calvinnme The Whistler series from Columbia is unusual. Every feature starts out with an introduction by "The Whistler" who is just a shadowy anonymous figure. The protagonist in every feature is played by Richard Dix, and in each case he is a different person with a different problem.This one tackles greed and loneliness. Dix plays business titan John Sinclair. The film opens with a film within a film that is a history of Sinclair's business life, starting in WWI, then spreading to auto production and banking, how his banks stayed solvent through the Great Depression, and a recent court win over another company stealing Sinclair's inventions. It's a nice little device to catch you up on John's history. But Sinclair is lonely because he doesn't trust other people to not use him to get his money. He has no friends or relatives. He has something that is merely called "an attack", and his doctor says he needs to leave immediately for a vacation or else he will die, the implication being that he will probably die shortly anyways. Nothing more specific is ever said about his illness.Well, John does take that trip, does make friends in Chicago, and then changes his destination to the seacoast on medical advice. He takes two of his Chicago friends with him - a cabbie, Sparrow, who helped him when he did not know he was helping the rich John Sinclair, and a nurse, Joan, at a neighborhood clinic for poor people. He marries the nurse strictly as a business deal - she will stay with him the few months he has left in return for inheriting his fortune. The problem is, Joan already has a fiancé, Fred, but he is struggling in spite of being a doctor and Joan wants money NOW. It is a revealing scene when she talks to her fiancé and you see how greedy she is underneath that compassionate exterior.So John, Sparrow, and Joan go to live in a lighthouse on the Maine Coast, renovated to a beach house. There is just one snag - John doesn't die. Happiness with Joan has helped him recover. The other snag is Joan is getting impatient again, tired of the isolation of the lighthouse which is really nothing for John since he has always been socially isolated. And then Joan's ex-fiancé shows up unexpectedly one day. John is suspicious that Fred will take Joan away. Fred still loves Joan. Joan still loves Fred but also loves the promise of her inheritance which she loses if she dumps John. And how does Sparrow the friendly cabbie fit into all of this, or does he? Watch and find out how this noir turns Capra-esque and then turns Hitchcock in the end.Recommended as a very good entry in the series. Columbia certainly knew how to take a shoestring budget and turn out an interesting product.

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.

MartinHafer This film is really like two separate films morphed together near the very end. The first 85% is a nice film about a rich but lonely man who is able to find himself. He seems like a very nice guy and you want him to succeed. I liked this very, very much and Richard Dix played an extremely sympathetic character. Then, as if out of left field, near the end of the film, the plot took a HUGE detour in an entirely different direction and this change made little sense. As I said, it seemed like an entirely different movie. Plus, once the film changed and the plot took a very dark turn, there was no sense of irony or suspense--leaving the viewer with a very flat and downbeat ending. While those who created this anthology series wanted to create a series with many of the characteristics of the later Twilight Zone TV show, the writing in the case of several of the installments just was too spotty. For a suspense-type film, it was gravely lacking in suspense.

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.