Columbia Noir #6: The Whistler

Columbia Noir #6: The Whistler
Blu-ray – Region B
Powerhouse Indicator
1944 – 1948
Starring Richard Dix, Michael Duane, Leslie Brooks
Written by Eric Taylor, William Castle
Photographed by James S. Brown Jr., Allen G. Siegler
Directed by William Castle, Lew Landers, George Sherman

A crime drama with a horror movie heart, The Whistler premiered on CBS Radio in May of 1942. Written and produced by John Donald Wilson, the first episode featured an ax murderer, his late, unlamented wife, and a haunted house. The episode’s creepy but predictable denouement would set the tone for the show’s 13 year run. The Whistler himself was an enigmatic presence whose melancholy theme song was the only clue to his real motives—yet wartime audiences, weary of escapist fare, were swayed by the program’s jaundiced worldview.

The Whistler‘s unexpected success led, almost inevitably, to a big screen adaptation which wallowed in the same dime novel ironies as the radio program. A total of eight films were produced at Columbia Pictures between 1944 and 1946 and Powerhouse has combined them all into one boxset, Columbia Noir #6: The Whistler. The collection accentuates the rushed, haphazard nature of the films, yet they can catch you off guard just the same—viewed in succession they’re like a long night of bad dreams; when one nightmare ends, another is waiting in the wings.

All but one of the films featured the silent screen star Richard Dix, and though his roles represented a cross section of archetypal Americans, from truck drivers to tycoons, his character remained the same; born under a bad sign and forever hounded by the “Whistler.” Dix, both the public actor and the private citizen, could not escape that shadowy figure any more than he could escape himself—the actor’s career-ending tailspin, what James Agee called “the desperation of thirst”, gives these penny dreadful noirs an unexpected resonance.

Before he turned his movies into amusement park rides, William Castle was a director of low budget crime films, but 1944’s The Whistler showed none of the mischievous spirit that gave the director’s The Tingler and House on Haunted Hill their spookhouse energy. Eric Taylor’s script is based on what must be the urtext for so many future noirs: Jules Verne’s Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, the oft-told tale of a man who hires his own executioner. It’s a fitting introduction to Dix’s tenure—he plays Earl Conrad, a man who lives life waiting for the other shoe to drop. J. Carrol Naish is the tireless assassin circling his prey, and in a role that defines “thankless”, the exquisite Gloria Stuart plays Conrad’s warmhearted secretary.

Castle would direct three more entries in the Whistler saga including that same year’s The Mark of the Whistler. Dix plays a drifter who impersonates a missing person in order to cash in on an unclaimed bank account. Written by George Bricker (the bizarre horror-comedy Sh! The Octopus), it’s the first hint that these deadly serious melodramas were playing by comic book rules; the storylines might run off the rails at any moment, character motivation could flip without warning, and preposterous coincidences begin to pile up like old newspapers. And the plot holes, oh, the plot holes. If it seems as if the filmmakers were making it up as they went along, look no further than 1945’s The Power of the Whistler directed by Lew Landers.

Dix plays William Everest, an amnesiac who finds a friend in Jean Lang, a sometime fortune-teller who peers into this confused gentleman’s future and sees nothing but trouble. She’s prescient, alright—it turns out this well-dressed ladies man is no gentleman, a revelation that sends this rather sanguine mystery off the deep end.

You can’t say it’s boring, which is more than can be said of Castle’s follow-up, 1945’s Voice of the Whistler—a seaside romance destined for a watery grave. The film drums up its own share of oddball plot contrivances, but not enough to make a dent in what Sinatra called ennui, but we call boredom. Dix plays a friendless industrialist on his last legs who retreats to a lonely lighthouse with a nurse named Joan Martin. This blonde and beautiful caregiver is played by Lynn Merrick, the veteran cowgirl of dozens of Republic westerns. She gives the lonely millionaire a reason to live but her fiancé has other ideas and—well, you know what they say about the best laid murder plans.

Mysterious Intruder would be Castle’s last hurrah in the Whistler series, a conventional detective thriller with Dix as an unscrupulous gumshoe on the trail of an inheritance. He’ll bend any rule to get his hands on the treasure: two rare wax cylinders from songstress Jenny Lind—a songbird who was obscure even in 1945. George Sherman, the director for Republic’s The Lady and the Monster, took over for The Secret of the Whistler about a greedy artist whose wife can’t die soon enough. Dix is the kept man looking forward to his dearly beloved’s inheritance while platinum bombshell Leslie Brooks undulates on the sidelines. The Ice Princess Brooks would get a chance to finesse her bad girl bona fides in 1948’s Blonde Ice, a low budget B in which she played a society columnist who’s also an energetic murderess.

William Clemens directed The Thirteenth Hour with Dix as Steve Reynolds, a trucker whose life goes off the rails along with his rig: he’s accused of multiple murders  including the drive-by killing of a jealous cop. Against all odds, Reynolds is exonerated, and even the Whistler seems surprised by this rare outcome; “…you were lucky…fate was kind to you.” The following year Dix suffered a heart attack that signaled a sharp decline in the actor’s health. He died in 1949.

D. Ross Lederman directed the final entry in the saga, 1948’s The Return of the Whistler. The ghosts of Notorious and The Man Who Knew Too Much haunt this capricious thriller about a lopsided love triangle: a man, a woman and her dead husband. Michael Duane is Ted Nichols, a civil engineer with an unexpected flair for fist fights—a talent that comes in handy when his fiancée (played by Lenore Albert) is abducted by a band of possibly shady characters.

The movie is positively Hitchcockian in its twists and turns thanks to an inventive story by Cornell Woorich and though it suffers in just about every comparison to an actual Hitchcock film, it’s an enjoyable time-killer with—hold on to your hats—a happy ending.

Powerhouse has performed wonders on these warhorses—the transfers are near immaculate and the prints are in great shape save for occasional light scratches. Among the extras are commentaries from film historians Eloise Ross, Josh Nelson, and the late Lee Gambin. Kim Newman contributes A Whistle-Stop Tour, an overview of the Whistler films, but the cherry on top is an exclusive 120-page book with a new essay from Tim Lucas, an archival interview with  Dix, and a extract from director William Castle’s autobiography.

The complete rundown can be found here at the Powerhouse site.