It's really too bad about the print quality because COLONEL MARCH INVESTIGATES allows us the opportunity to watch BK thoroughly enjoying himself portraying the one-eyed Scotland Yard detective who heads up the one-man "Department Of Queer Complaints" (this name certainly wouldn't fly today). The overall tone is lightly humorous even though 3 murders occur, one in each of the three stories depicted. Contrary to what is generally believed, INVESTIGATES is not part of the COLONEL MARCH TV series. INVESTIGATES was shot in 1952 as the pilot episode for the TV series which would be made later.
The three segments were taken from a series of stories by John Dickson Carr (1906-1977), an American writer of detective fiction who lived in England for a number of years and used a number of aliases. The Colonel March stories were written under the name Carter Dickson. The three stories were adapted by blacklisted American writers Walter Bernstein and Abraham Polonsky who did not receive screen credit. The director was Donald Ginsberg but, surprisingly, the direction is credited to Cy Endfield of ZULU fame, another blacklisted American artist.
The film opens with Colonel March introducing himself and showing us a cabinet containing a collection of curios. The first one is a grotesque rubber mask. A masked thief robs a bank and kills a guard. A cashier tracks him to a lawyer's office but the thief and the money have disappeared. Next out of the cabinet are a Javanese dagger and a ticket telling the story of a murdered Javanese dancer. Finally a nosy neighbor witnesses disembodied gloves commit a murder. Inspector Ames of Scotland Yard (Ewan Roberts) investigates all three incidents without success, so it's left to March to figure things out.
The Carr stories used are HOT MONEY, MURDER IN THE DRESSING ROOM, and THE NEW INVISIBLE MAN. Joining Karloff and Ewan Roberts are several dependable British performers including Richard Wattis, Sheila Burrell, Joan Sims, and Ronald Leigh-Hunt. The production values are minimal but if a quality print had been used, they would look better than they do. The same holds true for the audio. It's of variable quality but isn't that hard to follow. Karloff's voice, not surprisingly, comes off best. The background music is by conductor and arranger John Lanchberry. Episodes of the later TV series can be found online but their print quality is even worse.
