L'assassin sans visage

I've been on a film noir fix lately & finding these flicks on You Tube such as Private Hell 36, Crime Of Passion, The Killer Is Loose, Please Murder Me, Raw Deal, Black Angel etc. Most of these I enjoyed & I've watched them once but when I stumbled onto this one yesterday I watched it again today as it was a little more than what I expected. Follow Me Quietly is not really a film noir it's a crime drama & police procedural.

It's a bit experimental & unusual which makes it stand out from the others, the late 40's post war period was a time when filmmakers were trying out new gimmicks such as subjective first person camera like Lady In The Lake (1946) & Dark Passage (1947). The police create a dummy of the killer from what evidence & clues they have which is a little more than the usual routine bulletin description of a suspect.

Sometimes a person can be identified & recognized by the back of their head & ears & the size & shape of their body & physique. Since the police have never seen the killers face the dummy is faceless & startling. The scene where the killer replaces the dummy & sits in William Lundigan's office facing the window with it's back to him is clever but pointless & foolish. What if the detective was smart enough to notice it was really him ? Why would the killer take such a risk ? I think it was just a gimmick & for cinematic effect to satisfy the filmmakers & to give the audience a thrill. The silly trick worked & fooled me I thought it was the faceless dummy.

And when the killers face is revealed he's not what you expect, he's very insecure & nervous & seems incapable of doing anything right. How did he manage to kill 8 victims & get away with it ? The ending is similar to White Heat & this film isn't great but it's fun & interesting, different & memorable & worth watching. I've seen it twice & I may watch it again.

"Follow Me Quietly" is an atmospheric noir about a police detective on the hunt for a serial strangler.

The film's most memorable plot device is a dummy that the police department has made based on the limited information they've been able to capture about the killer. They know roughly his height, weight, hair color, the color of his suit, etc., and they construct a mannequin that approximates his appearance. They then wrangle up crooks and bring them into police lineups with the dummy to see if any of them look alike. It's actually pretty humorous and doesn't seem like the makings of crack detective work, but it does allow for some rather creepy scenes, and one in particular, when the police detective has an entire conversation with what he thinks is the mannequin, and which the audience finds out is the actual killer after the detective has left the room.

If you're a fan of rain-soaked streets and movies whose titles have nothing to do with what they're actually about, you'll like this one.

Grade: B+

I saw this film when I was 10 years old and it has haunted me all my life. At first I could only remember a guy waiting in a room for someone to come back, but then there was the idea of a crazy murderer who goes bizerk when it rains and then the memory of all these dummies in the police station and the murderer gets in there somehow, I don;t know how, but as he is in the room someone comes in, a policeman, just to check out the dummies and the murderer goes and sits in a chair so he won't be discovered because he looks like all the other dummies that are sitting there, and as he is sitting he is facing a window...and we see that it is beginning to rain...and there is a close up of his hand gripping the arm of the chair...all this is from my memory of the film as a 10-year old - when I managed to discover what the film was with the use of IMDb and got a video and looked at it - it all seemed pretty harmless stuff - I saw the film in a little cinema in Shaftesbury Dorset with my brother. My parents left us there and had no idea what the film was. The memory of the American streets, and the cars and the black and white quality have all stayed with me...

Normally lightweight William Lundigan is quite good as the hero cop of this quickie programmer. The rest of the cast is also quite good and the suspense remains high throughout. The plot is deceptively simple which is what makes the whole thing work in this atmospheric thriller. The only disappointment you'll have is that it's over so quickly.

Interesting B movie starring William Lundigan and Dorothy Patrick about a police detective's search for a serial killer called "The Judge."

Gritty city scenes (although as one poster points out, it was probably an RKO set) enhance the atmosphere, and it's one of the things that makes "Follow Me Quietly" unusual.

Two more items of interest: A very exciting finale and the twist of having the police make a dummy model from everything they know about the perpetrator. In one scene, Lundigan is talking to the dummy's back, and it turns out to actually be the killer.

Lundigan was a good looking, poor man's Joel McCrea, perfect to be a detective in real life but not much of an actor. He doesn't exude much energy. Patrick, an attractive blonde, neither wildly glamorous or beautiful, gives a spirited performance as a tabloid reporter.