Blind Spot (1947) User Reviews

Locked-room murder mystery retooled for the noir era

[bmacv · 7/10 · 27 November 2003]

A hoary locked-room murder mystery retooled in full noir trim for the post-war era, Blind Spot sports the grungy, wrong-side-of-the tracks look of early, low-budget entries in the noir cycle, like Suspense and Fall Guy and The Guilty. It compensates (or overcompensates) with hopped-up performances and some particularly gaudy patter (`a 45-caliber toothache').

A clutch of his books is the only mark of achievement in mystery-writer Chester Morris' squalid basement apartment; he's on the losing end of an extortionate contract drawn up by his publisher (William Forrest). Before heading uptown to confront him, Morris swigs some false courage from the heel of a bottle, telling himself `It isn't easy to beg money from a man you'd rather kick in the teeth.' Nor is it such a good idea to ask for favors reeking of booze and with a couple days worth of beard stubble, but he charges ahead anyway.

Morris muscles past the Veronica-Lake-ish secretary (Constance Dowling) to barge into Forrest's office, where the publisher is playing carpet golf with one of his successful authors (Steven Geray). Barely coherent, Morris claims that even drunk he can dream up a top-notch plot, and begins to pitch his locked-room mystery before he's shown the door. Down in the ground-floor bar, he continues recounting his story idea to the heard-it-all bartender (Sid Tomack), when he's joined by a suddenly fascinated Dowling.

Next morning, the police arrest Morris for the murder of Forrest, who was found dead in his office, bolted from within. Of course, he's lost the whole evening in a blackout. Curiously, two unlikely advocates rally to his side – Geray, who praises the psychological realism of Morris' writing, and Dowling, whose motives remain murkier (gal pal or femme fatale?). Circumstances take an even darker turn when the bartender, too, is found murdered in his bed....

Blind Spot feels a lot like a Cornell Woolrich knockoff (writers, blackouts, homicides), yet it's not quite cheesy. (The script reveals itself to be a keen student of the not-yet-identified noir cycle, with a couple of Hollywood in-jokes, including a veiled reference to The Lost Weekend.) Morris made the movie as a break from the ‘40s programmers which are his chief claim to fame, the Boston Blackie series, after which his career swiftly petered out. His biography includes one arresting detail, however: `In 1951, Morris received the deathbed confession of his friend Roland West for the murder of actress Thelma Todd in 1935.' Sounds like the beginning of another Boston Blackie script.

Stylish mystery with Chester Morris as hard-boiled writer of highbrow fiction

[csteidler · 7/10 · 18 April 2012]

A neat set up: Chester Morris is an author of "serious" books. He hates his publisher, but is forced to go to him and ask for an advance. Having worked up his nerve by downing several drinks, Morris arrives at the office to find the publisher in conference with a popular mystery writer—whom Morris promptly insults as a writer of pap. Writing a mystery is simple work, Morris drunkenly insists…he could invent a murder plot in a snap. A murder in a locked room.

Some hours later, the publisher is found dead….murdered in his locked office. And Morris can't quite remember two things—the locked room murder plot he had invented, and whether or not he actually did the murder. He sets about investigating—but it's not easy with the police figuring him as the prime suspect.

Morris is very good, especially after his character sobers up and we can watch him piece together events and the motives and actions of other characters. (During the first fifteen minutes his slurring and stumbling get a bit tiresome….as drunk people tend to do.)

Steven Geray is fun as the rival author; his thick accent adds to his vaguely exotic and sinister aura. Constance Dowling is hard and slick as a possibly dangerous blonde—the publisher's secretary who eventually teams up with Morris. She may be seeking the truth; she may be running away from it. Both the mystery writer and the secretary have their own reasons for wishing that publisher ill.

The film develops some great situations—like when Morris and Dowling meet up in his dark basement apartment, each thinking the other committed the murder. Some great camera shots: she steps slowly from the shadows, pausing where all is dark except her ankles in the light. Some cheesy but undeniably fun dialog: thinking she's trying to fool him with romance, Chester tells the girl, "You've got the wrong chump. Violins hurt my ears. And when the temperature's up I drink a bottle of beer…."

An excellent B mystery that moves fast, contains plenty of suspense and never takes itself more seriously than a murder mystery should.

"Do you really think I killed Small?" – A pause, then a hard kiss, finally an answer.... "Yes."

intriguing "lost" noir

[goblinhairedguy · 8/10 · 8 October 2003]

Like Decoy, this distinctive low-budget noir has fallen through the cracks and deserves resurrection. It's another masterly essay in irony from the pen of Martin Goldsmith of Detour fame. The plot involves a desperate, alcoholic writer who sarcastically pitches a "locked room" murder mystery to his publisher, then sees the plot occur in real life (with himself as chief suspect, of course). Despite the lack of his presence in the credits, Cornell Woolrich's novels are an obvious influence here - themes of urban paranoia, loss of memory, disconnected characters, etc, were his stock-in-trade. The ripe dialogue borders on self-parody, and the entire exercise could have easily been directed as a satire of the genre. Instead it becomes a double-density noir. Morris and Geray are rather miscast, but peek-a-boo blonde Dowling is striking (particularly visually) as a potential femme fatale. The moody cinematography is engagingly oppressive, lingering on beads of sweat and trapping us in confined spaces. Director Robert Gordon worked mainly in TV and never had much success in film. The "locked room" mystery, a staple of the detective novel genre, was most memorably committed to celluloid in the early talkie classic The Kennel Murder Case.

A B-Movie Noir that's so bad it's good

[achbarmaus · 6/10 · 7 April 2002]

This film is a must for fans of noir and b-movies. The hero is a semi-alcoholic writer, wrongly accused of a murder committed while he was drunk.

The actor plays this drunk so obnoxiously that he will have you cringing in your seat, begging for him to finally pass out. It's the acting equivalent of fingernails on a chalk board. What saves the movie and makes it worth seeing are the incredibly over-the-top lines the writer cooked up.

These include: "the heat sapped my vitality like ten thousand blood-thirsty dwarves," "a ghost-writer is like drugs," "plagiarism is inscribing my name on another man's pen," and "when I want poetry, I read Walt Whitman."

Good for a laugh.

B Murder Mystery with Extremely Ingenious Plot Variation

[robert-temple-1 · 7/10 · 5 November 2008]

This was the directorial debut of Robert Gordon, whose debut is however not of earth-shaking importance, as he never shook the earth later on. The film is an entertaining low-budget B murder mystery, and Chester Morris and Constance Dowling both overact. Morris especially over-does it as a particularly obnoxious drunk early in the film. This is unfortunate, as the story requires us to have sympathy for him later on, and those who find abusive drunks hard to tolerate will have to be strong. The chief merit of this film is an extraordinarily ingenious twist to the 'murder in a locked room' motif. Several films have been made on the theme: 'how did the murderer escape from the room containing the corpse when the room was locked from the inside?' In this version, however, another ingenious layer is added to the conundrum. Here we have the drunken author (just mentioned) inventing a plot solution for this while he is intoxicated and forgetting it when he has sobered up. However, by that time, someone who heard his idea has actually carried out the clever plan and implicated Morris as the murderer! When Morris tries to track down the people he told the idea to when he was drunk, in the hope that they will remember it and enlighten him, so that he can clear himself of a murder charge, he runs into difficulties. The bartender to whom he told the idea is murdered, to stop him telling the solution of the crime. Those of us who like to solve things will inevitably be interested in this film, and will disregard the inadequacies of the production as being beside the point. Hence, murder mystery fans will find much in this film to intrigue them. And perhaps they will wish, as I found myself doing, that the excellent story idea had been carried out with a better film version, or indeed that someone would remake it and do it properly this time.

Pretty cool little thriller

[Geoff-21 · 9/10 · 2 December 2002]

Jeffrey Anders is a down-on-his luck mystery writer who drunkenly blunders into his publisher's office one day with an idea for a new story. He has concocted a story where a dead body is found inside a locked, bolted room. He also has a simple solution for the mystery. Unfortunately, later his publisher is found dead inside a locked, bolted room and Anders can't remember the solution he told when he was drunk! Of course, Jeffrey is the main suspect since he was the last one to see the guy alive. He starts seeking out people he may have told the solution to. Then, those people start turning up dead as well. I liked this movie a lot. The suspects are pretty easy to narrow down once the love interest is cleared (she was the receptionist for the dead publisher and he always put the moves on her), but there's enough to keep your interest for 70 minutes and the acting is pretty good. Worth seeking out.

Slow and a Bit Talky

[evanston_dad · 6/10 · 4 September 2018]

I saw "Blind Spot" at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago as part of a noir festival hosted by TCM's Eddie Muller. Under those circumstances, and with a live audience, I enjoyed it more than I probably would have if I had stumbled across this in my living room. It's slow and bit too talky, and while its story about a man wrongfully accused of murder is right out of the noir canon, not a lot of other noir tropes are present to satisfy die-hard fans of the genre.

Chester Morris plays the main character, an alcoholic writer, as a slurry, stumbling drunk, but he does it quite charmingly and in a way that prevents it from getting old. But the real reason to see this film is for Constance Dowling, an absolute stunner, reminiscent of Veronica Lake but with a unique and exotic look all her own.

I saw this as a double feature with "The Unsuspected," and much to my surprise, my nine and seven year old sons liked this one more, despite it having much less action. Go figure.

Grade: B

An Unknown Noir That Deserves to be Known!!

[kidboots · 8/10 · 5 November 2010]

Chester Morris had a full and varied screen career - he was the consummate film actor. He tried his hand at most parts and always succeeded. In 1930 he played opposite 3 very different actresses - Alice White ("Playing Around"), Norma Shearer ("The Divorcée") and Una Merkel ("The Cat Creeps") and enhanced all three. Because he had never been typecast he was able to move through the years playing a variety of parts and in the 1940s when actors of his age where looking at character parts, he had his own series in "Boston Blackie". "Blind Spot" was the last "stand alone" movie he made, cushioned between a couple of Boston Blackies, before he conquered television.

Written by Martin Goldsmith, who wrote both "Detour" and "The Narrow Margin", it tells the story of Jeffrey Andrews (Morris), a writer down on his luck, who is forced to go to his publisher (who he secretly despises) for money he feels is his due. Small, who doesn't care for Andrews either, tries to convince him to come down off his artistic pedestal and write detective fiction. At the encouragement of Harrison, a popular mystery writer, Andrews outlines a "locked door" mystery he has had swimming around in his head. Later, at the bar, he meets Evelyn Green (Constance Dowling) Small's secretary, who comes in disheveled but eager to be friends (now she knows who he is) - she was pretty snooty at the office.

The next day Andrews is paid a visit by the police - he thinks it is because he drunkenly broke into Small's office and destroyed his contract, but the police are there to charge him with Small's murder. Things look bad - he has been heard telling people in the street about murdering a man in a locked room and the police can't find Evelyn Green. Harrison, who doesn't believe Andrews is guilty, gets the police to release him into his custody but Andrews gives him the slip and tries to revisit everyone, who in his drunken state, he had told the story to - but people have a habit of turning up dead!!!! With a sprinkling of "Blind Alley" thrown in Andrews is hypnotised and soon believes he is the killer.

This is a terrific unknown noir that deserves to be known. Morris is great as Andrews, unshaven and drunk for most of the movie but sobering up fast when he realises he may face the electric chair. Mild looking Steve Geray, who played Harrison, had a distinctive "Peter Lorre" like voice. Veronica Lake lookalike Constance Dowling was perfect as the romantic interest who, while her career was pretty lacklustre her private life was anything but. She had an affair with Eli Kazan in the late 1940s and her turbulent affair with Italian poet Cesare Pavese caused him to commit suicide in 1950.

Highly Recommended.

Talk about writing yourself into a corner.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 2 October 2023]

Smooth low budget film noir with top notch performances by the three major players: Chester Morris, a struggling writer whose work seems to have framed him for murder, Constance Dowling as the glamorous femme fatale secretary he hooks up with to try and clear himself (beginning to think at one point that she is the killer), and Steve Geray as a successful writer with a talent foe hypnosis.

Being drunk has left his memory a bit hazy, and then there's the fact that the deceased (Morris's publisher) was found in a room locked from the inside. Stories like this always are a bit messed up from the start, coming together as the film meets its halfway point. Some of the details have been used in other melodrama, with mixed results, but they are cleverly utilized here and that results in some surprising twists. This is a mesmerizing B thriller with a unique ending, a bit ironic and one I felt coming on with amusement as I realized that I was nearly right on the money.

Blind Spot:The uncut 72 minute edition.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 8/10 · 27 May 2015]

January 2015:

Whilst taking a look at IMDbs Film Noir board,I spotted a review from a fellow IMDber about a very good sounding Film Noir,which they mentioned appeared to have 10 minutes or so cut.Looking round online,I was disappointed to find that the only version which appeared was a 62 minute cut of the movie.

May 2015:

After giving up on finding the "full" version of the film,I was caught completely by surprise,when a fellow IMDber revealed that he had just tracked down the full version,which led to me getting ready to at last drive out of the blind spot.

The plot:

Grasping at his last $,fiction writer Jeffrey Andrews decides to go visit publisher Henry Small,in the hope of getting some quick cash.Pushing aside fellow writer Lloyd Harrison,Small tells Andrews that if he wants to get more cash,he needs to start writing more populist material,such as a murder-mystery book.

Despite being rather drunk,Andrews comes up with an outline which involves a man getting murdered in a locked room.Taking Small's advance payment,Andrews talks to Small's secretary Evelyn Green,who agrees to come along with him for some drinks.Saying farewell to Green,a very drunk Andrews suddenly decides that he can go back to Small's office and rip up the contract,so that he can become a free agent,and not have to dance round for Small's cash.As he tears up his contract,Andrews hears a strange noise from Small's office,which leads to Andrews soon finding out that his fictional mystery is about to be become real.

View on the film:

Name checking Humphrey Bogart,the screenplay by Harry Perowne & Martin Goldsmith has a deliciously black Comedy streak,as Andrews grinds his pulp novel up,by talking in a blunt manner to anyone he suspects of keeping the "blind spot" in Small's murder burning.Along with Andrews sharp, sarcastic Film Npir one-liners, Perowne and Goldsmith also give the title some excellent proto-Giallo shots,with Andrews solving of his own mystery novel being revealed in scatted fragments,which are connected up as Andrews uncovers the blind spot in his mystery tale.

Emphasizing the Giallo elements,director Robert Gordon and cinematographer George Meehan use icy first person tracking shots and silhouettes to show how cloudy Andrews mind is.Looking absolutely burnt-out, Chester Morris gives an excellent performance as Jeffrey Andrews,with Morris showing Andrews trying to get out of his Film Noir dead-end,by regaining fragments of his unwritten,unsolved mystery.Entering the title basking in an atmospheric mist,the gorgeous Constance Dowling gives a wicked Femme Fatale performance as Evelyn Green,thanks to Dowling taking Green from a flirty secretary to a hardened dame,who finds herself under Andrews blind spot.

A clever story that keeps you intrigued

[pensman · 9/10 · 13 January 2024]

While there is an obvious borrowing from The Kennel Murder Case, Chester Morris does an excellent performance as the author-on-a-bender who might have murdered his publisher. Morris' character, who is identified as a novelist who writes intellectual psychological stories, speaks more like noir style detective.

The story is a locked room murder supposedly carried out by Morris who devised the idea, but he can't remember how the murderer did it. And no matter what Morris does to try and remember his solution the more it looks like he did it.

Blind Spot is an entertaining whodunit with a supporting cast of well-known character actors. This is a film to enjoy on a rainy night or while being stuck at home during a winter storm. I came across this film on Hastings Mystery Theater on YouTube, and I was surprised at how good it was as a B+ B movie.