classicsoncall I get a kick out of watching these detective films of the era, they can be very entertaining but at the same time, some of them are quite brainless. The picture here fits in both categories. This Lone Wolf entry is based on a bet Michael Lanyard (William Warren) makes with Police Inspector Crane (Thurston Hall) that he can stay out of trouble for twenty four hours. By almost anyone's estimation that should be a safe one, but since that's the premise, you just know something will have to happen to cause the Lone Wolf's plans to go awry.A neat surprise for movie fans in this picture is the presence of Lloyd Bridges in his first credited screen role, even if he does spend a fair amount of time under duress while bound and gagged. He's been kidnapped by agents who want to get their hands on a new set of engraving plates that are stored in a virtually foolproof safe wired to a poisonous gas mix which is released if the safe is tampered with.If only the bad guys had been thinking as clearly as Lanyard there wouldn't have been any need to go the full seventy four minutes of the picture. Recall how Lanyard got the combination to the safe? - he just went back and watched the newsreel! Why couldn't one of the criminal masterminds figure that out for themselves? Gee, I don't know, not a lot of thought was put into this.Nor was anyone paying attention in the editing room. When Johnny Baker was shown bound and gagged in the locked safe compartment with the Lone Wolf attempting to open it, he clearly got his hands free enough to reach up to his mouth to remove the gag placed in it, but after a cut away, he's shown again with his hands tied and immobile. Fortunately Lanyard figures out the combo in time to make the save on his own, otherwise he might have simply asked Johnny for it! Well, I don't want to be too critical. The story was well played with a lot of humor thrown in, and the opening scene was fairly creative. An inattentive jeweler places a pearl necklace aside carelessly and it falls directly onto the neck of a black cat that scurries away. The whole time he's outmaneuvering the Wolf, his assistant Jamison (Eric Blore) and the police, I thought someone for sure would have called for apprehension of the cat burglar.

sol **SPOILERS**Always getting themselves into trouble playful and somewhat inebriated ex-Jewel thief Michael Lanyard, Warren William, and his faithful and somewhat nutty companion Jamison,Eric Blore,get in over their necks in this movie by having a murder rap hanging over their heads.After getting falsely arrested for attempted bank robbery, by chasing a black cat with a string of pearls around it's neck, Lanyard & Jamison take up a bet, a two week paycheck, from their arch enemies the bumbling Inspector Crane and his sidekick Det.Dicken, Thurston Hall & Fred Kelsey,that they can stay out of trouble for a 24 hour period; It just didn't happen. Lanyard gets innocently involved in the murder, by not letting him into is hotel room, of a detective who was left standing on the ledge of his bathroom as Lanyard was busy shaving. Lanyard thought the detective was working for Crane and was trying to get him to break the law.It turned out that the detective was protecting inventor Johnny Baker, Lloyd Bridges, who knows the combination to an armored train car safe that's transporting US Treasury engraving plates to San Francisco. On the run to prove his innocence in the detectives murder Lanyard together with Jaimson end up getting involved with a gang of hoodlums who kidnapped Baker and are trying to get him to give them the combination to the armored car safe that he invented.Lots of action and far less wit and savvy on the Lone Wolf's part in solving this crime and at the same time rescuing Baker from his own invention. Locked in the train-car vault with no one but Lanyard having any idea what the combination is the only way the Federal Authorities can open the safe is to break it open. That would release a deadly cloud of poison gas that would suffocate Baker who's locked and tied up inside.There's just too many ingredients in the plot here with a car train and plane chase as well as a haunted house that keep you off focus and confused to what's really going on in the film. Lanyard and Jamison on the run throughout the entire movie from the Keystone Kops-like police, who couldn't find an elephant in a telephone booth, end up saving the day and Bakers life by using both their brains as well as their shoe-leather. Checking out a newsreel of Baker opening up the train safe Lanyard just had the motion picture enlarged and copied the combination Baker was spinning when he opened the vault! The gang who kidnapped Baker and forced him to open the safe by threatening to murder his fiancée star Hollywood actress Gloria Foster, June Story, didn't have the smarts to figure out what Lanyard did!Losing the bet,by not being able to keep out of trouble for just one day, to Inspector Crane and Det. Sgt. Dickens Lanyard reluctantly has Jamison give the two cops their winnings, two week salary. Always a sore loser since he, up until then, never loses anything Lanyard has the two cops payed off with Treasury Notes, or twenty ten and five dollar bills, that he and Jaimson just printed up with the now recovered genuine US Government Treasury plates! One thing you've got to say about Lanyard is that this time around he was strictly legit. The money that he handed Crane & Dicken wasn't at all counterfeit.

MartinHafer One of the biggest problems I have with most B-detective series films of the 1930s and 40s are how stupid the police are in the films. After a while it just seems a bit annoying that the police are stupider than tacos!! Because of this cliché, I was happy to see that not only were the police reasonably smart in this film, but the leading man (Warren William) was actually pretty stupid himself on occasion--particularly towards the beginning of the film. Early on, Michael Lanyard (William) is in his bathroom when a detective begins banging on his window from the outside--considering that Lanyard lives high up in a high-rise apartment building, this SHOULD have gotten Lanyard's attention! And, when the cop tries desperately to tell Lanyard that a man is being kidnapped in the adjoining apartment, Lanyard closes the window on the poor guy!!! Then, a shot naturally rings out and the cop falls to his death. People assume Lanyard is responsible--and in a way he really was! Now despite this brain aneurysm, Lanyard spends the rest of the film intelligently trying to solve the crime and he's very ably assisted by his valet, played by the wonderful Eric Blore. Blore was always excellent in the Lone Wolf films in which he appeared, but in this one he seems even funnier than usual AND actually proves to be pretty helpful--something B-detective sidekicks seldom are! By the way, the kidnap victim happens to be a very young Lloyd Bridges. He'd done a few other B-detective films, but only in tiny bit parts (such as a bus driver in a Boston Blackie film). Here, he gets a pretty good chance to act even though he is tied up most of the time!! The film has a good and complex plot that is relatively easy to follow, excellent acting and is just plain fun to watch. A very good example of the genre that would have merited an 8 if Lanyard hadn't been so gosh-darn stupid in the beginning!

Spondonman Another good Lone Wolf entry, maybe only marred by too many slapstick moments at the beginning - but I never expect anything less from Fred Kelsey! The handsome young couple in here were Lloyd Bridges in his 1st credited film and June Storey who was managing without Gene Autry for a change.Warren William again plays Michael Lanyard the Lone Wolf, ex-jewel thief who has minded his own business for 10 minutes when a man is murdered by gangsters outside his 9th floor apartment window. His inadvertent help in the incident doesn't seem to faze him one bit, it's something that would definitely bother me! He and his ever effervescent butler Eric Blore are instantly mixed up and while they're chasing the baddies who've kidnapped an inventor the police are chasing them for the homicide. There's some nice scenes on a train pre North By Northwest where the Lady Vanishes becomes the Inventor Vanishes before the film swerves into an crumbly old dark house setting.With a continuously "inventive" storyline and fast pace it was one of the better and longer LW's and well worth watching for those of us who like b&w comedy mystery b pictures from the '40's.