The Mysterious Mr. Valentine

"Janet" (Linda Stirling) gets a puncture and seeks the assistance of "Armstrong" (Tristram Coffin) incurring the chagrin of that man's rather jealous wife "Rita" (Barbara Wooddell). To make matters worse, she now drives off in the wife's car only to collide with another car and then find herself embroiled in a previous, and fatal, hit-and-run with the partner of the husband of the wife of the car she is driving. Still with me? Now she engages the help of PI "Morgan" (William Henry) to try to get to the bottom of an internecine mystery that involves fraud, insurance and mysterious women. It packs quite a lot of plot into an hour, but the acting and the dialogue is banal at best with very basic production values that smack more of television than cinema. It probably looked OK at a drive-in when the audience maybe had better things to do, and it really is pretty instantly forgettable fayre.

The Mysterious Mr. Valentine packs a whole truckload of plot into its first few minutes. A sudden blowout forces a young woman (Linda Stirling) off a deserted road late at night; a tumbledown factory nearby holds the only prospect for help. A chemist inside seems distracted, even nervous, as well he might, since a body that was lying in the back laboratory amid the flasks and retorts has up and vanished. Nonetheless, he produces a bottle (of hooch) to offer Stirling a hospitable drink. Suddenly, as they toast, the door bursts open and a flashbulb goes off; the chemist's wife, it seems, has her suspicions. Scared witless, Stirling bolts outside and tears off in the nearest car, only to run a man down. But we know something that she does not: It's the corpse that was in the back room....

Too bad the rest of the movie, a Republic crime programmer, doesn't live up to its breakneck opening. It looks surprisingly good, though, with a noirish fondness for crisp, intricate shadows. The story involves a brash, smart-mouthed private eye (William Henry) who tries to help Stirling locate the `Mr. Valentine' who's blackmailing her about the hit-and-run with a series of unsettling phone calls. The clean cinematography, unfortunately, belies a muddy plot, with more characters and subplots than its brevity can accommodate. It still generates a passing amount of fun and suspense, and stands as an example of how the light mystery programmers so popular in the late1930s came to take on the more freighted style of the late 1940s.

I admit I lost the thread of this plot after its powerful first ten minutes of this film from Republic Studios.

A young woman, Janet Spencer (Linda Stirling) has a blowout. She walks to a nearby chemical company to use the phone. The chemist inside (Tristram Coffin) is a distracted wreck. Turns out there's a body in the back room, except it's gone.

Just then, the chemist's wife Rita (Barbara Woodell) walks in with a photographer, claiming to have found her husband in a compromising position with Linda.

Linda beats the hell out of there, jumps into a car, and takes off. Then she hits a body. Two men emerge from another car and tell her it wasn't her fault; she was probably blinded by their headlights. They offer to take the man to the hospital.

Linda doesn't know it, but the body was that of the dead man who disappeared from the lab. Soon, she finds herself being blackmailed about the accident by a "Mr. Valentyne" who sends her notes demanding money.

Other people seem to have enjoyed this noirish film better than I did. It does start out as a noir but ends up as a fairly normal crime drama. Linda Stirlng is very pretty and as the detective who helps her, William Henry does a good job. Nice to see Virginia Christine as such a young woman in this. She later became the Folgers coffee lady, Mrs. Olsen.

Sometimes compelling, often confusing private eye flick from Republic. What is or isn't noir is debated a lot by classic film fans. You can see some of that in the reviews here. It's a bit like the horror vs thriller debate I guess. I don't see that it matters all that much. There's nothing in this that screams film noir to me but I could say the same for a lot of crime pictures that are widely accepted as staples of the genre. This is a so-so B movie from a "lesser" studio that could surprise you from time to time with real gems. This is not one of those times. If you're like me and you sometimes feel like you've seen everything from the 40s, give it a shot. It won't likely become a favorite but maybe you'll enjoy it for what it is.

Not as good as Charlie Chan or Bogey, but entertaining for an hour with an interesting plot. Other than that; cliche performances with stereotype roles. Dialogue corny.