London Film Festival was great, as was Kevin Smith chatting away at the Indigo 02
London Film Festival was great, as was Kevin Smith chatting away at the Indigo 02
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‘I am The Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales, hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes… I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak’
So began every episode of The Whistler radio series that ran for 13 years between 1942-1955. The Whistler never actually appeared in the series but narrated every story and sometimes commented, omnisciently, at the criminals expense. Every episode consisted of some criminal act, normally committed by a regular joe, and how he/she was eventually caught, often caught out by some small thing they forgot about. The series was so popular it only took two years to get to the cinema screens in a series of B-movies.
The series as a whole was a strange one. The Whistler barely appeared, only seen in shadows and heard as a narrator, and the regular star actor, Richard Dix, played a different character in the seven of the eight films made between 1944 and 1948, the eighth had a different lead. A B-movie series with no real regular character is very
unusual, in fact I cannot think of another one. Bringing in Dix as a regular actor was obviously an attempt to counteract this and is must have worked, 8 films in 4 years is pretty good going.
The Mark of The Whistler is the second in The Whistler series of B-movies and was made in 1944. It again starred Richard Dix, the only connection, other than The Whistler himself, to the original movie.
This time around Dix plays Lee Nolan, a man who is down on his luck, broke and living on the streets. A fortuitous stroke of luck takes his eyes to a newspaper report about dormant bank accounts and in particular one in the name of Lee Nolan. He knows it isn’t his but decides that anyone who has left the money in an account for 20 years without touching it is unlikely to be able to care if he claims it himself. He researches the real owner of the money and assumes his identity. What he doesn’t take into consideration is the fact that persuading everyone that he is the other Lee Nolan may bring out the reasons he hasn’t been seen for so many years. There may be things that he doesn’t know about his namesake that could get him into deeper trouble than just being on the streets.
For a second time The Whistler brings us a tale of an everyday Joe who gets sucked into crime, albeit of his own accord, and shows us the consequences of such an action. Lee may feel that what he does is his only chance of getting off the streets and rebuilding his life, an admirable attitude in a sense, but what he doesn’t seem to even think about is that the money does belong to someone else and that he is stealing from them. This makes Lee a very unusual lead character, luckily though he does seem, at heart, to be a very nice chap. You do feel sympathy for the guy even if what he is doing is wrong.
A lot of this is down to Richard Dix, his portrayal of the down and so very nearly out Lee is very good. You believe he is in that situation at the start of the film and you can feel his sense of elation when he realises he has a very good chance of crawling out of the gutter. He even manages to make you believe he really is scared when he realises the situation he has got himself into.
Plot and story wise The Whistler series is much more like a film noir, before the style was given a name, than most of the normal B-movie film series. Most of the stories in other film series were crime based but were a lot more light hearted. This, and the previous Whistler movie, is quite dark. Not overly so but compared to the other B-movie character series it is very dark and unpredictable. Because the ‘hero’ is not a straight as an arrow good guy you are not entirely certain as to the outcome of the story, which is always a good think in a thriller.
The hour long length also works extremely well. It isn’t so short that everything is rushed and you cant follow what is going on easily but it also hasn’t been padded out with extraneous material just to make it longer and fill out time to make it feature length. You don’t feel that there is a wasted moment in the movie, or a sudden leap of logic used just to move the story along. What you get is a simple little tale told extremely well.
Once again the movie is directed by the soon to be well known William Castle. This one is a lot less based in dark and dingy streets than the first one so there is less of an opportunity for him to use shadows and darkness to create tension. This does mean that there is a lack of what seems to be his trademark edge of your seat scenes but he doesn’t put a foot wrong… no doubt one of the reasons why he went on to do better things.
For me The Whistler series is now up 2-0 in the ‘films well worth seeing scoreline and I really hope they carry on with stories of this quality for the rest of the series.
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