Follow Me Quietly

Some weeks back I mentioned the movie Follow Me Quietly and commented that I had this sneaking suspicion that I'd already seen it. I watched it, and as it turns out, I hadn't. It's on DVD from the Warner Archive, so I'm doing a review of it for you now.

Ann Gorman (Dorothy Patrick) shows up outside a bar one rainy night; she's looking for the detective Lt. Grant (William Lundigan). It turns out that Ann is a writer for one of those pulp magazines that were a thing back in the 1940s, specifically a crime magazine. She's doing a story on a serial killer known as "The Judge", and Grant is heading the police investigation. However, he doesn't really like reporters, and especially hates the pulp magazines which he thinks aren't real journalism, so he gives Ann the brush-off.

Part of the Judge's modus operandi is that he strikes on rainy nights, as though he's got some pathological urge to kill brought out by the rain. And since our story opens on a rainy night, sure enough there's another murder (well, the victim conveniently survives long enough for the cops to listen to his story) committed. Lt. Grant goes off to the crime scene, and...

Ann follows. In fact, she keeps following Grant around trying to get the story, eventually winding up inside his apartment (Ann keeps claiming to have "connections" that are never explained) to pester the poor guy. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of cops, but you have to feel bad for Lt. Grant since Ann is no prize herself. And yet, Grant for some bizarre reason decides to relent and let her get a story!

The investigation of the Judge is going nowhere, so Grant comes up with a bizarre angle to attack. Since they know everything about the Judge but what his face looks like, Grant has a life-sized mannequin constructed for use in showing the cops on the beat what they're looking for. And that dummy actually plays a part in several key sequences later in the movie.

But Follow Me Quietly is only a 59-minute movie, so it's going to get resolved relatively quickly. And since Ann has been following Lt. Grant around, you know she's actually going to be of some use in cracking the case. This happens when an issue of the magazine for which she works is found at a murder scene. She knows enough about publishing to surmise that the Judge got his copy at a used book store, which is a big clue.

Follow Me Quietly is a nice little B crime procedural with noirish elements, although at 59 minutes it leaves any number of things unresolved. In addition to Ann's "connections" I mentioned before, there's also the question of the Judge's motivation and why he thinks he should be in judgment of humanity. More annoyingly is the question of why Lt. Grant fell for Ann in the first place especially considering her dishonesty in getting into his apartment. Still, it's certainly worth a watch.

Follow Me Quietly only seems to be on a standalone DVD as far as I could find, which is a bit of a shame, because it's the sort of thing that would really be better suited for a box set.