Crime Doctor's Man Hunt (Columbia, 1946)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Later on Thursday, June 26, after my husband Charles came home from work at long last I ran him a YouTube post of a film from 1946, a Columbia “B” called Crime Doctor’s Man Hunt, that had a strikingly similar plot line to Sisters – enough that though Turner Classic Movies hadn’t shown it as part of their sinister siblings marathon, they could have. Crime Doctor’s Man Hunt was part of a long-running radio series (1940 to 1947) that got turned into a series of “B”’s by Columbia from 1943 to 1949 with veteran star Warner Baxter as Dr. Ordway (his first name was “Benjamin” on radio but was changed to “Robert” in the movies), both a medical doctor and a Ph.D. In the first film in the series, Crime Doctor (1943), it was established that Ordway had actually been a career criminal named Phil Morgan who suffered amnesia, forgot his past, and ended up studying medicine as “Robert Ordway.” In the later Crime Doctor films he became a private detective and consultant to the official police who used his medical and psychiatric expertise to help solve crimes. Crime Doctor’s Man Hunt, directed by William Castle (well before his re-emergence in the 1950’s as a horror director with a penchant for tacky gimmicks to promote his movies) from a script by Eric Taylor (story) and Leigh Brackett (screenplay), takes a while for a plot design to emerge.

Ultimately the story centers around “John Foster” (Myron Healey), a World War II veteran who’s clearly suffering from what was then called “shell shock” and is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He shows up at Dr. Ordway’s office for a psychiatric consultation during which he admits to having blackouts and continually returning to an address of which he has no conscious memory. Alas, “Foster” visits Dr. Ordway just that one time and never returns. Then Ordway is visited by his fiancée, Irene Cotter (Ellen Drew), who desperately wants to know whether the man she’s engaged to marry is mentally healthy or not. Ordway explains that under the laws of confidentiality, he can’t betray “Foster”’s secrets to her or anyone else. The next thing that happens is that Ordway is taken hostage by two thugs who have just killed “Foster” and are trying to take his body away by pretending he’s drunk but still alive. The action centers around an amusement park in which there’s a shooting gallery run by Ruby Farrell (Claire Carleton), a salty broad and easily the most interesting character in the film. The two thugs who killed “Foster” then confront the woman who hired them, Irene’s sister Darlene Cotter (also Ellen Drew, though made up to look different with a blonde wig and glasses), and demand more money from her.

Both Cotters are the daughters of clueless rich man Gerald Cotter (Francis Pierlot), who drove Darlene out of the house because he thought she was a bad influence on Irene. Darlene left for parts unknown after having kept Irene in such total thrall to her that Irene had no will of her own. After cycling through various suspects, including phrenologist Marcus LeBlaine (Olin Howard), astrologer Alfredi (Ivan Triesault) – who gets on the suspect list after the police learn “Foster,” whose real name was Philip Armstrong, consulted him and Alfredi predicted his death – and Ruby Farrell, who becomes a suspect because Armstrong’s killer did it with an air gun he’d stolen from her concession – both Ordway and the lead official cop, Inspector Harry Manning (William Frawley – who actually got cast as police detectives in Columbia “B”’s surprisingly often given that he’s most famous today for playing Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy), realize that Irene is the real killer. Like Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder) in Sisters and Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in Psycho (a film Crime Doctor’s Man Hunt has been compared to, even though in Psycho the late relative who has Norman Bates psychologically entrapped is his mother, not a sibling), Irene’s stronger sister took over her identity even after they were no longer living together.

In fact, a deus ex machina character emerges in the person of Darlene’s Haitian (but white) husband, who announces to the cops that Darlene is already dead and therefore he resents that they’re making her the prime suspect in an active murder investigation. There’s a great final scene set in an old dark house in which Ordway and Manning apprehend Irene in Darlene’s guise, taking off her blonde wig and glasses and therefore “outing” her as the presumably “nice” sister who felt compelled to kill Philip precisely because if they had got married, sooner or later he would have discovered her secret and exposed her. Crime Doctor’s Man Hunt is a well-done little thriller, and though I think director Castle and cinematographer Philip Tannura may have overdone the noir atmospherics at least a bit, it’s well constructed and proves that William Castle didn’t need to float collapsible skeletons over the heads of his audiences or have certain seats in the theatres wired to administer electric shocks to unsuspecting audience members, as he did with his 1959 film The Tingler. Future director John Waters recalled going to the theatre in his neighborhood that showed The Tingler early to make sure he got one of the “wired” seats!