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.

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 entry is the best in this above-average series from Columbia. All the stories had intriguing premises and clever twists, but this one even more so, since it was based on an original by Cornell Woolrich, that master of gloom, fate and paranoia. You definitely won't see the last curveball coming. There's a nice element of "Crime and Punishment"-like guilt infiltrating the protagonist's shady exploits, although it's not directly responsible for his downfall. The material is the essence of noir, but Castle filmed it straightforwardly for the most part. In his early days before churning out his gimmicky horror pics, he knew how to add telling little touches and include fascinatingly offbeat characters on the margins. All the same, one can't help thinking that this might have been a low-budget noir masterpiece along the lines of "Blind Spot" or "Fear in the Night" if the style had been more doom-laden and shadowy.

The mark of the whistler 1944

Film noir, by definition, deals with crime and that too in a stylised way. These films galore in Hollywood in the 40s to 60s period. One such film is this.

The story is narrated by an incognito narrator (the whistler) and is about a stone broke man who gets into the hotseat due to his greed for easy money. The storyline is simple, characters are very few and the filming is seamless. The suspense is kept intact, though it isn't a 'whodunit'. The protagonist gets his share for his part on the day of reckoning and there is one major suprise in the end too. Roughly an hour long, this drama is worth watching and you wouldn't regret it.