Very disappointing...

Too much of everything

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Like many low-budget serials, this one is about as bad as you'd expect, looking more like some of the flaky stuff that had been done ten years previously. The one shining light in this thing is, of course, Karloff. Watch it for him, and it's good for a grin.Bear in mind, this has no relation to actual law or police procedure! Tracy and his pal whip out those .38's and fire, no matter what the surroundings, and for little reason. He breaks into a professor's house and searches it, all without benefit of a warrant. There are dozens of other things that real cops wouldn't get away with today -- and I don't think they did back then, either!But as long as you're not expecting "Gone With The Wind," it's good for a bit of fun.

First lets get this out of the way, Boris Karloff is amazing. Karloff brings serious gravitas for a character in a film such as this. Beyond Karloff, however, the acting is quite suspect. Byrd and Gwynne aren't nearly as compelling as Conway and Jeffreys of the 1945 film.On the story front, there is much more cartoon atmosphere present compared with the 1945 film. The names of persons and places are all gags, hand-canons are constantly going off at seeming random and Tracy's partner bumbles like no other. Whilst this is fun it isn't done well at all. The film still plays to close to 'real'. Overall this creates a strange unbalanced experience.**Spoiler**The entire device to get Tracy to the lair of Gruesome (his body switch for Melody) is ridiculous. If all Gruesome wished was to kill Melody, he wouldn't have stolen and burned him. It would have been much simpler to shoot or knife him in the hospital thus avoiding stealing an ambulance &c.**Spoiler Over**Overall, the film is enjoyable and worth a watch. It's flawed and questionable, but Karloff and occasional gags pull it together to create something a notch above average.

I'm fantasizing what I could do with the stop-action chemical compound that the bank robbers use in this film, the best of the Tracy's. It's a neat plot device, novel for the time, and a very well done special effect. I hope the actors were paid double for having to hold pose when freeze-frame wouldn't do. And catch Karloff as Gruesome. Make-up didn't even have to spend much money to create a grotesque effect— the actor's craggy features were already half-way there (I gather that in real life, he was a gentle, very nice man). Under- rated director John Rawlins adds some effective touches, such as the got'cha in the taxidermy shop, and and manages to keep things moving at an entertaining pace. And watch for that surprise on the conveyor belt at movie's end— I expect that was to spare kids in the audience. Also, it's a clever script with a few surprises, along with the usual tongue-in-cheek names, like Y. Stuffum (the taxidermist) and I. M. Learned ( the professor)! And, of course, no Tracy is complete without those two real-life weirdo's, Skelton Knaggs (X-ray) in coke-bottle glasses and grave-yard Milton Parsons (A. Tomic) as the invention genius. Good thing there's the fetching Anne Gwynn as Tess Trueheart to give the eyes a rest. Ralph Byrd is the definitive Tracy and, what's more, appears to be enjoying the part. In fact, it looks like RKO put more money (hiring Karloff) and effort into this production than in the others. So, I'm sort of surprised the series was discontinued. Were the box-office results disappointing?— maybe an executive power play? Too bad, because the comic strip was never more popular than during those postwar years. Anyway, this is the best of the entries and still holds together nicely as an example of the movie-making craft.

I have long been familiar with Dick Tracy through first his comic strip when I was a kid in the '70s, then an Archie series that showcased animated comic strips, then an early '60s cartoon series from UPA, then Warren Beaty's 1990 movie and now from the last of four RKO Tracy movies from the '40s. As he had in some late '30s Republic serials and the previous RKO entry, Ralph Byrd plays the title character whose nemesis here is the other title character played by the legendary Boris Karloff. It involves a gas that paralyzes people for several minutes that makes it easy for Karloff and his cohorts to come in an rob a bank. Also in the bank is Tess Truehart (Anne Gwynne) who happens to be in a phone booth when the gas goes off so she isn't affected and calls boyfriend Tracy as the robbery takes place. Nicely dramatic and comedic use of freeze-frame throughout with subsequent action sequences an added bonus. Very good performances from Karloff and his cohorts Skelton Knaggs as X-Ray and Tony Barrett as Melody. The good guys aren't so bad either! I liked Pat's line about doing business with Boris Karloff the best. Well worth seeing for fans of '40s series programmers. P.S. Jason Robards, Sr. plays the bank vice president here.