The Whistler (1944)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

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

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

One of William Castle's early directing jobs is this entry level drama that would lead to a popular series for Columbia Pictures. Richard Dix starred in all but one; and each time as a different character. THE WHISTLER has Dix playing Earl C. Conrad, a successful business man who is consumed with the guilt of his wife's death. Conrad just can't come to grasps with continuing on and cancels his life insurance policy. The despondent man doesn't have the gumption to commit suicide so he hires a hit man(J. Carrol Naish)to kill him within a week. When Conrad is notified by telegram that his wife is actually still alive; he is not so eager to welcome his own death and must find the mystery man he paid to kill him.A suspenseful thriller that sustains your interest from the very beginning. And there is the eerie sound of The Whistler(Otto Forrest).The finale is not especially unexpected. Worth watching again.Rounding out the cast: Gloria Stuart, William Benedict, Alan Dinehart, Kermit Maynard, Pat O'Malley and Charles Coleman.

Richard Dix is a depressed businessman who, through a third party, hires an unknown hit man to kill him. When the reason for his depression disappears, Dix prowls around looking for the unknown murderer, trying to stop him. Other movies have used a similar formula, most recently "Bulworth." Dix is a little soggy but otherwise bland, with the voice of an experienced actor. Gloria Stuart is the secretary who loves him and hers is an appealing presence. Pretty, too. J. Carrol Naish is the would-be murderer who first shows up as an annoying and somewhat comic life insurance salesman but, thereafter, is unidimensional as the determined killer who never smiles, is usually interrupted in his attempts to plug Dix, and who is given to reading books with titles like, "The Pleasures of Necrophilia" -- I mean "necrophobia." He conceives the idea of scaring Dix to death. It sounds silly but under the right conditions it can work. Read my ground-breaking article, "Doomed Status", in "Psychiatric Quarterly," where all will be explained.It's a minor B feature based on the popular radio series. "B Feature", as in this case, usually translates into "no time, no money, little talent." The sets are spare. There is, though, one fascinating and repellant scene in a flop house. Twenty-five cents buys a sort of cot for the night. You must watch out for cooties and thieving neighbors. Director Castle makes the most of the scene.I don't know exactly how it's possible for some people to compare this unpretentious, careless minor feature to Val Lewton's psychological horror stories over at RKO. This is a sometimes diverting B movie. Lewton's work was sometimes gripping and always meticulously executed.

(There are Spoilers) In an almost empty bar on the city docks businessman Earl C. Conrad, Richard Dix, has a prearranged meeting with this stranger who's to get a "job" done for him. The stranger a local hoodlum named Lefty Vigran, Don Costello, is to set up a hit on someone that Conrad want's iced by no later that Friday. What Lefty doesn't know, since everything between the two is done on a no name basis, is that the person that Conrad want's to be hit is non other then himself!Dark creepy and unnerving suspense drama that has a man wanting to commit suicide but not having the guts to do it himself. Hiring a hit-man to do him in Conrad's contact Lefty, who it turns out is a fugitive cop killer, ends up getting gunned down by the police resisting arrest moments after he leaves Conrad drinking away his troubles in the bar. Lefty having his runner the deft mute, who reads only Superman comic books, William Benedict get the message, with the $5,000.00 fee, to the hit man's, J. Carrol Naish, hotel room put everything into motion to get Earl C. Conrad the wish that he's been hoping for. A death wish Conrad had since he, in his confused and disturbed mind, left his wife Claire to drown in a boating accident in the Pacific Ocean.It's later that a shocked Conrad gets the "good news" from his secretary, who's secretly in love with him, Alice Walker( Gloria Stuart) that the Red Cross had found that his wife in fact survived and is interned in a Japanese internment camp ; the film takes place during WWII. Conrad now not waning to have his life snuffed is in a dilemma in not being able to contact Lefty, who's dead, and not knowing who the hit-man, J. Carrol Naish, is! This all leaves Conrad, if he wasn't already, to become a paranoid individual suspecting anyone he runs into to be the man who's out to take his life! The man that he in fact paid to do it!Excellent performance by former silent film and cowboy star Richard Dix as a man, Earl C. Conrad, who screwed himself by overreacting to a tragedy that he in fact had nothing to do with. In fact Conrad heroically saved a number of passengers from the sinking cruise ship that he and Claire were on but had her slip out of his hands at the last moment. The insane hit that Conrad arranged on himself was in fact far worse that any conceived notion of guilt that he had about his wife's death. Arranging a mob hit, even on oneself, is murder and knowingly wanting and paying to murder someone, even himself, is far worse then even letting, which Conrad didn't, someone purposely drown!The movie has a really good double surprise ending that, even though it's very contrived, ties all the loose ends together. The ending not only rights all the wrongs of what Conrad crazily did to himself, and those like Alice who loved him, but shows the audience that "The Whistler" was right all alone in his assertion that a curtain individual's destiny was to die tonight.

Oh, what Hitchcock could have done with this story and a bigger budget! Dix plays a man depressed and ridden with guilt over his wife's death. He decides to put a contract out on himself. He gives $10,000 to shady character who in turn hires the killer (Naish). Dix doesn't know who the killer is, what he looks, or whether it is a man or woman.The shady character dies in a shootout with the police shortly after hiring the killer, so when Dix changes his mind and decides he wants to live, he has no way of canceling the contract.There are some amusing twists in this fast paced noir which Hitchcock would have enjoyed. The best one is when the killer (well-played by Naish) poses as a fast-talking insurance salesman and tries to sell the man he plans to kill some life insurance! Also, as in Hitchcock movies, there is a ying-yang relationship between hero and killer. Hero initially wants to die, killer is morbidly afraid of death.The seamy low-life characters that Dix encounters are very well-played by obscure character actors.The whole thing is beautifully photographed in typical doom-noir style.The plot is very similar to 1971's "The Face of Fear" where a young woman who thinks she's dying of leukemia, hires a mob killer to eliminate her, then changes her mind.