Dr. Ordway. His extremely calm and unassuming manner is always relaxing to see and in this one (the third out of ten) he clearly has his character down and is able to get away with a few rather rude moments (such as throwing the chemical bottle at Zucco's feet) with barely a rise out of the other characters due to his otherwise professional demeanor.

The plot is very exciting in this entry - a young woman comes to Ordway's home in the middle of a rain-stormy night to beg for his help with her sleepwalking nightmares. At her home, Ordway encounters a dead body after suffering a similar such sleepwalking nightmare. Yet, all of the characters, including the young woman (an excellent Nina Foch) think their friend died of natural causes. Ordway's persistence proves otherwise.

As usual with classic Hollywood detective films there are always some plot holes, but this film easily overcomes them by succeeding with terrific atmosphere, steady pacing and by simply being a fun whodunit. Cheers to Dr. Ordway!

Flaccid. Incoherent. I don't know what movie other reviewers saw but this was truly a mess. Not enough of a motivator in the plot to generate all the mayhem and is never fully explained. Well it's explained and the explanation is absurd and unrealistic. You Tube has all the Crime Doctor movies available, which is where I found this one. I will watch another one as the cast was good in this particular offering. Very atmospheric. Looked like it had potential. What a dud. Many thanks to the other reviewers of this picture for the historical background on the series. Your synopses of the movie were far more interesting than the film itself. I found it trite, un-engaging and ridiculous. My opinion only. No one has to agree with me. I'll give the series another chance though.

When the young "Lois" (Nina Foch) starts having nightmares at her seaside home, she calls in the help of renowned psycho-sleuth "Ordway" (Warner Baxter) to help her out. He duly arrives at her rambling pile and finds on his first night that he has become a sleepwalker. Luckily he is found by "Uncle George" (George Zucco) on the beach and escorted back to the house where he discovers a body. Rousing "Lois" they return to discover it's gone! What is going on here? What's with the eerie smoke that hovers around the rooms at times? Is "Lois" just not quite the full shilling or is George Zucco up to his usual nefarious acting tricks? I quite liked this - it's dark and coastal scenario, bodies there then not and just a little chemistry do rather point us to the conclusion, but the whodunit element is still a little left field. It's production is basic, as is just about everything else - but it passes an hour enjoyably enough.

Former criminal Dr. Robert Ordway is now a criminologist. Ordway is visited at three in the morning by the mysterious Lois Garland. Lois complains of nightmares, where the theme of suicide keeps recurring. Ordway then decides to stay in her haunted house, located on the Pacific Ocean. Lois receives several mysterious guests and one of them is murdered. Ordway decides to unmask the culprit using hypnosis and begins investigating the dark cellars beneath Lois's house.

A good entry of the crime Doctor series starring the charismatic Warner Baxter who gets involved in murder and strange apparitions. The ambience is certainly classic dark and brooding with lots of nooks and corners with the house overlooking the sea. Loved all the hidden stairways to the cave to the beach. The Gothic elements, headed by Zucco as a suavely sinister uncle and a ghostly apparition dripping wet from the sea, is well done.

There are reminders here both of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, in the mystic gloom of the environment with secret corridors and caves and even hypnotic gas, which would have interested Agatha Christie, who was the expert on chemistry in crime; but here the intrigue is just as intricate and complicated as any intrigues of hers, and like in her stories, it is impossible to figure out who the murderer is, although he has time to commit a number of murders in the course of the film, which is just for about 70 minutes. Warner Baxter's cases are always interesting, since he is both a psychiatrist with a criminal past who knows how to use his knuckles while at the same time he is an expert psychologist and doctor, so you can always rely on him, even when he gets into trouble himself and starts sleepwalking finding strange dead bodies in strange places. This is criminal entertainment and almost as good as any Sherlock Holmes adventure, while you will not be the only one to be surprised at the end.