It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Follow Me Quietly is directed by Richard Fleischer (with uncredited help from Anthony Mann) and adapted to screenplay by Lillie Hayward from a story written by Mann and Francis Rosenwald. It stars William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, Jeff Corey, Nestor Paiva and Paul Guilfoyle. Music is by Leonid Raab and cinematography by Robert De Grasse.A serial killer known as "The Judge" is stalking the city, his modus operandi is to strike when it rains and to kill by strangulation. The police have loads of little clues but nothing solid to go on. The strain is starting to weigh heavy on Lt. Harry Grant (Lundigan), but he comes up with a genius idea to help catch the killer - a mannequin!Not widely known, but once released to MOD home format it got more noticed and has been keenly sought out by fans of the great Anthony Mann. It has proved a little divisive so this fawning review should be taken with a little context. Clocking in at just under an hour in length, Fleischer's film is by definition a compact RKO "B" picture, but the quality of story, and the little slices of noir craft, ensure it's got plenty of strengths going for it.In essence it's an early police procedural dealing with the hunt for a serial killer. There's a babe in the mix, Dorothy Patrick as an intrepid reporter who announcers herself to the film wearing a see through mackintosh, which of course is splendid. She teams up with Grant, not as a fatale, but as a sort of wry cohort, suggestion is evident, sexual tension even, but nothing is shoe-horned in to the pic. The cops are all stoic types, splendidly attired for period delights, but it's with Lundigan's head of investigations where the film gets its pulse beat. He gets in deep with the psychological aspects of the case, thinking like the killer, talking to the faceless mannequin that has been constructed out of clues left by the killer, the mirror images of the killer and mannequin are not exactly a million miles away from Lundigan himself. Cheeky is that.Mann's stamp is all over the film, but Fleischer's work is evident for sure, an economical purist meets the crafty auteur, a fine match. Robert De Grasse (The Body Snatcher/Born to Kill) is a key component, operating with angles and shades when required, there's a distinct uneasy feel to proceedings. A few scenes grab the attention with full effect, akin to a spider inviting a fly to dinner, which all builds to a head, culminating in a blunderbuss finale at an oil refinery - cum - power plant. Only where White Heat (also 1949) went nighttime for its coup de grace, Follow Me Quietly did it in daylight. Cheeky is that.It's not perfect. Some logic holes are there as regards the water effect with the killer, which also leads us to lament a lack of reasoning and understanding with the perpetrator. There's also a couple of instances where the mannequin is played in a rear shot by a real actor, why? I have no idea. While the best scene in the film, as Lundigan chats to the dummy in a darkened room - and the rain falls hard on the windows - brings about a reveal that makes no sense what so ever. Especially once "The Judge" is revealed. However, this is easy to recommend to noir heads and fans of police procedurals, and I loved it. 8/10

Follow Me Quietly casts William Lundigan in a B picture police drama out of RKO as a detective assigned to what we now would be calling a serial killer. A man who strangles his victims and then leaves cut out notes at the crime scenes saying he killed these individuals in some kind of retribution and signs himself the Judge. When watching Follow Me Quietly it reminded me of the Agatha Christie story Ten Little Indians which has been filmed a few times and where the perpetrator is in fact a terminally ill judge gathering victims on an island and killing them one by one for crimes he feels that the normal justice system hasn't dealt with.Which is the main problem with Follow Me Quietly, we are never given an answer as to how the Judge's victims are selected. All we do know is that rain somehow sets his psychosis off.In one respect the film is quite modern. One of the tools that Lundigan and partner Jeff Corey use is to reconstruct a faceless dummy of the approximate height and weight of the Judge using whatever forensic clues have been found at crime scenes. This is years ahead of when that kind of forensic tool was used, it's like a three dimensional mugshot and it helps in bringing the judge down.A little more work on the story and Follow Me Quietly could have been a classic noir.

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.

I have to rate this one pretty low. It has a certain charm in that the script, direction, characters, acting, all feels just a shade above a television program during the 50s. Just longer by about an hour. I mean this baby is about low budget as they came. The only thing cheesier would have to be the cheapie monster flicks from the same period. The texture never rises not drops no matter what's going on. It relies heavily on music for this to no avail.The only thing it has going for it is a stream of classic character actors all over it.Good if you don't really need to pay attention.