Follow Me Quietly is a tightly packaged, low-budget film noir that is surprisingly thrilling. The story is co-credited to Anthony Mann, and it was directed by Richard Fleischer, who would go on to direct such diverse films as Soylent Green, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Conan the Barbarian. It stars William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, and the always great Jeff Corey. So I guess it isn’t that surprising that it’s good.
Buy Follow Me Quietly from MovieZyngA serial killer is on the loose. He kills at night, only when it rains, strangling his victims with his bare hands. He leaves notes behind, calling himself “the Judge.” Lieutenant Harry Grant (Lundigan) and his wisecracking partner Sergeant Art Collins (Corey) are on the case. The Judge has killed seven people so far, and while he leaves behind clues whenever he kills (gloves, notes, strands of hair), they are no closer to catching him than when they first began.
Following them (rather loudly, despite the title of the film) is magazine reporter Ann Gorman (Patrick), who is desperate for a scoop. Despite Grant repeatedly telling her to get lost, she never listens. Eventually, she’ll wear him down, and he’ll allow her to tag along. Then she proves herself useful with some knowledge about magazine publishing (the killer leaves a pulp magazine behind after the eighth murder), and naturally, they fall in love by the time the credits roll.
With various vague descriptions, a pretty good idea of how tall and heavy he is, and some scraps of his clothes (that were torn off at a crime scene), Grant comes up with a curious plan – make up a dummy to look as close to what the Judge looks like and let all the cops get a good look at it. He figures that’s better than just reading off the descriptions. They even take pictures of the dummy and pass that around the neighborhoods.
It is as goofy as that sounds. But it does lead to a scene where Grant finds himself talking to the dummy, set in a chair by the window, one dark and stormy night. Then Collins comes in, tells him he needs to get out of the office because he’s starting to go coo-coo. As they leave, Collins turns to the dummy and tells it he thinks he’s creepy. Once everyone is gone, the dummy, who is actually the killer (and has presumably been sitting in that chair for a while hoping nobody would turn on the lights), gets up and walks away. It is an utterly ridiculous scene, yet it actually rather works.
Most of the plotting is pretty standard procedural stuff. Grant runs down clues, tries to figure out where the magazine and other evidence were purchased from, and asks a lot of questions. The captain puts pressure on him to solve the case, and he does a lot of brooding. For such a short film, there is a surprising amount of fluff, mostly entailing the awkward flirtations with Ann Gorman. The ending is rather thrilling with a good little chase through some industrial buildings, and it certainly doesn’t wear out its welcome.
It does have a runtime of just 60 minutes, which makes it feel like an episode of some long-lost TV series rather than a fully fleshed-out movie. It is very much a B-picture intended as the second half of a double feature. They don’t really do double features anymore, but if they did, I’d definitely stick around for this one.
Buy Follow Me Quietly from AmazonWarner Archive presents Follow Me Quietly with a new 4K transfer from the original negative. Extras include Dark Shadows, a short film from the Crime Does Not Pay series, plus the original movie trailer.
