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Truly Dreadful Film

Strong and Moving!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is one of five mysteries Westerns star Bill Elliott did in the fifties. He returns as a Lieutenant in the L.A. Sheriff's Department but is now called Andy Doyle. I preferred this entry into the series over the first due to the superior supporting cast of Tom Drake, Beverly Garland, Lyle Talbot and Minerva Urecal. Also, this entry was more of a true mystery than Dial Red 0. The first mystery is whether Wallace Curtis' (Drake) mother committed suicide or was murdered, a mystery that Lt. Doyle resolves. But if murder, whodunit? A prime suspect would be Curtis since he was accidentally blinded by his mother. Drake and Beverly Garland, who plays Curtis' girlfriend, Phyllis, really shine in this movie. In fact, their characters are more memorable than Elliott's. Garland had a long television career and is noted for her groundbreaking although short lived television series "Decoy." A good mystery with a solid cast.

In "Meet Me in St. Louis", the boyishly handsome Tom Drake courted Judy Garland. Just 11 years later, he has aged a bit, and is in love with the womanly Beverly Garland. Is he also a brutal mother killer? Bill Elliott returns as the Hollywood detective who has his doubts, even with evidence pointing towards him. You see, his mother (discovered dead by asphyxiation in the very first scene) was the one responsible for his blindness, and Drake's nosy landlady (a very boisterous Minerva Urecal) gives Elliott the indication that his mother refused to use her medical insurance so Drake could have eye surgery to restore his sight. So the motive is there, but as clues are discovered, Elliott is unsure if the barely grieving son is the guilty party.While there are elements of film noir here, they are not as heavy as the film series' first entry ("Dial Red O"), although the set-up is definitely dark. There's enough mystery to give multiple facets to the characters played by Drake and Garland so you really don't know what side of the law they are really on. To bring in a femme fatal character (played by the ironically named Helene Stanton, not to be confused with Helene Stanley from "Dial Red O") and a rather sleazy businessman (Lyle Talbot) also adds a few more elements of film noir, but this is more traditional than the first entry.

In the second of Bill Elliott's quintet of police stories his character surname was changed from Flynn to Doyle and he was to stay Doyle for the rest of this series. Why it was changed God only knows, but these films were nothing that the public couldn't get on television.This time Lieutenant Doyle of the Los Angeles Police Department is called in on a case that looks like suicide. The woman's blind son Tom Drake called it in after discovering his mother's body and an open gas jet. The coroner even says it was suicide, but Elliott keeps investigating.Of course it was murder and of course Elliott first zeroes in on Drake because he needed his mother's insurance money for the operation to cure his blindness. But in the end it turns into something entirely different.Nice, but nothing special.

Det Andy Doyle (Bill Elliott) suspects that a suicide is actually a murder. He suspects the victim's son, Wallace (Tom Drake) who is blind and he pursues him until he gets to the truth..This is a good detective mystery that is well-acted by all. A special mention must go to Minerva Urecal who plays the nosy landlady and neighbour "Mrs Kelly" and Beverley Garland who plays Drake's girlfriend "Phyllis". Andy Doyle has a similar style to Columbo in that he keeps coming back to pester people. It's quite amusing although I'm not sure that this was intended. He's a right pain in the arse. But a pleasant one! He's very straight-talking but meets his match with several other straight-talkers in the cast, notably Mrs Kelly on their first meeting. She's quite funny.The storyline will keep you guessing as to what really occurred and it moves along at a nice pace. This was a surprisingly good discovery and I will be looking out for more of these Bill Elliott detective stories.