The Crimson Key

P.I. Kent Taylor is nursing a hangover when a dame walks into his office. She wants her husband followed. She doesn't think it's another woman, although she admits it might be. She wants to know what he's keeping from her. She drops a c-note and walks out. Taylor splits the money with his secretary - he hasn't paid her in a while - and heads off to pay some bills, probably for liquor.

That evening, after trailing the husband home, he takes off for the evening. It's too bad, because he goes out later and is shot dead in an artist's studio. The police follow her to Taylor's office, where she drops more money on him. She leaves and gets herself killed too. Taylor thinks he owes her, so he starts trying to puzzle it out himself.

It's a fairly good example of the Hard-Boiled Detective yarn, half MALTESE FALCON, half MURDER MY SWEET, without much in the way of wisecracking, but plenty muddled, and competently directed by Eugene Forde. It's from Sol Wurtzel after Fox had closed down its B studio, but was still distributing his independently-produced movies. The Ritz Brothers may have mourned back when they were transferred to his division that they were going "from bad to Wurtzel," but his inexpensive productions made money, and in Hollywood, that made you very popular with the studio brass, even if some people claimed he was a worse vulgarian than Harry Cohn. Wurtzel produced movies for another couple of years, bringing his total of features up to 180, then retired. He died in 1958, aged 67.

Larry Morgan (Kent Taylor) is a private dick who needs a case because he's broke. When a lady arrives at his office and offers him a lot of money to trail her husband, Larry thinks it's his lucky day. However, before he can follow the husband, the husband is murdered!! Then, shortly after this, so is the wife that hired Larry! How does a red key play into all this bloodshed?

Like most B-mysteries, it was obviously filmed quickly and too often the detective seems to go from point A to point C. In other words, to speed things up, the detective seems almost psychic in his ability to know where to go next. And, using a mystery movie cliche, he gets the killer to betray themselves in a trap. Little new here but not a bad way to spend an hour.

By the way, at one point Larry tells the cops that the identity of his client is protected by privilege. Well, unless you are a doctor, a priest or it's your spouse, there is no legal privilege.

A strong, neat little private eye entry. The writing and plotting are very competent. The steady direction helps sort it all out. Kent Taylor makes a watchable sleuth in the Bogart, Dick Powell, Mitchum mold, if without the star charisma. The bodies pile up, and the mystery is credible. The convoluted plot will keep the viewer interested until the very end. The cast is solid, with many reliable character actors of the time doing very accomplished work. A real sleeper for the 40s detective genre lover. Better than many more famous noir titles of the era. Catch it when you can. I'd like to see this released in the 20th Century Noir Classic series. It's up to that standard.

This minor private eye movie has more than a hint of THE GLASS KEY in Taylor's abduction and beating. We get the P.I. meeting the pay roll by doing a surveillance job that ends in a murder - swim suit models, a missing key and a hovering Asian minder.

The second string cast meet the need with Dowling surprisingly glamorous.The small budget doesn't get in the way of a B movie slickness.

A doctor's wife hires a private eye named Larry Morgan to find out what is distracting her husband. Morgan gives up on his first night surveillance of Doctor Swann shortly before the doctor gets murdered in an artist's studio. Morgan is alerted to the fact that a certain type of key has important bearing on the case. His attempt at tracking down the key coincides with other murders starting with that of Mrs Swann herself.

Kent Taylor is good as the private eye who manages not to fall for the many traps laid for him in most instances. He finds himself continually playing cat-and-mouse with all the suspects in his search for the key. My favorite sequence on that score is when he's revealing his fake dreams about the key to a fake psychiatrist who calls himself Dr Harlow. Milton Parsons playing 'Harlow' tells Morgan that the key in his 'dream' is actually the symbolic one to unlock his hidden desires. All the time they are trying to find out from each other how much the key is worth and where it can be found.

Apart from those two no other characters really roused my interest that much. But the range of suspects should keep you guessing. Morgan has to work out the sort of relationships that are going on between the suspects. Jealousy and avarice and blackmail rear their ugly heads in this mystery. I didn't detect the murderer myself so I have to recommend this as a whodunit generally.