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Best movie ever!

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The early Crime Doctor films were a great training ground for Columbia's up and coming young actors and actresses. Like Lloyd Bridges and Lynn Merrick who in this entry play a young couple who call on Dr. Ordway to see if he can advise them on their future. Jimmy Trotter was once on trial for murder and is forever in Ordway's debt for getting him a new trial (for which he was found not guilty). Ordway is concerned that he has put himself in the same working situation that he was in before his trial but before he can see Burns to ask him why he took a chance on Jimmie who has been shunned by society, Burns is murdered.Jimmie has really nothing to do with this intricately plotted entry, he is just a red herring, there to throw the scent off the real murderer. It is a story of revenge, inheritances and pent up grievances. There is icy Mrs. Byrnes (Rose Hobart) who has only been married a year and a pixilated housekeeper, Miss Patricia (Virginia Brissac) whose dreams hold the key to the mystery. She knows that the cook isn't really a cook but Burn's old partner's daughter who, disguised as domestic help, has come to the house for answers about her missing father. Jimmy, of course, brings suspicion on himself by fleeing from the house when the police van rolls up. Ellen (Jimmie's fiancée) also throws suspicion on herself when Ordway gives her a piece of vital evidence yet within seconds she drops it and her apologies don't sound sincere. After that she always seemed to look guilty but maybe that was just a case of bad acting on Merrick's part.Miss Patricia's hypnosis sessions with the good doctor has all paths leading to a disused night club - the Golden Nights. Over 30 years before it was a thriving theatre and Patricia was the dancing star who overhears a quarrel between Burns and his partner, Fenton, who was eager to get home because his wife was about to have a baby.In the early Crime Doctor entries Ordway was very hands on (in the later entries he seemed to be around only as a help to the police) and in this one he is at the front of the action when everyone converges on the old theatre where a skeleton is found as well as a hidden safe that interests the murderer very much. Thomas E. Jackson had played slow talking Sergeant Flaherty in "Little Caesar" and received a life sentence where he was destined to play officers of the law for the next three decades - he was terrific though, as was Barton Maclane. This was Gloria Dickson's next to last role. She had given a sensitive performance in "They Won't Forget" (all the publicity went to Lana Turner though) but was destined for a career of tough dames. She was playing a woman of 31 in this movie and really looked it, however in reality she was only 26. Constance Worth (Ordway's receptionist) had a noteworthy career in Australia as Jocelyn Howarth where she had starring parts in her first films - "The Squatter's Daughter" and "The Silence of Dean Maitland".

***SPOILERS*** Going against his good friend Dr. Robert Ordway, Warren Baxter, advice the just found innocent accused murderer Jimmy Trotter,Llyod Briges, gets a job as the private secretary to Walter Burns, George Lynn! That's the same kind of job he had where he was accused of murdering his former employer Mr. Goulding that he stood on trial for . Wanting to marry his girlfriend Ellen Monroe, Lynn Merrick, Jimmy needed the income working from Burns to make the marriage a go.Dr. Ordway dropping into the Burns estate to check out how Timmy is doing he shocked to find out from the places housekeeper Patricia Cornwell, Virginia Brissac, that the man of the house, Mr. Burns, has just been found dead in his bed after having a sip of his evening coffee! Jimmy who's in the basement working on the Burns finances is totally in the dark to what happened to his boss but is soon to become the #1 suspect in his murder! That in the eyes of everyone,including the local police, in that Jimmy murdered before even though he was found innocent of the crime it's no stretch of the imagination that he murdered again! In fact it was Jimmy who was she last person to see Mr.Burns alive when he brought him the coffee that ended up killing him!On the run from the law Jimmy gets in touch with his just married wife Ellen begging her to keep him hidden until the storm blows over and the real killer of Mr. Burns is found! Dr. Ordway knowing in his gut that Jimmy is innocent goes out on his own to track down Mr.Burns' killer. This leads Dr. Ordway to the now shuttered down "Golden Nights Cafe" that Burns still owns after he relinquished all his real estate proprieties. It's at the "Golden Nights Cafe" that the truth is to be found to what lead up to Burns murder that involved the murder of the late Walter Burns' partner in the establishment George Fenton, Ray Walker, 30 years ago in 1912!It's doesn't take that long for Dr. Ordway to figure that there's a fly in the ointment in Burns murder and that being the Burns in house cook Mrs. Keppler, Gloria Dickson. Mrs. Keppler got her Job at the Burns estate with the help of housekeeper Mrs. Cornwall who in fact used to work at the "Golden Nights Cafe" and knew ****SPOILERS*** Mrs. Keppler's father George Fenton! It was Fenton who disappeared the very night together with $50,000.00 is cash belonging to Walter burns that Mrs. Keppler, who's really Evelyn Fenton Cartwright, his daughter was born!****SPOILERS*** As things soon turned out Dr.Ordway almost ended up getting murdered himself but with the help of his bloodhound like intuition soon tracked down who not only murdered Walter Burns but his brother Addison, Sam Flint, whom the killer strangled and made to look like a suicide. That's by Dr. Ordway tricking him into thinking that he's on to where the $50,000.00 is hidden and thus having him expos himself! That by trying to gun down Dr.Ordway with the doctor's gun that he purposely left for him to do it with that wasn't loaded!

Crime Doctor's Strangest Case, The (1943) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Second film in Columbia's Crime Doctor series has the psychiatrist (Warner Baxter) trying to solve the murder of a real estate agent. All fingers point to a man (Lloyd Bridges) who the crime doctor got off of murder charges the year before. This second film is certainly better than the first film but it's still not top-notch mystery. Baxter seems a little bit more at ease here but again, his performance isn't anything that really jumps off the screen. Bridges steals the film as the man who knows his past will make him look guilty here. The rest of the supporting cast is pretty forgettable as is most of the mystery but at 68-minutes it never gets too slow.

Dapper yet avuncular Warner Baxter, one of cinema's earliest Oscar winners (Best Actor in 1928's IN OLD ARIZONA), is put through his paces in this second entry in Columbia Pictures' CRIME DOCTOR series, based on the hit radio series. Baxter plays the title character, a.k.a. Dr. Ordway, an amnesiac who learned (in the first CRIME DOCTOR movie) he used to be a gang leader. Since then, Dr. Ordway's been using his knowledge of the criminal mind to become an in-demand psychiatrist. (My husband wondered if he was able to psych out his rival gangsters in his hoodlum life.) Baxter's testimony had helped acquit Jimmy Trotter (a young Lloyd Bridges), who'd been accused of poisoning his previous employer. Jimmy finds that even when you're proved innocent, it's tough to find a job when you've got "Accused Poisoner" on your resume. But does Jimmy follow Dr. Ordway's advice and get a fresh start with his new wife in a new town? No-o-o-o! Jimmy grabs the first job he can get, as assistant to a Realtor, only to find himself jobless and the prime suspect when the Realtor dies of poisoning. Dr. Ordway gets involved, and before you can say "It's old Mr. Withers! He wanted to get the land cheap!", he's up to his fedora in wily blondes disguised as brunette cooks, family skullduggery, a would-be George Gershwin who's careless with matches (played for comic relief by Jerome Cowan, best known in our household as Miles Archer in the classic 1941 version of THE MALTESE FALCON. Fellow ... FALCON alumnus Barton MacLane plays the police detective on the case), and an anxious middle-aged lady whose freaky dreams may be the key to the mystery. That dream sequence is surprisingly intense, with imagery of silhouetted girls plummeting off cliffs and hanging from nooses; it's almost like a welcome bit of comic relief when a sinister male silhouette holding a suitcase labeled "POISON" shows up! THE CRIME DOCTOR'S STRANGEST CASE may not be THE MALTESE FALCON, but Baxter is an ingratiating lead and the flick is an entertaining way to spend 68 minutes. Give it a look next time it turns up on Turner Classic Movies!