The Mark of the Whistler

The Mark of the Whistler, aka The Marked Man, is a 1944 American mystery film noir based on the radio drama The Whistler. Directed by William Castle, the production features Richard Dix, Porter Hall and Janis Carter. It is the second of Columbia Pictures' eight "Whistler" films produced in the 1940s, all but the last starring Dix.

Plot

A drifter claims the money in a dormant bank account. Later, he becomes the target of men who are the sons of the man's old partner, who is now in prison due to a conflict with him over the money.

Cast

Richard Dix as Lee Selfridge Nugent
Janis Carter as Patricia Henley
Porter Hall as Joe Sorsby
Paul Guilfoyle as 'Limpy' Smith
John Calvert as Eddie Donnelly
Matt Willis as Perry Donnelly
Bill Raisch as the truck driver, best known for playing the One Armed Man in The Fugitive. He lost an arm in World War II between the making of this film and The Fugitive.

Reception

Bosley Crowther, the film critic for The New York Times, gave the film a mixed review, writing "The dodges by which a fellow successfully stakes a phony claim to a dormant account in a savings bank and swindles $29,000 lend some fair to middling interest to Columbia's latest Whistler-series film—one called The Mark of the Whistler...In this dubious demonstration, the film does present a criminal case with the patient documentation familiar in crime-and-punishment shorts. But the things that happen to this defrauder after he has got the cash are just the claptrap of cheap melodrama—and they are bluntly presented that way."