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.

After reading those comments by other viewers I was prepared for the worst, but I enjoyed this movie more than I expected to; that organ music in the background is a real scream. By the way, has anyone other than myself noticed that the outside shot of the Marsden Building is flopped (printed in reverse)? Try reading the street number or the name Marsden over the entryway! This film was apparently shot back-to-back with MASK OF THE DRAGON, which has an almost identical cast, including hapless Sid Melton who is saddled with badly-timed "comic relief" scenes in both films, which is a pity since Melton was a talented comic when given good material; fans of the Gomer Pyle TV series may remember Melton as a bumbling con artist in several episodes. Appearing as a brutal thug in both films is huge wrestler "Killer" Karl Davis, known as the man with the world's coldest stare. (Davis also made an unforgettable zombie in the unsettling opening scene of 1955's CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN; watch for it!!)

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.