User Reviews

**SPOILERS** Talky and boring "Crime Doctor" movie that showed, being the next to last of the series, that the "Crime Doctor" Dr. Robert Ordway was running out of patients and stories. Dr. Ordway had to go so far as to have the almost incomprehensible story explained during a rest period in a fight, that he had with the villain. Then after the Paris Police came to his rescue come up with another explanation and even later, as the movie ended, explain what happened again in the police station. With him getting a foot warmer from what turned out to be the partner, an art dealer, of the killer!

Giving a lecture on crime and mental illness Dr. Ordway is invited by his friend inspector Morrell to examine Henri who claimed that he killed his father but can't remember when or how. Henri had married against his fathers wishes Mignon Duval and he thinks that's why he murdered him. Still he can't remember how it happened and want's to now plead guilty and divorce Mignon in order to avoid her from having the stigma of being married to a convicted murdered.

The movie gets even more confusing with Dr. Ordway and Henri's lawyer Jules Davdel feeling that he's either innocent or insane which will at least, if Henri did in fact murder his dad, spare him from being executed. Just when you think you got a handle to whats happening there's this artist Anton Geroux thrown into the mix who's a friend of both Henri and Mignon. Geroux is involved in copying masterpieces and selling them through his fence art dealer Louis Chebonet as originals.

Everything starts to go haywire in the movie with Mignon's father Jules a professional knife thrower who's suspected in killing Henri's father, he was stabbed to death, who's himself later found dead in his apartment under the covers and under somewhat mysterious circumstances! Later artist Geroux, who's suspected in Henri's fathers murder by Dr. Ordway, is brutally murdered when this unknown assailant breaks into his studio and hacks him to death! This leaves Henri, whom Dr. Ordway is certain is innocent, off the hook since it would have been impossible, with him under 24 hour police observation, for him to have murdered them. This also proves that that since he had nothing to do with Jules & Geroux, who were suspected in his fathers murder, murders he couldn't have murdered his father either!

The big expose in the film to who murdered not only Henri's father but Jules & Geroux as well comes in this long and pointless auction, secretly set up by Dr. Ordawy, of one of the paintings that Henri's father owned that we find out was either a phony or the real deal! The painting was switched by his killer who, feeling that it would be left to him in Henri's fathers will, now has to come out in the open to buy it and thus expose himself.

Just too many subplots to keep up with what's going on and by the time you finally find out who killed Henri's father, together with Jules and Geroux, you couldn't even care less!

By the time the movie is over you feel just like like the "Crime Doctor" who, after the mental and physical beating he took in the movie, just wanted to take the first plane home and forget that he had anything at all to do with this mess.

That's what the Crime Doctor must determine when the son-in-law of a knife thrower is sentenced for killing his father who disapproved of his marriage. This film also involves a painter of copies of classic paintings and culminates with an auction where Warner Baxter (in one of his last of this series) hopes to trap the guilty party who has already added several other corpses to the pile.

As with other films in the series, this has many convoluted clues to prevent the audience from figuring out who the killer is. There are however, some interesting tidbits concerning the Parisan art world, including some ironic ways of figuring out if a painting is an original or a copy. Late in the series, it is definitely showing its age, especially when compared to the other detective stories of the time (now more film noir) rather than "series" films which were slowly disappearing from the bottom half of double bills.