Such a frustrating disappointment

Good start, but then it gets ruined

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a really good and fun comic crime thriller. It's worth watching if you like comic heroes and superhero type of films. This particular film might appeal to those that like crime noir.Dick Tracy is after a man calling himself Splitface. Splitface is a serial killer - and out to get 14 people in remembrance of his jury trial when he was put in prison for murder. Splitface is out of prison and now out to get revenge on those that put him there.Some interesting scenes with lots of action. The film is comic book-ish in it's way but not so much so that fans of crime noir could not enjoy the film. I'd say the film is more noir-ish than comic book-ish.8/10

A psychotic killer by the name of "Splitface" (Mike Masurki) is on the loose and is killing people of different backgrounds. What's even stranger is that extortion notes are found on the victims but the people who pay are still killed anyway. Even the mayor is being threatened and "Dick Tracy" (Morgan Conway) is being pressured to find the killer as soon as possible. Now, even though this is a rather short film (barely over an hour long) there is enough mystery and action to keep a person's attention throughout. Even so, the script was a little corny at times and the performances of all concerned were average at best. Other than that there really isn't too much to be said about this movie except that it was filmed in black and white and some viewers may not like it because they don't realize how popular Dick Tracy was back in the day. Still, it was an okay film and worth what little time was spent watching it.

The first of four Dick Tracy films that were made by RKO Studios in the Forties is a straight action filled drama so unlike the live cartoon that Warren Beatty did and cast with a bunch of Hollywood names. Morgan Conway plays the square jawed detective with Anne Jeffreys as the eternally faithful and eternally exasperated Tess Truehart. If ever a man was wed to his job it was Dick Tracy as a homicide cop.The villain here is Mike Mazurki excellently cast as Splitface and one look at him and you know why he's named that. He's responsible for a string of brutal stabbings and those scars he bares both give the city fright, but also make him impossible to trace since they were acquired in prison and render him unrecognizable. He's picked a cross section of citizens as his targets and while I think the viewer will figure it out before Conway puts it together, it's still a lot of fun.A subsidiary villain in the film is Trevor Bardette playing a con man astrologer and hypnotist. Bardette has a real field day with the part.Dick Tracy Detective is a fairly good B film from RKO Studios and the cast looks like they're having a good time.

If you're expecting MALTESE FALCON you're in the wrong place. This first in the RKO Dick Tracy movies based on Chester Gould's hardboiled policeman is very faithful to the source material and a LOT of fun.The cast is well chosen and Morgan Conway looks like he stepped right off the comics page.What is unexpected is the inky black noirish camera work, something that was very rare for a B-picture. The entire series was entertaining, with Ralph Byrd replacing Conway for the third and fourth installments, and the two earliest entries were geared towards an adult audience as shown in the violence depicted.Pull the stick out of your crack, sit back and enjoy some very entertaining little films from a more innocent time, when our good guys were someone to look up to.