utgard14 Second in the I Love a Mystery series sees Jack Packard (Jim Bannon) and Doc Long (Barton Yarborough) investigating a mystery involving a missing man, shrunken heads, and blow guns. Yarborough is at his "good ole boy" best, for those who enjoy him. Bannon is not bad but not exciting. Very ordinary. Anita Louise is irritating throughout the picture. Terribly overwrought performance. The best thing about this series were the nice atmospheric moments. The usage of supernatural or bizarre elements helps separate it from most other B detective films. The killer is pretty easily figured out, though the motivation was pretty cool. Anita Louise's hysterics are the worst part of the movie. Still a decent way to spend an hour and change.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** It's when a plane crashed on it's way to South America that among the wreckage was found a box with a shrunken human head inside! This set off alarm bells back in San Francisco to who that head belonged to in that the Cordoza Museum where the head supposedly came from had, in it's collection of shrunken heads, one head too many or unaccounted for!The wife of the late big game hunter and explores Clinton Mitchell Louies, Mona Barrie, is terrified of her step daughter Janet, Anita Louise, in that she's planning to have her murdered in that her father who was lost in the Brazilian jungle was in fact murdered by Louise and her secret lover Prof. Arthur Logan, Frnak Wilcox. It was Prof. Logan who was with Anita's father on the expedition and who's love letters to Louise she found hidden in the house. What all this has to do with the head found in the plane wreckage is that it's suspected by Janet to be her father's, Clinton Mitchell, head!The head itself is nothing to write home about in that it can belong to anybody without one but the circumstances of it being found in such a mysterious way had Louise get in touch with ace private eyes Jack Packard & Doc Long, Jim Bannon & Barton Yarborough, in order to protect her from her outargued step daughter Janet, who feels that it's her father's head, from having her killed! In Janet suspecting her of murdering her father and have his head shrunken to cover up her crime!There's also in the movie Janet's good friend Rex Kennedy, Michael Duane, who in trying to get to the bottom of Clinton Mitchell's disappearance ends up being the #1 suspect in Louies' butler Johns, John Elliott, murder when he was spotted snooping around outside the Mitchell mansion. The fact the murder weapon in John's death was a South American native blowgun made it very certain that the unidentified shrunken head must have been that of Clinton Mitchell! Since it was there in South America that he spent the last year getting friendly with the local native head shrinker's who's weapon of choice is the deadly poison dart blowgun! In fact Janet herself was involved with a head shrinker here back in San Francisco Dr.Karger, Ludwig Donath, who was recommended to her by Rex Kennedy a former patient of his. Dr.Karger who was not only shrinking Janet's head but planning to shrink her bank account in using the information about her that he got from his head shrinking sessions to blackmail Janet! ***SPOILERS*** The key to this whole missing or shrunken head mystery turns out to be Janet's good friend and confidant Uncle Leon, Paul E.Burns, the friendly neighborhood taxidermist who among all his stuffed animals that he keeps in his house also has a live full grown black panther named Diablo! It's in fact Uncle Leon who's expertise in stuffing animals as well as shrunken heads that in the end exposed the secret to whom the mysterious head belongs to and even more important who shrunk it!

Michael_Elliott Devil's Mask, The (1946) * (out of 4) The title might make it sound like a forgotten horror film but it's actually part of Columbia's "I Love a Mystery" series, which was based on the radio show. A plane crashes without anyone getting killed but the strange thing is a shrunken Indian head, which leads two detectives (Jim Bannon, Barton Yarborough) on a strange case that includes a mysterious woman being stalked by a hired killer. I've been watching a lot of these "B" series this year and this one here is by far the worst film I've seen from any of the series. I'm not sure if others are better but I won't be finding out anytime soon. The two leads are downright horrible and their style of comedy is long past funny and I doubt it was very funny back in 1946. The supporting cast is equally dull as is the screenplay and the actual mystery. The ending is actually pretty good but I wouldn't recommend sitting through the rest of the film just to reach it.

Neil Doyle The "I Love A Mystery" films from Columbia were all based on a radio program of that name and each of them was made into very entertaining mysteries, the sort that Columbia was able to churn out on a tight budget with directors like Henry Levin.This is the most gripping mystery in the batch, full of ingredients that will have you guessing from beginning to end just how all the loose ends will be tied up.It starts off with the shrunken heads discovered when a plane crashes en route from California to Columbia, and then the plot includes a missing explorer who has possibly been murdered, an anxious wife afraid that someone is trying to kill her (MONA BARRIE), a young woman and her fiancé (ANITA LOUISE and MICHAEL DUANE)who resent being followed by detectives, and the detectives hired to cover the case (JIM BANNON and BARTON YARBOROUGH). Also in the mix: a restless black panther and the weird owner of a taxidermist shop (PAUL E. BURNS).Nicely photographed in crisp B&W with appropriate set decorations, it has the look of a better than average programmer from Coumbia (not Republic, as another comment suggests).Guaranteed to surprise and entertain, it's well worth watching.