Stars of the Silver Screen : 'Crime Doctor' series 1943-1949

"Crime Doctor" (1943) - 'Oráculo do crime'

The Crime Doctor's "Strangest Case" (1943) - 'Dilema de médico'

"Shadows in the Night" (1944) (aka The Crime Doctor's 'Rendezvous') - 'Sombras da noite'

Crime Doctor's "Warning" (1945) - 'O crime perfeito'

The Crime Doctor's "Courage" (1945) - 'O médico destemido'

"Just Before Dawn" (1946) (aka 'Exposed' by the Crime Doctor)

The Crime Doctor's "Man Hunt" (1946) - 'Luva reveladora'

"The Millerson Case" (1947) (aka The Crime Doctor's 'Vacation')

The Crime Doctor's "Gamble" (1947)

The Crime Doctor's "Diary" (1949)

John Litel, Harold Huber & Don Costello.

Psychiatrist Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter) comes to the aid of former client Jimmy Trotter (Lloyd Bridges), whose new employer, Walter Burns, is found poisoned. Having cleared Jimmy of a similar charge earlier, Ordway investigates. When the Burns family cook is revealed as an impostor, Ordway hypnotizes the housekeeper to unearth a complex web of family and business connections, revolving around the disappearance 30 years earlier of Burns' partner, and the theft of $50,000.

Warner Baxter, Lynn Merrick (Ellen Trotter) & Lloyd Bridges (Jimmy Trotter).

Nina Foch & Baxter in 'Shadows in the night'

'Just before dawn' ('O caso da agulha envenenada').

Warner Baxter & Martin Kosleck.

Baxter, Lupita Tovar as Dolores Bragga & Anthony Caruso as Miguel Bragga in 'Courage'.

The film starts by showing a young couple on their honeymoon. The new bride insists on going to the edge of a rocky cliff. Her husband (Stephen Crane as Gordon Carson) wants her to move away from the edge because his first wife died in an accident during the first week of their marriage just a year ago. She hit her head while swimming, it was ruled an accident, but the deceased bride's brother still thought it was murder. The couple argue. During the argument, Gordon's new wife pulls away from him, loses her footing and falls off of the cliff to her death. The sheriff calls it an accident, but the brother of the first wife believes that now Gordon is some kind of maniac that enjoys marrying women and then killing them in ways that look like accidents. His parting words to the sheriff are "Who will it be next year?".

The answer to that question is Hillary Brooke as Kathleen Carson. She interrupts Dr. Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter) the psychiatrist on a vacation to sunny California that he is taking on doctor's orders. Kathleen has only been married one day and believes her husband could be insane. She asks Ordway to dinner to observe her husband.

There are quite a few people at the dinner besides Ordway and the Carsons, and one of the servants is actually the first bride's brother who apparently has been popping up all over the place for the last year urging Gordon to either commit himself to an asylum or commit suicide before he kills someone else. Gordon is obviously troubled, retires to his study alone, and a shot rings out. Ordway and crime novelist Jeff Jerome (Jerome Cowan) burst in and find a gun near the body of Gordon, but the gun is cold. Somebody has tried to cover the murder of Gordon Carson with a fake suicide. But who could murder Gordon when he is locked inside his study and there are bars on the only window?

Dr. Ordway finds his help unwanted by the local police, but he can't help coming across clue after clue. For one, the newly widowed Kathleen disappears right after the murder, hiding at the castle like home of the mysterious Braggas (Anthony Caruso & Lupita Tovar).

A new will leaving everything of Gordon's to Kathleen was made out the day before Gordon's death. As for the mysterious Braggas, nobody has ever seen them out after dark, there is a portrait of them that is apparently 300 years old, they keep coffins in their basement, and they perform a dancing act at a local club in which one family member disappears and then just as mysteriously reappears. Did I mention that Miguel Bragga is in love with Kathleen? Could a vampire that can disappear and reappear at will possibly be the murderer?

We are presented with a quite weird set of people to mull over, for one of them did the deed. Was it the frothing brother of the dead 1st wife, the 3rd wife and rich widow Hilary Brooke, the dancing brother & sister vampires, the intense young man, the bumbling cabinet maker Lloyd Corrigan on loan from Boston Blackie, the irreplaceable butler, or odds-on Jerome Cowan? Police Inspector Emory Parnell had his work cut out, but Warner Baxter as Ordway was as unflappable as ever in working it all out.

A series of baffling twists and turns shed little light on whatever the outcome of the case will be and the explanations that come forth during the film's last five minutes are less than satisfying, nor are they the least bit credible. Watch and find out in this atmospheric entry to the crime doctor series. There are more suspects than I mention here, so it is not so cut and dried as you might think. Favorite bit: Baxter and Cowan travelling through club sandwiches and beer at the nightclub to make amends for their interrupted dinner party.

Warner Baxter as Dr. Robert Ordway

Hillary Brooke as Kathleen Carson

Jerome Cowan as Jeffers 'Jeff' Jerome

Mark Roberts as Bob Rencoret

Lloyd Corrigan as John Massey

Emory Parnell as Police Captain Birch

Stephen Crane as Gordon Carson

Charles Arnt as Butler

Anthony Caruso as Miguel Bragga

Lupita Tovar as Dolores Bragga