Who payed the critics

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

One of William Castle's early directing jobs is this entry level drama that would lead to a popular series for Columbia Pictures. Richard Dix starred in all but one; and each time as a different character. THE WHISTLER has Dix playing Earl C. Conrad, a successful business man who is consumed with the guilt of his wife's death. Conrad just can't come to grasps with continuing on and cancels his life insurance policy. The despondent man doesn't have the gumption to commit suicide so he hires a hit man(J. Carrol Naish)to kill him within a week. When Conrad is notified by telegram that his wife is actually still alive; he is not so eager to welcome his own death and must find the mystery man he paid to kill him.A suspenseful thriller that sustains your interest from the very beginning. And there is the eerie sound of The Whistler(Otto Forrest).The finale is not especially unexpected. Worth watching again.Rounding out the cast: Gloria Stuart, William Benedict, Alan Dinehart, Kermit Maynard, Pat O'Malley and Charles Coleman.

Richard Dix has lost his wife and has nothing to live for, life has turned to ashes, etc., so through an agent he hires a hit man (J. Carroll Naish) to kill him. He changes his mind as his wife has been found alive, but the agent is killed in a gun fight, so he can't contact the hit man to cancel the deal. So far you can go along, right?Then, the hit man contacts him, and says he can't cancel the deal, he is duty-bound and logic and reason be damned. Dix takes it 'on the lam', as they say, and from hereon the story becomes increasingly unbelievable until it enters a surreal phase from which it never recovers. The hit man shows up around every corner like a cartoon character, until the film ends abruptly, an ending which is outlandishly contrived.I liked the rest of the series but this initial entry is about the weakest, and I was never a fan of William Castle. The more I think of it the more I think my rating is too high.

So many B films I have seen were poor prints on VHS tapes. How very nice it was to see such an excellent print on TCM. I listened to many episodes of The Whistler and found them engaging. In this, the first of the series, Richard Dix as businessman Earl Conrad has suffered from serious depression over the accidental death of his wife three years earlier. His friends seem to to blame him for not saving her from drowning. Extremely despondent he contracts with a killer's middleman to kill him. After sending the contract money and a message to the killer, the middleman is shot to death by police. Soon thereafter Conrad is notified that his wife did not die but has been in a Japanese internment camp for the past three years. Oops - now he doesn't want to die but doesn't know who the killer is and sets out to find someone who knows the middleman and perhaps then the killer. He returns to the bar where he made the deal with the middleman and a woman (played by the always capable Joan Woodbury). As they are driving to the place the middleman hung out she tells Conrad that she was the middleman's wife and accuses Conrad of setting up her husband for the police to kill. Proving that even the most nasty characters have someone who loves them, she tries to kill Conrad by running the car down a cliff. Didn't work - she dies, he lives. But the real threat is the killer, played by the wonderful J. Carroll Naish who, as a matter of twisted honor, decides to fulfill his contract to kill Conrad although it is now pointless to do so. The killer decides he wants to frighten Conrad to death by following him and making him fearful. Naish plays the psychotic killer to a tee. Specially interesting in this film are the scenes in the flop house and those with a security guard at the docks. There were many familiar faces in this movie including Billy Benedict, Cy Kendall, Woodbury and Kermit Maynard. Gloria Stuart did a good job in the thankless role of faithful secretary. Not as impressive is Richard Dix. He's OK but really kind of bland and weak in the role. This is a superior B film more interesting than many a so called A film.

The "Whistler" was very odd for a B-movie series and so much unlike its contemporaries (such as Charlie Chan or The Falcon). Richard Dix starred in 8 of the 9 films. though he played a totally different character in each--sometimes a good guy and other times a bad one. In many ways, this is reminiscent of Universal's INNER SANCTUM series in that the same actor often played different roles in each film AND the series was NOT the standard detective film but an anthology series--much like TV's TWILIGHT ZONE. The "Whistler" in the titles of most of the films is an unseen guy in the shadows that narrates the film and occasionally makes comments during the film. This format was apparently created for the radio version of "The Whistler".In this first of the series, Dix plays a depressed man who, instead of suicide, pays an unknown assassin to kill him!! While the whole idea is ridiculous and contrived, it is pretty entertaining--especially when Dix changes his mind and truly wants to live but he isn't sure who is coming to kill him or how to stop the contract! The biggest negative, other than the silliness of the story, was the narration by The Whistler. This narrator talks too much--sometimes making comments or saying things that were obvious to the viewer. I haven't seen the rest of the series, but surely hope this was corrected.