FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

utgard14 Last of the Whistler movies and the only one without star Richard Dix. The plot here is about a man (Michael Duane) whose fiancée (Lenore Aubert) disappears from her hotel the night before they are to be married. He investigates along with the assistance of a private detective. Michael Duane is okay but it's easy to see why the series didn't continue with him. Lenore Aubert is lovely. Richard Lane, usually playing Inspector Farraday in the Boston Blackie series, plays the private eye here. Great character actor Olin Howland stands out as a hotel clerk. Not a bad B movie but missing the screen presence of someone like Richard Dix. Still worth checking out if you catch it on TV one of these days.

GManfred "The Whistler" really didn't go anywhere, he's here, whistling his mournful dirge and giving us the lowdown on the case at hand. The difference is that Richard Dix was replaced by Michael Duane as the main character in this, the last of the series.The good news is that this one is an entertaining, spellbinding story for 50 mysterious minutes. The bad news is that the picture lasts for 60 minutes, and begins to fall apart towards the end. I often think that authors and screenwriters start with a terrific idea for a story and then can't figure out how to end it (exhibit A is "Harvey").I thought Michael Duane was a good main figure and did a creditable job in this film, but then disappears soon after from motion pictures. Boston Blackie fans will recognize Richard Lane, who played Insp. Farraday in that series. This was a good entry in "The Whistler" series, before losing some credibility in the last 10 minutes. In fact, it was very good, for the first 50.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Last of "The Whistler" Columbia Pictures series and the only one without Richard Dix has to do with a scheme to get a young widow out of the picture in order to collect her husbands inheritance.Arriving from far off France Alice Dupres Barkley, Lenore Aubent, got very disillusioned with her late husband's, a US transport pilot who was killed on D-Day, family in that their resentful of her marrying him and now a threat, being that Mr. Barkley was the sole recipient, to the Barkley family's vast holdings. Alice meets young engineer and armature doctor, he fixes Alices sprained ankle, Ted Nichols (Michael Duane) and both fall in love with each other and within two weeks she and Ted decided to get married. It's then that strange and unexplained things started to happen to the two lovebirds that seemed to be purposely preventing them to tie the knot.Driving out in the country, in a driving thunderstorm, to get married Ted & Alice are hampered with the fact that the minster who's to preform the wedding ceremony couldn't make it because all the roads to the chapel were washed out. Deciding to stay at a local hotel until morning, when the minster is expected to show up, Alice mysteriously disappears when Ted spending the night sleeping in his disabled, by someone hired by the Barkley's, car shows up to meet her that morning. Being that the two were not married the hotel clerk(Fred F. Sears), a man of conscience, refused to have them spend the night together.Confused and not knowing what to do Ted is approached by private eye Gaylord Traynor, Richard Lane, who offers to help. It was an offer that Ted,who needed all the help he could get, couldn't refuse and in the end despite Traynors true intentions, which weren't at all helpful, reunited him and Alice.Alice is used as a pawn in this game of both money and power on the part of her greedy and scheming in-laws. Trying to get Alice out of the way by just airbrushing her out of the Berkley family's history wasn't as easy as the family (Brother Charlie, James Cardwell, Sister Hulskamp, Sarah Padden, and Moma Bradley, Ann Shoemaker) at first thought it would be.Ted after being knocked out cold by Traynor, who was secretly working for the Bradley family, who took off with Alice's and her late husbands wedding papers or certificate later realized that he was being used by the Bradley's to get poor Alice out of the way. Charlie Sister Hulskump and Moma plan to put Alice away and out of their lives for good as an incurable mental patent at the Woodlawn Sanitarium.It takes a lot of patience as well as legwork for Ted to finally track down Alice but he does it by faking it in trying to prove to the sanitarium administrator Bertram H. Grantland M.D, Wilton Graff, that he's just as sick as any of the other patients under his care. Ted get's to save Alice just before she's to be put under, by Bertram H. Grantland M.D, with a super-strong seductive and locked away, with her memory being erased with the use of shock treatment, for the rest of her life.****SPOILER ALERT**** It turns out that the at first villain in the movie Traynor turns out to be the good guy. Traynor realizing that he's been snookered by Charlie Barkley & Co to stiff Alice, as well as Ted, out of the Barkley inheritance gets in touch with the police who in the end put an end to Brother Charlie and friends, or relatives, grandiose plan to get their hands on the Barkley fortune. As for Ted & Alice they finally kiss and say I do as the long awaited minister, who was stuck in traffic during the storm, finally shows up and marries them.

Spondonman This was the eighth and final Columbia Whistler film and the only one without Richard Dix who had retired from movies and was to die the following year. It's still a competent thriller, the machine carried on without him perfectly, but – something was missing: Dix! The stories in the Whistler series were always interesting, sometimes brilliant, the screenplays often noir always atmospheric, but it wasn't only the Whistler himself that hung it all together on screen, Dix did too.Young couple stepping out for a whole fortnight get the urge to marry in the pouring rain but are thwarted when the potential bride first disappears then is discovered to already be married before she apparently goes mad. Is the potential groom put off, even when the private dick he's hired to find her suddenly slugs him and lams, or is love blind? Who's twisting who is the question. Michael Duane in his penultimate film is OK if a bit of a wimp, lovely Lenore Aubert's finest moments came next film in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, and Richard Lane was wonderful as ever on loan from Boston Blackie. Also the only outing where the Whistler himself must have got wet from slouching about in the rain, unless he got sprayed with sea foam in Voice.A lot happened in this last hour, well worth watching over and over again as usual to fans of the genre like me. The Whistler radio series begun in 1942 carried on until 1955 clocking up nearly 700 half hour shows, nearly all of which are available on mp3 and based upon what I've heard so far nearly all of which are well worth listening to as well.