Main Cast: William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, Jeff Corey, Charles D. Brown
Release Year: 1949
Country: US
Run Time: 59 minutes
Plot
Lieutenant Harry Grant (William Lundigan) and Sgt. Art Collins (Jeff Corey) have been handed the unenviable assignment of tracking down "The Judge," a mysterious serial murderer responsible for seven deaths over the past few months. The police have plenty of clues and forensic evidence, but no solid leads to who this highly resourceful strangler is. Complicating Grant's work is the presence of Ann Gorman (Dorothy Patrick), an ambitious reporter for a sensationalistic crime magazine, who keeps sticking her nose into this case and into his work. In exasperation over The Judge's latest victim, a newspaper editor named McGill (Frank Ferguson), Grant decides to take a novel approach to catching the killer -- he prepares a life-size blank-faced dummy using all the clues the police have, as to height, weight, physique, preferred way of dressing etc., in order to give his officers a clearer picture of who and what they're looking for. The result is creepy but effective, and soon Grant is getting closer to the killer -- but The Judge is insane, and agitated by all manner of outside stimuli, and he might prove too much even for a police detective to deal with in a direct confrontation. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
One of the neatest thrillers to come out of RKO in the late '40s, Richard Fleischer's 59-minute Follow Me Quietly was the kind of box office success that made a rare bright spot on the studio's ledger books, at a time when they were losing money by the bushel on productions such as Mourning Becomes Electra and Androcles and the Lion. Fleischer, working with a generally excellent cast and a nice, twist-laden script, keeps things moving so fast, and with such a veneer of eeriness about it, that not only does Follow Me Quietly overcome some moments of wildly illogical action, but positively revels in that action. This is nowhere truer than the bizarre scene near the mid-point in the picture when the obsessive murderer substitutes himself for the faceless dummy in the office of Lt. Grant, the lead investigator; Fleischer has maintained such an odd, off-angle tone and look to the movie up to this point, that the audience simply accepts the scene. Only the romantic subplot involving Grant (William Lundigan) and reporter Ann Gorman (Dorothy Patrick) seems predictable in these surroundings, and it is more than made up for by the overall odd, obsessive tone of the movie, and a pay-off finale at the Los Angeles refinery that manages to echo White Heat and The Naked City while giving the suspense component a twist all its own. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Albert S. D'Agostino - Art Director, Walter E. Keller - Art Director, Richard Fleischer - Director, Elmo Williams - Editor, Leonid Raab - Composer (Music Score), Constantin Bakaleinikoff - Musical Direction/Supervision, Gordon Bau - Makeup, H.W. Phillips - Makeup, Robert de Grasse - Cinematographer, Herman Schlom - Producer, James Altwies - Set Designer, Darrell Silvera - Set Designer, Anthony Mann - Screen Story, Francis Rosenwald - Screen Story, Lillie Hayward - Screenwriter
A mysterious killer, known only as "The Judge," kills anyone he considers worthless.
Detective Harry Grant (Lundigan) is assigned to track him down. With just a handful of clues, Grant constructs a faceless dummy to help his men conduct their investigation.
Police finally break the case after receiving an important clue. Finally, after cornering the killer during a chase on the catwalks of a refinery, the killer is revealed to be a middle-aged man whose cruel disposition and unattractive appearance lead him to become "The Judge."
The New York Times was dismissive of the film and wrote, "There is no intelligent reason why anyone should heed the proposal of Follow Me Quietly...[f]or this utterly senseless little thriller is patently nothing more than a convenient one-hour time-killer between performances of the eight-act vaudeville bill. In it, William Lundigan, playing a blue-print detective role, takes forever, it seems, to uncover a mystery murderer labeled "The Judge." When he finally does encounter this conspicuously unattractive gent, he chases him into a refinery and destroys him. That's the end of "Judge" and film."[2]
Critic Dennis Schwartz wrote of the film, "Follow Me Quietly is patterned after He Walked By Night. In this obsessive film noir, one oddly enough without a femme fatale, the police are the good-guys who take the viewer on a tour of a dark and cynical underworld that opened up in the postwar period. Fleischer leads us into this perverse noir world, but it only dallies with its noir atmosphere and instead turns into a straight mystery story—effectively filmed in a semi-documentary style that emphasizes police procedures over character studies or creating suspense over suspects."[3]
