sol ***SPOILERS*** The "Crime Doctor" Dr. Robert Ordway gets caught up with an identity crisis in the movie "The Crime Doctor's Manhunt" in two people in the film having two different names, one real one fake, to hide their real identity! It's up to Dr.Ordway to find out who's who and why their trying to hide the fact from him and later the police just who they really are! All this confusion started when shell-shocked ex-GI John Foster came to Dr.Ordway's office to find out why he has lapses in his already shattered, from the war, memory and what's causing them! It's later that Foster's fiancée Irene Cotter shows up at the Doc's office telling him that her boyfriend is acting very strange and Dr. Ordway should follow up in his head shrinking treatments on him. As it turns out Foster never shows up to be treated which has Dr.Ordway go to Foster's usual hang out at the local carnival to see if he's responding to his treatment that he already gave him. Before he can talk to Foster Dr. Ordway finds him shot in the head outside his apartment by two hoods who are trying to dispose of his body. Faking to be drunk Dr. Ordway is left alone after being escorted to his "pad" by the hoods who are so stupid in that they let him, the one person who can identify them and send them to both prison and the electric chair, get away! The movie gets even more confusing then it already is when Irene's control freak sister Natalie shows up on the scene after a three year absence. It soon discovered, by the dead man's US Army dog tags, that John Foster is really Phil Armstrong Irene's fiancée who never bother to tell the Crime Doctor, when she visited him in his office, what his real name was? ***SPOILERS*** Dull and at times hard to follow "Crime Doctor" film with the "Crime Doctor" Dr. Ordway as usual doing all the heavy lifting and taking all the hits as he and police inspector Harry B.Manning track down who offed John Foster/Robert Armstrong and why! Natalie later has a falling out with the two hoods who murdered Armstrong over money and end's up offing them, by turning up the gas at their hideout, as well. The "Crime Doctor" soon sees through Natalie's act and uses himself, like he does in most of the "Crime Doctor" film, as bait to get her to slip up! Nothing to really write home about here that's we haven't seen before in the 'Crime Doctor" movies but that the "Crime Doctor" or the actor who plays him Warren Baxter is starting to get a wee bit tired of playing him being a detective instead of practicing his craft: Psychitry. That's by Dr.Ordway being forced by the writers and directors of the series to be a hard boil take it on the chin private eye instead!

calvinnme ... because they usually have nothing to do with the actual subject of the film. You also have to make sure you don't blink during these short fast-paced films or else you'll miss something important. Here the film opens on a young man stumbling around an amusement park in a fog of amnesia. He's had several of these spells lately and goes to Dr. Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter in the title role) for help. Ordway goes to the place where the young man says he found himself stumbling about. After walking around awhile what does he see but a couple of men coming out of a boarding house carrying the body of the young amnesiac man who came to see him that day, a bullet wound to his head. The bad guys spot Ordway so he has to feign drunkenness and pretend that he thinks the dead body they are carrying is actually another drunk or he's afraid that he'll share the young man's fate. The henchmen buy the act and let Ordway go. Ordway goes straight to the police and together they raid the boarding house. Nobody has ever seen the men Ordway saw, nobody every heard a shot, and no sign of violence is to be found anywhere in the boarding house. Police Inspector Harry B. Manning (William Frawley) obviously respects Ordway from his past help in solving crimes, but this time thinks maybe the good doctor is imagining things.Ordway knows that he saw what he thought he saw, so he first has to prove there was a crime then find the criminals. In the process Ordway runs across the young man's fiancée, a mousy and wealthy girl who's so meek she's almost invisible, a boarded up old mansion that for some reason has a master bedroom that is still completely furnished, and the dead bodies of the two henchmen Ordway saw carrying the young man's body. They've been asphyxiated in their sleep by gas, only they're not in their own apartment at the time of their deaths. Who is going about causing all of this mayhem? Watch and find out.William Castle directed several Crime Doctor films, and they always have that touch of the macabre. Thus this film has not only the well constructed mystery typical of the Crime Doctor films, it has lots of atmosphere as well. Highly recommended.

Michael_Elliott Crime Doctor's Man Hunt (1946) ** 1/2 (out of 4) William Castle returns as director in this sixth entry. A man returns home from the war suffering from amnesia so he goes to the Crime Doctor (Warner Baxter) for help. Within days the man is found dead and all fingers point to his fiancé but there might be more behind his death. Once again director Castle is able to build some nice atmosphere in some moody scenes but overall this is on par with the rest of the series. This one here manages to become one of the better entries due in large part to the screenplay giving Baxter some nice supporting characters and actors to play them. Ellen Drew, Frank Sully and William Frawley are all good in their roles. The mystery is also laid out pretty well as this film features a different screenwriter than the previous five films.

MartinHafer While this isn't the best B-detective film ever made, it is different enough from the usual style that it's well worth watching. Warner Baxter's detective is a psychiatrist and instead of following the usual formula employed by Boston Blackie, The Falcon and MANY other film detectives, his films are a little more cerebral as well as more believable. There is also a real plus because the usual cop investigating the case isn't a total idiot, so I am very thankful for the role William Frawley played. The film itself is well-paced (being only 61 minutes long), interesting and offers a fun twist ending (though psychologically speaking, it was VERY far-fetched). Not a great film, but a welcome film since it is different enough that it doesn't just blend in with the crowd.