Great Film overall

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

"The Missing Juror" was one of Columbia's "filler" movies, usually made in about 12 days for around $100,000 and designed to fill out a double bill. Budd Boetticher, the director, gave the film flair and individuality. It was only his second directorial credit (his first was a Boston Blackie mystery "One Mysterious Night") and he had fond memories of the movie and it's stars. He thought Janis Carter was wonderful and could have been a top star if only she had learned to "play the game". It also really advanced the career of George MacCready along the ranks of memorable movie villains.At a suburban railway crossing, a shadowy figure props the body of a man behind the wheel of a car as a train hurtles into it!! The murdered man is the fifth person to die from a jury that condemned an innocent man to death. Newspaper man, Joe Keats (Jim Bannon) has always been convinced of his innocence but even though there are appeals and submissions, Harry Wharton (MacCready) is found guilty. When the first juryman is shot, he confesses to Keats that Wharton has been framed and as a result of new evidence he is released. But Harry is a changed man, imprisonment has sent him insane and while incarcerated in the State Mental Hospital, he sets fire to the ward and hangs himself - or does he???Keats is still investigating the juror's deaths and comes to know one of them, Alice (Janis Carter). She is not at all interested in him but is interested in Mr. Jerome K. Bentley, the mysterious jury foreman, who has a strange fetish for the number 12!!! Unlike a lot of the reviewers I thought it was a pretty good thriller - not Noir but definitely not mediocre!! Of course Keats takes an immediate dislike to Bentley but still takes up his invitation of a visit to the steam baths - Big Mistake!!! They are met by Colly (Mike Mazurki), the proprietor who proceeds to give Bentley his nightly neck massage while reciting Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" - as if that isn't enough to make Keats suspicious, he almost comes to a steamy end in the actual baths. Meanwhile Bentley has lured Alice to his home on the pretense of pretending to hire her to redecorate it - Keats can't go running to the rescue as he has been mistakenly jailed so it is up to Alice's faithful room-mate Tex (Jean Stevens) - who is smarter than the two leads and should have been on the case from the start. She makes a few phone calls which lead to a happy ending. Jim Bannon, after starting out in thrillers ("The Soul of a Monster", "I Love a Mystery") quickly found a home in the West, particularly TV, with shows like "The Range Rider" and "The Adventures of Champion".

Like many other B-movies, "The Missing Juror" really shows that it was rushed into production. After all, despite a very nice plot, the script is so littered with holes that it's a wonder the thing isn't mistaken for a piece of Swiss cheese! And I am talking about HUGE holes. It's a shame, really, as the idea was great and the film, despite its problems, was a lot of fun.George Macready plays an innocent man mistakenly sent to death row. Fortunately (perhaps), a reporter (Jim Bannon) is able to discover the real perpetrator and Macready is set free. However, his time in the death house apparently has destroyed his mind and he's sent to a sanitarium. Some time later, he apparently killed himself--though the body is so charred that identification is impossible. No one at all questions whether or not it was him--even though it's obvious that it might not be him (huge plot hole #1). Later, one-by-one, the members of the jury that convicted him begin to die. At this point you'd think someone would suggest that the dead man isn't dead and is killing the jurors...but not in this silly film. They only consider this towards the end of the film! Another huge plot problem is that Macready's body was apparently actually the foreman of this jury....and this man just happens to look almost exactly like Macready!!! So, when Macready walks around in a disguise as clever as Clark Kent's, no one is able to determine who he really is! Was this perhaps filmed on some planet other than ours where people are all blind or stupid?! Despite these HUGE problems, the idea of an innocent man snapping and exacting revenge is great. And, the way he kills them is also very good. In many ways, this plot was reminiscent of the much later film "The Abominible Doctor Phibes"--a cheesy but very enjoyable Vincent Price film. Plus, Macready and Bannon were very good actors stuck in a film that was beneath their talents. But, in spite of everything, I still kept watching as the film was entertaining throughout--even if EVERYONE in the audience was smarted than the folks in the film!!

Though it wasn't part of the "I Love a Mystery" series (that wouldn't start at Columbia until the next year) "The Missing Juror" has the same writer, Charles "Blackie" O'Neal (Ryan O'Neal's father), and the same star, Jim Bannon. It also has the same breezy unconcern with plot credibility; like his script for the first "I Love a Mystery" movie, O'Neal's screenplay literally makes no sense, as well as being structured around one man impersonating another (I know I'm treading on the thin edge of "spoiler" here but IMDb's cast list actually gives the game away anyway) and supposedly not being recognized by two leads who know both people well. What saves this movie is George Macready's malevolent performance and, above all, Budd Boetticher's direction: Boetticher and cinematographer L. W. O'Connell take the film noir look to such extremes that some scenes are played out in almost pitch-black darkness and only flashes of light, along with the voices on the soundtrack, clue us in as to what's supposed to be going on. It's a pity Boetticher later specialized in Westerns and didn't make many more noirs — he was damned good at them!

This film, rarely seen on TV, is one of the great over-looked film noirs of the 1940's. Similar in tone to such noirs as the "Stranger On The Third Floor", the movie plays out as a noir-twist on the film "And Then There Was None" with George Macready at his nasty best.