Fingerprints Don't Lie

This movie from director Sam Newfield belongs to one of his lasts. It is not that bad but lousy enough to avoid it if you have something else to do. The plot sounds like those B flicks from the thirties and forties. So imagine in the fifties, and not for TV industry but big screen cinemas....oh, it is agreeable to watch, I repeat: not that bad but forgettable at the most with many nearly comedy lines. The quality of the copy I watched is tremendous, and I admit that helps a lot to appreciate the film. So, if you are a Sam Newfield's filmography explorer, you can try this one without any problem.

The movie concerns a young man (Emory) who stands accused of murdering the mayor over a dispute between the two. After being crucified by a police fingerprint expert (Travis) who testified that his fingerprints were all over the murder weapon, the condemned man pins his only hope for proving his innocence on the daughter of the murder victim and the very man whose testimony could send him to the gas chamber!

The writer who previously reviewed this movie and said this movie is worse than Plan 9 From Outer Space was totally wrong. Although this movie was a low budget movie, it wasn't really a bad movie at all.

One more thing. The writer said that he recalled that a scene from a railroad station showed smoke going the wrong way. That's funny as there wasn't any railroad scene in this movie. I guess he must have had it confused with another movie.

This film, Fingerprints Don't Lie, ran a little over an hour. Yet somehow I felt as if it was longer than Gone with the Wind.

What a horror. A man sits in prison, convicted of murder, insisting he didn't do it. Yet his fingerprints are on the murder weapon, a telephone. His fiancée believes him innocent and begs the man who helped put him away with his fingerprint evidence (Richard Travis) to investigate the case further.

The music in this movie -- the organ -- sounded like what they used to play on the old soap operas. It was APPALLING. When someone was knocked off and came to, a choir of angels sang.

I thought the two lead women looked alike, which made things even more confusing.

Imagine - Lyle Talbot was in this and even he didn't come off that well. Lyle Talbot - a 56-year career, never out of work - I guess he must have owed someone a favor.

Richard Travis wasn't a bad actor, at least. He did very well in television.

I always liked Sid Melton. After this I may hate him. He played a doofus photographer whose flashbulb never went off. Kind of like this movie. I can only assume he was in the film to pad the script.

If someone told me this was a television drama, I would have bought it. I assume it was a B movie. I'd have been gone from the theater by then.

A forged signature...fingerprints that are just too perfect on a murder weapon...a dead crusading mayor...a fingerprint expert who decides to find out how he was fooled into making a mistake that convicted an innocent man. And let's not forget what really makes this murder mystery memorable: A pipe organ playing melodramatic background music, augmented by a groaning chorus of singers.

Fingerprints Don't Lie is an awkward, amateurish movie. It lasts 57 minutes. It was shot on a miniscule budget. It tells us a lot about fingerprints. If you watch this dog, look for two things. First is the credit line for the director. The name is Sam Newfield. Between 1926 and 1956 he directed nearly 300 movies, and I suspect they all were as bad as this one. The other is Syra Marty. She plays Syra, a blonde artist's model. She only made three movies. She can't act. But she sure looks provocatively overbalanced in a bathing suit.

Easily the worst movie ever made - - - I think it beats "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Maybe it is Plan 10. Seems to have been made on a budget of $ 17.25. If I remember correctly, a scene at a railroad station was orchestrated by a background projection of the side of a railroad car with puffs of smoke coming from left and right! Uggh.