The Mark of the Whistler

This was the second of the eight self-contained Whistler films starring Richard Dix, still playing a goodie but this time with more bad in him. Also after the first my second favourite entry in the series.

Lee Nugent – mark that name – is a human derelict who hits upon the idea of impersonating a man whose bank is advertising for him to appear and claim his dormant bank account. He doesn't initially know how much money is involved but when he does get it he gives Porter Hall a fair price for the loan of his suits … Things start to get complicated when he bumps into Limpy the match seller and a determined newspaper reporter played by Janis Carter – just before she played a determined newspaper reporter in One Mysterious Night! Favourite bits: Signing his name but blotting his middle initial in the bank; Some of the sinister scenes with John Calvert chasing after Dix. The overall moral is Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide, with Dix you can believe it too. With one twist after another the last one is a little twee but still effective.

No cgi cartoonery, swearing, sex or violence, just b&w and an intricate story well acted make for a very pleasant hour.

Lee Selfridge Nugent (Richard Dix) is introduced as someone who once had power and wealth, but has lost that over time, and due to bad health cannot hold a job and has become a homeless hobo. He looks at a newspaper left on a park bench and sees an ad for unclaimed money at a local bank. The accounts are all said to be over a hundred dollars (about 2000 dollars in 2021 money), and one of the people who has a dormant account left it in trust for her son, who is also named Lee Nugent.

So Lee does some reconnaissance and gets enough backstory on Lee Nugent that he feels he can impersonate him and get his mother's money. But nobody seems to know what happened to the actual Lee Nugent past fifteen years of age. Lee does pull it off. A brief investigation by the bank and the money is his. But it is thirty thousand dollars not just one hundred. In 2021 that would be about 600K.

But Lee's conscience bugs him because he KNOWS the money is not his. Before he gets the money he thinks every cop or guard who stares at him must know about his fraud. But after he gets the money he is a bit too confident. And then he starts noticing strangers staring at him who are not cops or guards. Is he imagining things, or are they wanting to rob him, or is it something more? Watch and find out.

Well directed by William Castle, the camera gets good close ups of the people involved, detracting from the somewhat cheap sets that poverty row Columbia could afford, and allowing the viewer to feel the claustrophobia that Lee is feeling.

This Whistler entry has some great plot twists, as do most of them. Plus The Whistler himself narrates more of the story than he does in later entries. I'd highly recommend this one.

A drifter claims money held in an old bank account for a namesake of his. Soon he finds himself the target of two men who turn out to be the sons of the man's old partner, who was sent to prison because of a conflict with him over the money in that account.

The second in the low budget Whistler series from Columbia but, at just under an hour's running time, this is a surprisingly watchable film. The storyline flows and there are several twists along the way. Stars Richard Dix.

Like all but the final installment of the Whistler films, this one stars Richard Dix...and just like in several others, he's a bit of a scum-bag. When the film begins, he is a drifter and happens upon an interesting con. He's just learned about a tragic fire back in 1912 and a surviving boy was left without a family following this. A few years later, this Lee Nugent disappeared from his foster home...and no one's seen him since. However, there is a dormant bank account and armed with some inside information, the drifter decides to impersonate Nugent and collect. But how much? And, is it possible without any documentation that he'll be able to pull off this scam?! And, might he be walking into a deadly situation by claiming to be Nugent? Well, like in "Date Night", the anti-hero in this film learns the hard way that taking another's identity is not all it's cracked up to be!

All in all, this is an exciting installment...though what occurs to 'Nugent' isn't exactly a surprise...even the surprise twist at the end. However, the acting is nice and the direction likewise. Because of this, it makes for a diverting B movie. Not one of the best in the series but still quite good...and worth seeing.

This is the second of the Whistler films, having two titles: THE MARK OF THE WHISTLER and THE MARKED MAN. It has a superb plot written by the famous mystery writer Cornell Woolrich. And Richard Dix, who plays the lead, intensifies the suspense by his brilliant portrayal of a man who impersonates another man of the same name in order to access a dormant account at a bank. He only discovers that the dormant account exists by randomly picking up a newspaper in which an ad has been placed for claimants to dormant accounts to come forward. His name is Lee Nugent, and so is the man whose money was left to him in trust by his mother many years ago and never claimed. Dix does research and, reassured that laying claim is probably safe, approaches the bank with a loan from a pawn broker to pay for a new suit (as Dix is penniless). But nothing in a film noir is ever simple, which is, one might say, the same as with Life. There are unknown factors in the background, and some begin to stir. Will the bank hand over the money? Will Dix get away with it? How much money is there, anyway, since the bank won't say. Events get more and more tense. This is a really excellent suspense film.