I wish I could recommend this because it has potential and there is some talent involved -- Richard Fleischer, Anthony Mann, Jeff Corey. And -- William Lundigan? When it comes to B movies this comes pretty close to a Platonic ideal. The script is weak and full of holes, the actors unexciting, and the direction no more than routine. RKO was about on its last legs, I guess, and this was made on the cheap and it shows. Look at the production design. The city isn't identified, so there is no local color to speak of. Not that it would help much if a narrator told us grimly, "This is Los Angeles. The City of Angels, but a part of the city you'll never see." Almost all the scenes (except the climactic shootout) take place indoors or on the lot. When a man walks past the window of a restaurant, the sign says simply "Restaurant." The hero is blandly handsome. His sidekick looks funny and is given to wisecracks. The ambitious heroine is pretty and pure. The uninteresting serial killer -- here called "The Judge" -- is seen murking around in silhouette and pretending to be a dummy in the police department. (I swear I'm not making that up.) It isn't until the end that we see his hapless mug, a sad baggy eyed clown who is given no explanation for his deeds. It would seem to have something to do with his trying to wipe out evil in the world, although we don't know anything that the rather ordinary victims did that was so bad, and although that whole judgment business is thrown away at the end anyhow, when it's suggested to us that what's really wrong with him isn't that there is evil abroad in the land but that dripping water drives him nuts. Don't ask me.
Maybe that's all being a little tough on an unpretentious little black and white B from a studio on the brink of bankruptcy, but after all you can do quite a lot of sprucing up if you give things a little thought. The street that the killer lives on is not only barren of pedestrians. That wouldn't be too surprising anyway in LA. But there isn't a parked car in sight. And the garbage cans are all neatly and equidistantly lined up at the curb. The gutter doesn't even contain a crumpled newspaper. It looks like, well, like the back lot of a minor movie studio that has gotten only minimal attention. Val Lewton worked at the same studio on miniscule budgets and see what he accomplished.
It's not worth going on about. You won't lose anything if you skip it.
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