SPOILERS -- A strong, fun cast makes this a sharp shortie from First National. That cast almost makes up for the shady story, which is pretty lame. William Warren "plays" doctor Brown in this story, and will also be Perry Mason and the Lone Wolf... he was great at playing either a good guy or a bad guy. Allen Jenkins actually plays someone besides a mob thug here. Donald Meek, who was a character actor in just about every film made, is the wise, capable doctor in the hospital. The nurses are the smart ones here, they catch on to doc Brown, and cover for him in the short term, but the truth is shown at the end. Jean Muir is Nurse Grant,(one of her early credited roles) who saves the day. Funny to see so many bad medical practices in one short film, but I'm sure the rules for medical practices and surgery were much more lax back then. Some iffy special effects near the end, but were probably pretty cool at the time. The fake doc Brown keeps seeing the face of the person whose medical certificate he snitched. Nurse Grant has an accident, and doc Brown must do the actual surgery this time. Big final scene where he is exposed as the fraud. Repeated use of shadows.. at one point, we see the silhouettes of the doctor and the nurse working on the patient on the table, and we bypass seeing the actual internal guts of the patient as they work. That was a pretty cool effect. We also see Doc Wiley use "The Stimulator", to revive someone, which may have been an early version of the defibrillator (?) Not so bad. Picture and sound quality are quite good for such an early film.
