Follow Me Quietly (1949)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Don't waste your time on this stinker. The movie only runs an hour but you'll be thinking that it had to originally run longer and has been severely cut. There are no explanations as to what motivates the killer-we get some conjecture but never find out why this man has selected his victims ahead of time. What "evil" could a random housewife be responsible for? Why is his killing instinct motivated by rain? Actually he gets motivated by ANY falling water (as indicated in the lame chase/conclusion). Why? The scene where he replaces the dummy (known only to the police working the case)is mind boggling.Is the man omnipotent? How does he stay one step ahead of the police? If you want frustration then watch this film. It had possibility but comes up short very early on. Regarding those prior questions-they never get answered.

Between its video release in 1990 and its DVD release at last in 2011, this film was unavailable in the English-speaking world. Knowing it to be a well-known noir of the period, I searched for it and discovered its availability only in France, from Editions Montparnasse, in their series 'Collection RKO'. There its French title is ASSASSIN SANS VISAGE (KILLER WITHOUT A FACE). The French RKO series is very good, and has many fine titles. Each disc contains both the original without subtitles and the French subtitled version, so this series is a good place to turn (through French Amazon) for old RKO movies, and one does not have to watch the French subtitles at all. Some of the French film titles are extremely amusing, such as LA FÉLINE (THE (FEMININE) FELINE) for CAT PEOPLE and PANIQUE A L'HOTEL (PANIC AT THE HOTEL) for the Marx Brothers' ROOM SERVICE. If you want Katherine Hepburn in MARY OF Scotland (1936) without having to buy a John Ford box set, then you can get it in France on its own as MARIA STUART. It is thus worth checking out all the titles in the French RKO series for 'ones that got away' in the USA. This is the third feature film directed by Dick Fleischer. His first was BODYGUARD (1948, see my review), a good noir with Lawrence Tierney. In this year, 1949, he directed no less than four films. He did a very good job of this one, and on a low B film budget made something with some snap and sparkle. There are several good one-liners in the dialogue that raise a laugh. Anthony Mann was the main screenwriter, showing his stuff as a writer in between directing. In 1947 he had directed the excellent noir, T-MEN (see my review), and in 1948 the even better, and what I like to consider the perfect, classic noir film, RAW DEAL (see my review). Anyone interested in Anthony Mann thus needs to see this as well. It stars the highly congenial William Lundigan as the police detective trying to solve a series of murders by a psychopath who calls himself 'the Judge'. It is thus a very early 'serial killer' film, though that terminology was, of course, not yet in use. The film has many fine touches. One is that the mysterious killer's appearance is known in every way except for a missing description of his face, so Lundigan orders a life-sized dummy to be made, but which has a blank face. He then shows this to people to try to stimulate their memories, and this has a useful result. But there is one incredibly eerie scene where the seated dummy, with its back turned towards him in his office, is addressed by the frustrated Lundigan, who then goes out in search of the killer. After he leaves, we see the dummy, silhouetted against the office window at night, suddenly move. It has been 'the Judge', not the dummy! He then replaces the dummy in its spot, leaves the police station unobserved, and goes out and kills another victim. There is a weird psychological twist to 'the Judge', which is that he only kills when it is raining. Heavy rain excites him and makes him want to kill. This rain-fixation comes out in an unexpected form when he is being chased through a huge chemical factory. The police fire at him and make holes in a tank, from which water or other liquids pour in several streams, simulating rain. In the chase sequence, when he encounters this, which reminds him of heavy rain, he goes berserk and become violent. 'The girl' in the film is played by an amusing Dorothy Patrick, who is 'kinda a cute kid', and makes something of the part. This is a worthy noir, and now at last available from American Amazon, so that you don't have to turn in desperation to Paris if you don't want to.

This is a B-movie that up until the end really hooked me. While the film had no stars, it was a wonderful example of very snappy Film Noir dialog. Again and again, the cops used incredibly colorful language, such as calling a mental hospital "the bug house". Because of the way the cops talked, it really had me hooked. Too bad, then, that the film ended in such an anticlimactic manner.The film is a cop's eye view of the investigation of a serial killer who calls himself 'The Judge'. This nut has been killing for sometime and his m.o. is strangulation as well as always leaving a note signed with his moniker. While you'd think they'd soon catch up to him, after six months the investigation is still stalled. So, the detective inspector in charge tries a new strategy--hoping to FINALLY get somewhere in the case. Along for the ride is a pretty reporter who at first is more of a nuisance than anything else, though she isn't the stereotypical reporter, thankfully.As I said, the ending was a real bust. Despite the wonderful mood, finding this elusive guy at the end seemed like a big disappointment. To make things worse, when the police are about to apprehend him (though they have no real evidence linking the man to any crimes), he inexplicably runs--thereby incriminating himself. Additionally, once he is caught, the previously smart detective behaves like an idiot and nearly gets himself killed. It seemed as if they were simply running out of film and quickly slapped a contrived ending on the film in order to keep it to the trim 60 running time!

Follow Me Quietly (1949) *** (out of 4) Exciting film noir from RKO has a detective (William Lundigan) trying to track down a mysterious killer known as "The Judge". I haven't heard too many film noir lovers mention this film but I found it to be very tense and brilliantly directed. The film only runs 59-minutes but there's a lot of style throughout each one of them. The ending is full of action and some nice suspense. The film runs at a very fast pace and is over before you know it but for the life of me I can't figure out why this film isn't talked about more. Certainly worth checking out if you can catch it on TCM.