clanciai
This should have been an ideal part for Claude Rains, who could have added a great deal of suavity and other nuances to the weird character of William Everest, who as it is raises your suspicion from the beginning, while poor Janis Carter in spite of all her beauty and charm seems to be totally blind to the warnings that should be alarming enough to anyone, like the weird man causing the deaths of three pets - Janis seems to take it for granted that it must be accidents, but three? Just coincidence? Come on.But the story is good, and the intrigue is fascinating. She gets the idea from her cards that a man standing by the bar only has 24 hours left to live, wherefore she will do anything to prevent this and save his life. It actually proves to be at peril, since he just had a car accident and has lost his memory, so the least thing she could do is to help him regain his memory and find out who he is. It proves however that losing his memory was the best thing that could have happened to him, and as he gets it back not even Janis can save him any more.As it is, an interesting intrigue gets undeveloped and lost in superficiality, while a Claude Rains would have been needed to bring the film to maturity.
mark.waltz
24 hours to live. The cards have it, twice, shocking an amateur fortune teller (Janis Carter) who out of the blue looks over at total stranger Richard Dix sitting at a bar and on a whim deals his future from her deck. Shocked by this, she decides to warn him, and after discovering that he has no idea of who he is makes it her mission to find out. Is she going to find danger as she helps him along his journey? Only the whistler knows for sure!Absolutely superb mystery with enough twists and turns to fill out a map of the east, west and Greenwich Village where much of this takes place. As Carter gets in deeper, her sister Jeff Donnell finds out her share of information, and like a train whistle, it is a warning of approaching danger.Deliciously complex but never convoluted, this could rank as a B film noir if it wasn't for its radio history and certain other elements that aficionados argue over. Miss Carter, who appeared in a few film noir as femme fatales, is noble here as she digs herself in deeper. The exotic Tala Birell also fits in to the fast moving nail biter that is delightfully atmospheric and gripping.
dougdoepke
Far from the best of the series. The first twenty minutes or so are intriguing, after which the film trails off into a conventional suspenser. Dix plays a mysterious man who's suffered memory loss following an accident. Lovely Janis Carter steps in to assist after a prophetic portent from an ordinary deck of cards. Dix appears a decent sort eager to uncover his lost identity, but as events unfold the situation becomes darker, with an ending that would warm feminist hearts of decades later.Some nice touches that build ambiguity, such as the frilly apron as Dix prepares breakfast for the girls, or his saying grace before the chatty sisters can dig in. On the other hand, there are the mysterious deaths trailing behind. The Whistler makes several shadowy commentaries, a neat carry-over from the radio series of the same name. Nonetheless, the material cries out for a stylish director who can lift the last half beyond the merely familiar, and create the kind urban nightmare of the original (William Castle).Dix is again effective as the mystery man. However, Carter's high-energy smile and bubbly personality seem better suited to a Betty Grable musical than this slice of psychic noir. I just wish the imagination of the first half had carried over to the second. Still, worth a look-see from an outstanding series.
John Seal
Columbia's B pictures were generally the worst of the major studios. It's hard to forgive them for those awful Jungle Jim films and producer Sam Katzman generally had no artistic quality in his product. Maybe his absence explains the relative excellence of the Whistler series, in particular this very early entry in the Psycho Killer stakes. More reminiscent of Val Lewton than Katzman, The Power of the Whistler foreshadowed many Hollywood psychological features of the next half century.
AD
