Load of rubbish!!

Dreadfully Boring

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

The Crime Doctor series was usually consistent in it's style and excellence, helped enormously by Warner Baxter as the unobtrusive doctor. The stories were always a bit different to the usual cops and robbers fare with Doctor Ordway's most important job to get to the root of the patient's problem. This movie, though, seems to have it's fair share of holes and starts out with a troubled man, having lost his first wife on their honeymoon and soon to lose his second in a rock slide - again on their honeymoon. Even though the fall was an accident it was caused by the young man's strange behaviour and though he is acquitted, the brother of his first wife feels it was no accident.Dr. Ordway enters the picture when a newly married socialite Kathleen Massey (Hillary Brooke) begs him to come to dinner to observe her husband and diagnose whether he is insane or not!!! Yes, it is the same husband whose former wives were involved in those honeymoon accidents. The brother who made the original allegations keeps popping up everywhere driving Carson (dare I say it) insane, until this particular night he makes his appearance as a waiter and has it out with Carson in front of everybody - minutes later Carson is found dead!!Now the storyline goes off on a completely different tangent - wants you to forget about Carson and his troubles (the brother doesn't appear again!!) and concentrate on Kathleen, who apparently has always loved Miguel Bragga (Anthony Caruso) (well for a few weeks anyway) - who, along with his sister (Lupita Tovar) have a mystical disappearing dancing act that they perform at a local night club. As Kathleen tells yet another of her love sick suitors, she liked Carson "well enough" but only married him for the financial help he could give her father. I think the viewer loses sympathy for her and seeing she tends to disappear from the second half - it doesn't help her case!!The movie then concentrates on the Braggas who, publicity says, are a pair of modern day vampires who are never seen in the day time, never sleep in their beds and when Ordway makes a search of their "castle", finds two silk lined coffins in the basement. His buddy in this movie is a writer (Jerome Cowan) who has cooked up the vampire publicity for the pair and brings them to Ordway's notice when he comments on their amazing disappearing act. Even though production values are good and events are explained, the ending seems hastily put together - it would have been interesting to keep the angry brother around, at least as a red herring!!Still it was nice to see Lupita Tovar again. She had a few roles in the early thirties, usually as "native girl" and she was in the Spanish version of "Dracula" but she married director Paul Kohner and retired (their daughter was actress Susan Kohner). And I am definitely convinced that it is Virginia Mayo by the pool - what do other people think???

***SPOILERS*** One of the most strangest of all the "Crime Doctor" films has the "Crime Doctor" police psychiatrist Dr. Robert Ordway, Warner Baxter, go on vacation in sunny Southern California to sooth his nerves only to run into a pair of Spanish vampires who spend all their daylight hours in coffins and at night do an on stage brother and sister disappearing act.The Vamps Miguel & Delores Bragga, Anthony Caruso & Lupita Tovar, get involved with Dr.Ordway in an out of the way connection in the murder of Gordon Carson, Stephen Crane. Gordon who's two previous marriages ended with with the bride getting killed in a mysterious accident was just married to bride #3 the gorgeous Kathleen Carson,Hillary Brooke. It in fact was Kathleen who invited the "Crime Doctor" to the Carson Mansion where she was throwing a party so he can check out her husband Gordon whom, after being married to him for just one day, she suspects him to be a both homicidal lunatic as well as being completely off his rocker! Katheen had gotten these mysterious letters and newspaper clippings about Gordon that convinced her she made the wrong choice in marrying him!It's during dinner that one of Gordon's dead wive's brother David Lee, Dennis Moore, disguised as a waiter crashed the party accusing Gordon of murdering his sister. Hurt and humiliated in being accused of murder in front of all his friends including his wife Kathleen Gordon locked himself into an outer room and before the guests at the party could get the door open shot himself to death! Dr. Ordway smells a rat right away in that the gun that Gordon used to kill himself was ice cold, instead of warm, proving that it was planted on the dead Gordon after he was murdered. What's even more strange is that the Bargga's who were at the party are the only one's who could have pulled, Gordon's murder, it off in the fact they had the means, by making themselves invisible, to do it!****SPOILERS**** Dr. Ordway plays it both cool and straight in solving Gordon's murder not for once falling for the con-job that there in fact are such things as vampires which later turned out to be a red herring in order to cover Gordon's killers tracks. What really lead to Gordon's murder as well as number of other killings to cover it up was that fact that he married Kathleen! The killer was so obsessed with Kathleen that when he heard she left him for another man, Gordon Carson, he completely flipped out. Using the phony vampire angle that mystery writer Jeff Jerome, Jerome Cowan, provided him with the killer planned to get Kathleen back by both murdering her husband Gordon and at the same time pining his murder on the totally innocent Bragga's!This plan would have worked with the police, who fell for the phony vampire act, but not with the wise old and experienced "Crime Doctor Robert Ordway! After over 12 years investigating the strange and the unknown there's very little that the Doc doesn't know about con jobs and the shysters who try to use the supernatural to throw the police off their trail. In this case Dr. Ordway saw right away, through his friend Jeff Jerome, that the Bragga's were being set up to take the rap in Gordon's murder! The only thing left for him to uncover is who was the person who set them up!

Another nice entry in the Crime Doctor series [#4/10], with atmospheric almost noirish black and white photography and some splendid Spanish American backdrops and sets. And a more off-the-wall storyline too!A man who looks like the insane murderer of his first two wives is found dead in a locked room after a dramatic dinner party. The Crime Doctor is on the scene (ostensibly as a guest) to immediately and resignedly proclaim it murder, and so we are presented with a quite weird set of people to mull over, for one of them did the deed. Was it the frothing brother of the dead 1st wife, the 3rd wife and rich widow Hilary Brooke, the dancing brother and sister vampires, the intense young man, the eccentric cabinet maker Lloyd Corrigan on loan from Boston Blackie, the irreplaceable butler, or odds-on Jerome Cowan? Police Inspector Emory Parnell had his work cut out, but Warner Baxter as Ordway was as unflappable as ever in working it all out. One of the goofs listed on the IMDb is wrong: On breaking into the murder room Ordway says "Right through the centre of the forehead" and Cowan replies "He didn't miss this time". Favorite bits: Baxter and Cowan travelling through club sandwiches and beer at the nightclub to make amends for their interrupted dinner party; The scene where the Braga's place of repose is seemingly rumbled. The plot does seem to meander a bit at times and the way it was all explained off was perhaps more worthy of Monogram, but leaving it in the air as supernatural wouldn't do either!Well worth a watch if you already like the genre, you won't be disappointed unless you really don't like the genre.

Better than average World War II-era "who-dun-it" featuring Warner Baxter as a former gangster who suffered amnesia and has been reborn as a psychiatrist now known as Robert Ordway who helps both the police and criminals who want to go straight. Crime Doctor's Courage is the fourth in the series of ten and also involves a victim who might have some mental problems. The link to "courage" is not particularly clear.This entry revolves around the death of fortune hunter Gordon Carson whose two previous wives have under mysterious circumstances and who in turn dies in a locked room under conditions that resemble suicide but Dr. Ordway labels murder. Hillary Brooke plays the part of widow Kathleen Carson who is involved with Anthony Caruso - a mysterious Spanish dancer whose act includes his sister that disappears on stage. As a mystery novelist, Jerome Cowan is a good supporting actor as is Lloyd Corrigan as an aficionado in crime.Spooky houses with creaking doors, caskets in the cellar, and suspects that are never seen in daylight add to the air of suspense. The set for the dance sequence is quite elaborate and the ballet music very good. Direction, production design, and photography stand out. The exterior shots and costumes suggest more affluence rather than normally found in the average "B" detective thriller.Strongly recommended.