The Unknown

The third and last film based on the I Love A Mystery series has San Francisco PIs Jim Bannon and Barton Yarborough accompanying Jeff Donnell for the reading of andma's will at the Martin Family estate. The Martins are an old southern family in the Tennessee Williams/William Faulkner tradition and they are on creepy bunch.

Donnell has been raised away from them in a boarding school all her life and she's now meeting her family including her unbalanced mother Karen Morley for the first time. There's grandma s will to be read, but a whole lot of strange things going on including one real murder.

Good thing Donnell has teo {Is with her as Bannon and Yarborough get to the bottom of things,

Nice if cheaply made mystery with some horror overtones.

Very odd to see someone state that Jeff Donnell is the biggest-name draw here, given that the star is Karen Morley. Granted, Morley wasn't the biggest movie star ever, but, I'd think that Dinner at Eight and Scarface alone would provide her a bigger profile than Donnell. And she also managed to appear in a few other special, noteworthy flicks, such as The Mask of Fu Manchu, Gabriel over the White House and Vidor's great, if flawed, Our Daily Bread. Even The Sin of Madelon Claudet and Mata Hari.

Plus, Morley's pretty boss in this film. She really anchors it and makes her character quite a sympathetic one. It really is her film.

As for the rest -- it's a fun, minor little B-mystery with nice horror touches. As are the other I Love a Mystery flicks. Nothing great, but certainly fun for mystery, horror and B-movie fans, the kind of small, old, and old-fashioned movie that deservedly endears itself to certain kinds fans (I'm one of them).

Plus, this one had really nice Southern Gothic atmosphere. I love it when a cheap film can effectively create and define a relatively small space and generate a real (especially spooky) atmosphere. (Can you tell that I'm a big-ass Val Lewton fan? Or that Horror Hotel/City of the Dead is one of my very favorite horror movies?)

I just saw all three of the ILaM flicks on TCM the other early AM and enjoyed the other two similarly. Fairly ambitious in ideas and plot twists, far less so in their makers' ability to turn those thoughts into fully-realized cinema – and fun, old-fashioned treats, all in all. Bannon is hardly a great actor, but he sure as heck is nice to look at, and Yarborough has his moments. And each film has a few special bonuses in its "case-specific" cast: I Love a Mystery has the great Nina (My Name is Julia Ross) Foch and legendary screen creep George Macready; The Devil's Mask has Anita ("Ginger's Mom") Louise and Frank Mayo, an actor who intrigued me greatly just a while back on TCM with his terrific starring performance in Vidor's keen silent melodrama, Wild Oranges (talk about creating and defining a small, atmospheric space!), making me wish he'd been given so much more to do in his career; The Unknown has not only has Morley and Donnell but also, for the Val Lewton fan, The Leopard Man's James Bell!

Matthew

Unknown, The (1946)

** (out of 4)

The third and final film in Columbia's short-lived "I Love a Mystery" series. This time out Jack (Jim Bannon) and Doc (Barton Yarborough) travel to the South with a woman who claims to be the granddaughter of a woman who recently died. The will is about to be read and those who were expecting more money aren't too thrilled with the new family member and soon they're trying to uncover a secret from the past. Having now seen all three entries in this series I can easily say this is a major step up from the second film (THE DEVIL'S MASK) but not quite as good as the first (I LOVE A MYSTERY). I think this films biggest flaw is that there's simply way too much story and too many mysteries trying to be solved. The film starts off with a good ten-minute prologue that sets up various things that are going to happen throughout the film. I thought the opening was handled very well but the rest of the film didn't really build on it. Once in the present day it takes way too long for all the characters to be introduced and in the end the mystery just has too much fluff and not enough interesting things. Both Bannon and Yarborough slide into their roles quite nicely, although I'm sure there are going to be some that won't enjoy their brand of "comedy" so to speak. The real star is is Karen Morley who even manages to get the top billing. I thought she delivered a fine performance and really made her character quite interesting. The film's Southern settings are actually pretty good and we're really given a dark and Gothic look in this old mansion. There are many horror trappings mixed in with the comedy and drama but in the end THE UNKNOWN simply doesn't have strong enough of a screenplay to make everything work.

"The Unknown" (1946) is a surprisingly entertaining and atmospheric mystery inspired by the "I LOVE A MYSTERY" radio program. It is actually one of three Republic B-movies based on the program, all featured straight arrow detective Jack Packard and his corn-pone partner Doc Long (Barton Yarborough).

In "The Unknown" Jack and Doc are hired to escort young Nina Arnold (Jeff Donnell) to her ancestral mansion in Kentucky for the reading of her grandmother's will. The twist is that Nina was placed in foster care as an infant and will be meeting her mother Rachel (Karen Morley) for the first time. The mansion is spooky with her grandfather's body buried behind the fireplace and a mausoleum full of seemingly restless ancestors located outside the house.

I was very surprised at how well written and nicely paced this film was. It's a good yarn with a lot of misdirection and some unexpected plot elements.

Although Bannon and Yarborough are the series regulars, top billing for "The Unknown" went to Morley. Deservedly so as it is clearly her film, she plays an addled woman who never recovered from the loss of her baby daughter. She keeps a baby crib in her bedroom and hears a baby crying throughout the film. The was probably Morley's best performance, shortly after she fell victim to the HUAC hearings and worked very little in the industry from that point.

The other two "I LOVE A MYSTERY" thrillers are also quite entertaining but neither has anything to match Morley's performance.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

The dominant matron of a wealthy southern family prevents her daughter Rachel (Karen Morley) from running off with the man (Robert Wilcox) she has secretly married. There's an argument; there's a struggle for a revolver; the girl's father is accidentally killed; the groom flees and the girl is stuck—to spend the next many years alone in the decaying mansion with her mother, her two bitter brothers, and a butler whose devotion to the mother runs dark and deep. So begins The Unknown—in a lengthy introductory scene narrated years later in ghostly tones by the finally deceased mother.

Jumping to the present day, we see Jim Bannon and Barton Yarborough arriving on the scene with another young woman—Jeff Donnell as Nita, the now grown daughter of the cruelly separated couple of the opening scene. Bannon and Yarborough are, of course, Jack Packard and Doc Long, back for a third and final appearance as the detectives from I Love a Mystery.

The mystery this time around involves strange baby cries from behind the walls, the unbalanced Rachel (played by a sufficiently disturbed Morley), a family crypt and house full of busy secret passages, and our detectives' efforts to present Nita as a legitimate heir to the place—efforts that are quickly expanded to include keeping her safe and sane.

The suspense develops nicely; the atmosphere crawls with sinister shadows and inscrutable, furtive glances and creepy noises; suspicion is cast cleverly over an assortment of possible villains.

Short and sweet, The Unknown is hardly nightmare-inducing, but it's certainly a fast-moving and entertaining little picture. –Call me a sucker, but I'll admit to goose bumps running up my spine in at least one scene.