Now that's not a description you hear every day when getting your finger prints taken! "You can't destroy a blank!" the amnesiac Warner Baxter snarls at his doctor, Ray Collins, furious that every test known to psychiatry can't make him remember his past, that is who he was and what he did before he was tossed out of a speeding car. Baxter decides to find out on his own what he can't remember so he decides to study psychiatry with his new identity and make his own life his first case.
Sometimes though the past is a scary thing to revisit, but circumstances make it impossible to avoid which Baxter discovers when he is recognized by someone he treats, and not recognizing them is a concern as to why the man won't identify any details from their past. It turns out that they believe Baxter to be a criminal, supposedly a thief, and they'll do anything to get their hands on the large amount of cash the thief stole. Beautiful social worker Margaret Lindsay helps Baxter out to find the missing pieces of his life.
A very clever opening to the next of Columbia's B crime series, not as gritty as the Boston Blackie films, but told through a psychiatric point of view. Baxter's interactions with the criminals he treats (particularly Leon Ames) is like nothing that you've seen on screen before, and he gives a strong, convincing performance. My one issue is the speedy way his recovery from the assault to becoming the crime doctor is dramatized, skipping over some vital detail. But this is a B movie, meant to only have a short run time, so for what we get from this ends up being extremely well done.
Sometimes though the past is a scary thing to revisit, but circumstances make it impossible to avoid which Baxter discovers when he is recognized by someone he treats, and not recognizing them is a concern as to why the man won't identify any details from their past. It turns out that they believe Baxter to be a criminal, supposedly a thief, and they'll do anything to get their hands on the large amount of cash the thief stole. Beautiful social worker Margaret Lindsay helps Baxter out to find the missing pieces of his life.
A very clever opening to the next of Columbia's B crime series, not as gritty as the Boston Blackie films, but told through a psychiatric point of view. Baxter's interactions with the criminals he treats (particularly Leon Ames) is like nothing that you've seen on screen before, and he gives a strong, convincing performance. My one issue is the speedy way his recovery from the assault to becoming the crime doctor is dramatized, skipping over some vital detail. But this is a B movie, meant to only have a short run time, so for what we get from this ends up being extremely well done.