Lew Ayres' career at MGM was destroyed because he was a conscientious objector to WWII. He actually wanted to be admitted into the service as a medic, but because the Army could not guarantee he would not end up a regular soldier, he chose the objector status. Ultimately he was admitted as a medic, but the publicity hurt him and ended his role in the popular Dr. Kildare series of B movies.
MGM decided to try the popular screen team of Ayres and Lorraine Day in an atmospheric murder mystery in completely different roles with Day as dancer Edwina Brown and Ayres as unemployed actor Oliver Duffy.
In Chicago there have been a series of ax murders. In each case the murderer is an insane person and does not know the victim. Police interrogation gets them nowhere. Oliver Duffy sees Edwina walking home late at night and somebody stalking her. At first she thinks Duffy is a masher, but when it is proven she is being followed he escorts her home and stakes out her fire escape. Duffy sees the guy stalking her approach the fire escape but scares him off. The following night he sets a trap and catches the man, with an ax, who like all of the other perpetrators is insane.
The police put Edwina up in a hotel, and as Duffy is saying his goodbyes, notices that an axe used for fires is missing and chases yet another guy with an axe down the stairs. This proves that somebody is deliberately trying to kill Edwina, and that this is no random attack. But the police don't want to listen to Duffy. From the police he learns that all of the attackers have last names that start with the letter B. In the meantime, Edwina seems to be hiding some deep dark secret from Duffy. So what is the motive of whoever it is going to all of this trouble to kill such a seemingly ordinary girl as Edwina by dispatching seemingly random maniacs to kill seemingly random victims? Watch and find out.
This film was extremely well done. I think I would have believed the immediate chemistry between Day and Ayres even if I had not seen any of the Kildare films. It also has some humor in it as Ayres impersonates an insane person to help catch the killer. Unfortunately his rendition is a bit too authentic for one psychiatrist. It's rare to see a film released and made in 1942 not discuss the war at all, yet this one doesn't. It is a pure murder mystery with lots of twists and turns and maybe it stayed out of mentioning the war to help the film since Ayres was out of favor with the public over his draft status.
I highly recommend this one. Not up to the very end do you really understand everything that is going on. What a shame it is not in the Warner Archive so I can buy a copy and see this whenever I want.
