Sadly Over-hyped

Expected more

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This film comes much earlier than Out of the Past but both show keen detailing for their times' social, political and gender realities. Excellent depiction and good camera-work of industrial security and espionage of the day. After the opening action sequences, during which Walter Pigeon's Nick Carter establishes himself with the audience, we're treated to a series of well executed short scenes of 1939 high-tech. Technology shown as integral to the future/the coming war. Transitional image of women--on the one hand Rita Johnson's character flies an airplane in an emergency and we see the looks of pleasure on her face as she experiences her own competency. But when she lands the plane, "of course," she's overwhelmed and faints (we don't see this, we're just told). A few years before Rosie the Riveter.A B film--these films were the television of the day--but just like T.V. today, up to 20% of them were well worth watching. And not always because of their plots, paranoid fantasies full of plot holes that they are. Some are actually interesting cultural windows onto the recent past. This is one.

That was Jacques Tourneur' second American film after a short stint in France,where,in the wake of his father Maurice ,he produced some shorts and feature films including the funny "Toto" (1933).It's right to say that Tourneur's career really began with classic "Cat people" ."Nick Carter" is not much more than an episode of an imaginary miniseries.It features spying,hostage-taking and a comic relief (not that much comic anyway) provided by a second sleuth.Best scenes are to be found at the beginning (the eventful flight) and at the end (the chase between a boat and a plane).The rest is never really exciting and does not predate Tourneur's great works.

MGM in buying the rights to the Nick Carter stories and then making three films with the character just shows the twist of fate in some people's careers.Walter Pidgeon was one of their second magnitude stars at that time. B picture leads and occasionally in an A film where he always lost the girl. Louis B. Mayer must have thought a whole slew of these would have been made for Pidgeon and he would have become identified as Nick Carter on screen. But he managed to get some decent films, two back to back Best Pictures, How Green Was My Valley and Mrs. Miniver and a lifetime partnership with Greer Garson. He escaped movie oblivion then.It's a competently executed film, but I have to agree with previous reviewers. Donald Meek as the bee man looked like he just took his zany character from You Can't Take It With You and it just didn't fit in this fast paced detective story. The film itself is barely an hour. Meek distracts from the plot. Too bad because Donald Meek is usually a fine performer.I much prefer Walter Pidgeon as the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd or Clem Miniver or even Dr. Morbius. Good thing he escaped Nick Carter.

This B movie was directed by Jacques Tourneur, who went on to direct one of my favorite films, Cat People. It also has handsome Walter Pidgeon in an early starring role. This is a 1939 film about sabotage at an aircraft plant that Carter is called in to investigate. There are many airplane sequences, lots of fog, and everyone looks suspicious. Donald Meek is on hand as loony Bartholemew, the bee man, providing the comedy.It's fun to see people who, 15-20 years later, would be TV names: Frank Faylen of "Dobie Gillis," Milburn Stone of "Gunsmoke," Sterling Holloway, he of the unusual voice, of just about every TV show, who was also the voice of Winnie the Pooh. Henry Hull, who plays the old man in this and sported white hair, was 49 when this film was made. I took the trouble to look it up because in the 60s he was at least 150 years old. No, just in his 70s, one of those people who played old man all his life, I guess.This is a fun movie, with its old-fashioned and poorly done process shots, a very handsome Pidgeon, and some character actors from my youth.