The Power of the Whistler (1945)

This should have been an ideal part for Claude Rains, who could have added a great deal of suavity and other nuances to the weird character of William Everest, who as it is raises your suspicion from the beginning, while poor Janis Carter in spite of all her beauty and charm seems to be totally blind to the warnings that should be alarming enough to anyone, like the weird man causing the deaths of three pets - Janis seems to take it for granted that it must be accidents, but three? Just coincidence? Come on.But the story is good, and the intrigue is fascinating. She gets the idea from her cards that a man standing by the bar only has 24 hours left to live, wherefore she will do anything to prevent this and save his life. It actually proves to be at peril, since he just had a car accident and has lost his memory, so the least thing she could do is to help him regain his memory and find out who he is. It proves however that losing his memory was the best thing that could have happened to him, and as he gets it back not even Janis can save him any more.As it is, an interesting intrigue gets undeveloped and lost in superficiality, while a Claude Rains would have been needed to bring the film to maturity.

I suspect that a number of modern day viewers who watch this particular entry in the 1940s "The Whistler" B movie series will find some plot turns quite unbelievable by today's standards. Would you, upon finding a person with amnesia, quickly invite him or her to stay at your home instead of guiding them to a hospital? If you came across two strangers sitting in your car, would you offer to drive them anywhere they wanted? And would you lend the use of your automobile to someone you know nothing about? These are just some things that happen in this movie that would never happen today. But if you look at the movie through a 1940s perspective, you can overlook such unbelievable plot turns as those, and you'll probably find the movie to be a serviceable B feature. As the amnesia- stricken character starts his trek to find out who he is, you'll quickly find yourself curious enough to follow him to find out the answers to who he is and what he was up to. The journey is a little padded at times, I admit, but it's never dull. About the only real weakness is the ending - it needed a bit more punch. But apart from that, this is a decent series entry.

The absurd plot points of "Power Of The Whistler" are too many to list here, from small (Dix and Carter entering an unlocked stranger's car for "a little rest"; when he finds them there, he is not upset at all, only happy to drive them to their destination!) to big (the police not issuing a description of an escaped homicidal lunatic to the patrol officers). Nonetheless, Dix is effective in a change-of-pace role (it's a credit to his acting ability that his character here is so different to those he played in the same series just one year earlier), and Janis Carter, who has a bigger (and different) role here than she had in "Mark Of The Whistler", is equally good as her character goes through a range of emotions. There is a memorable climax involving a pitchfork, too. Great late-night viewing fare, if you don't think too hard about it. **1/2 out of 4.

Columbia's B pictures were generally the worst of the major studios. It's hard to forgive them for those awful Jungle Jim films and producer Sam Katzman generally had no artistic quality in his product. Maybe his absence explains the relative excellence of the Whistler series, in particular this very early entry in the Psycho Killer stakes. More reminiscent of Val Lewton than Katzman, The Power of the Whistler foreshadowed many Hollywood psychological features of the next half century.