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The title is a lawman's command to the malefactor he's just cuffed, also the suggestive tenor of the perpetual noir stalk. The self-appointed executioner favors rainy nights, "The Judge" is his moniker, Old Testament delusion and pulp-fiction appetite are two halves of the murderous urge. (The latest victim is a tabloid editor who dictates the scoop with his last breath.) His opposite number is the police lieutenant (William Lundigan) so obsessed with tracking him down that he's forged an unwholesome familiarity: "I know him so well I almost live with him. Sometimes I wish I didn't." The tenacious hackette (Dorothy Patrick) tags along, but the hero's most interesting relationship is with the faceless dummy built to help the investigation—a blank mannequin with hat and suit, posed before the office window as a downpour suddenly starts. (Siegel in Escape from Alcatraz repurposes it strikingly.) The partner (Jeff Corey) speaks for the audience, "you give me the willies!" An Anthony Mann project seconded by the nominal director, cf. He Walked by Night, plus invaluable groundwork for Richard Fleischer's subsequent manhunts (The Boston Strangler, 10 Rillington Place). "Me and Deadpan," the incomplete effigy stands at the police lineup with its back to the approaching camera until the close-up turn. (The real culprit's reveal finds nervous-doleful peepers creeping from under the fedora brim on a deserted street corner, his apartment has its "own private little chamber of horrors.") A tangle of leaking pipes keenly embodies the deranged mind at the refinery tower, all blown to bits by White Heat later that year. With Nestor Paiva, Charles D. Brown, Edwin Max, Paul Guilfoyle, Frank Ferguson, Marlo Dwyer, Archie Twitchell, and Douglas Spencer. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |