kidboots This is a very haunting entry in the unusual Whistler series, exploring loneliness and the need of friendship. Lynn Merrick was an up and coming starlet who had been featured on the Crime Doctor series and also in "Nine Girls" but she just wasn't showy or different enough to stand out from the crowd I suppose - she looked eye catching enough in this movie. These series were particularly good with unusually solid parts for girls, here Merrick plays Joan Martin, a nurse at the East Street Clinic where ruthless industrialist John Sinclair (Richard Dix) has been directed. He has just collapsed outside a train station where he is helped by a cheery cockney (!!!) cabbie who doesn't know who he is. Sinclair has been a hard headed business man all his life and through his hunger for power has missed out on love and companionship and now wants to make amends. He is drawn to nurse Joan (Merrick) but Joan is engaged to doctor Fred, even though, because of his lowly paid work among slum patients, he cannot give her the money and security that she craves. Sinclair sees his chance, reveals his true identity and lies, telling Joan he has only six months to live and that after his death, if they marry, she will inherit everything.The odd thing is that they then move to an isolated lighthouse - after realising that being around people has cured him of his malaise. Never fear, Joan has now given him even more of a reason to live and at the end of six months it is a hale and hearty John and a discontented Joan who welcome Fred as a guest to their lonely home. Fred has changed from a caring doctor to a grasping opportunist who can see a way out for himself and Joan. John's thoughts are going along the same lines and he engages Fred in that old conversation "how would you plan the perfect murder"??? John confides his plan of starting a rumour around the village that Fred is a sleepwalker - so when Fred's body is found, he will have a perfect alibi. Fred starts to act on the "suggestion", just as John hoped he would and when Fred enters his room that night, John is two steps ahead of him and Fred then becomes the corpse.... but there is a problem!!! After listening to John's proposal, Fred had become paranoid and ordered Sparrow (who is now John's buddy) to nail down the windows so it seems John now has to carry Fred's body down to the rocks below where he is seen by someone.... but who!!!After proving that he could play a villain as well as the next man (in "The Ghost Ship") Richard Dix was signed to do "The Whistler" series where he was called on to play a variety of characters - none of them particularly nice!!!

gridoon2018 Although "Voice Of The Whistler" is the shortest of the first four Whistler films, running just under an hour, it is also the slowest in its setting up the plot. It doesn't really pick up until the last 20 minutes or so, when the young doctor arrives at the lighthouse and the film becomes (not a who-done-it but) a who-will-do-it-first! The characters are complex people - neither good nor bad, but somewhere in between (like most of us). Other points of interest include the surprising amount of skin Lynn Merrick shows in her vintage mid-1940s swimsuit, and the pseudo-documentary at the start which actually reminded me of Woody Allen's "Zelig"! **1/2 out of 4.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** One of the most unusual and unpredictable of "The Whistler" movies that has to do with burnt out industrial and banking tycoon John Sinclair, Richard Dix, who after working himself into an early grave, in making his millions, finds out that he'll soon and up in one if he doesn't get his act together and take a long vocation from his work.Going to his rented island vacation house off Chicago's Lake Michigan Sinclair has a sudden seizer and ends up in Chicago cab driver's, who gave him a lift, Erin Sparrow, Rhys Williams,next door hotel room. Despite his phenomenal success in the business world Sincleir never had a chance to develop any lasting relationships and is in fact, despite his many millions, all alone in the world. It's Sparrow, a former English lightweight boxing champion, who shows the clueless Sinclair, who now calls himself John Carter, what friendship is all about and how to make friends as well has his, Sinclair, ability in influencing people to invest in his banks and businesses.Having a new lease on life Sinclair easily makes friends with a number of people that he comes in contact with in Chicago including registered nurse Joan Martin, Lynn Merrick, who Sparrow introduced him to. Not really being that hip in Joan's future with her long suffering fiancée Dr.Fred Graham, James Cardwell, who's trying to open up his own practice, he works almost for nothing at a local charity clinic, Sincalir make Joan a proposal to marry him and move into his new home away from home a converted, with all the modern convinces, lighthouse off the coast of Maine.A destroyed Dr. Graham leaves Joan feeling that her marriage to Sinclair, with him not expecting to live for more then six months, so that she could inherit his money is incredibly greedy as well as unfeeling towards him. It's when Sinclair's health improves and his sudden death, predicted by his doctors, doesn't come to pass that things start to get a bit stressful for everyone involved including Dr. Graham. The doctor unexpectedly showed up at the lighthouse expecting Joan to come back to him, after her husbands John Sinclair's demise, as well as as also getting himself a piece of Sinclair millions.The movie "The Voice of the Whistler" then takes a turn for the worse for everyone involved with Sinclair and Dr. Graham plotting each others murder with Joan, who's caught in the middle of all this, not Sinclair's money being the ultimate prize.****SPOILER ALERT FROM THIS POINT ON****You never know what's coming next but when it does it will shock your socks off. Sinclair for all his smarts let's the cat out of the bag in giving Dr. Graham the idea to murder him. It's that idea on Sinclair's part that leads to the double disaster at the conclusion of the film. If Sinclair was honest with himself he would have left Joan alone and not think that he could buy her like the many expensive, homes cars and yachts, items he bought for himself all through the years.In he end Sinclair overestimated himself in trying to outsmart Dr. Graham and giving him the opening that he needed to put him away for good and thus have Joan all for himself. It wasn't that Dr. Graham saw through Sinclair devious and murderous plan but that Sinclair, always feeling that he's in complete control, overlooked some very vital things, like the nailed shut lighthouse windows, that in the end lead to his downfall.

goblinhairedguy Like the other entries in the Whistler series, this one has an intriguing premise (not far removed from "Indecent Proposal") with a couple of nice twists. Unfortunately, it doesn't make for good cinema due to its static nature -- it's much more suited to the series' original medium, radio. The grungy setting of the first entry in the series (also directed by the fledgling William Castle) is sorely missed, though he does introduce a few oddball characters in passing. Nonetheless, it is worth sitting through the dull parts for the clever climax and the haunting aftermath. And there's one of those nice little walk-across-the-room bits by a sexy waitress to keep the guys alert (reminiscent of Lana Turner's rookie appearance in "They Won't Forget" or Yvette Vickers' eye-catching serveuse in "Hud"). A similar tale of a lighthouse-bound ménage-a-trois occurs in PRC's semi-noir appropriately entitled "Lighthouse".