January 2015:Whilst taking a look at IMDbs Film Noir board,I spotted a review from a fellow IMDber about a very good sounding Film Noir,which they mentioned appeared to have 10 minutes or so cut.Looking round online,I was disappointed to find that the only version which appeared was a 62 minute cut of the movie.May 2015:After giving up on finding the "full" version of the film,I was caught completely by surprise,when a fellow IMDber revealed that he had just tracked down the full version,which led to me getting ready to at last drive out of the blind spot.The plot:Grasping at his last $,fiction writer Jeffrey Andrews decides to go visit publisher Henry Small,in the hope of getting some quick cash.Pushing aside fellow writer Lloyd Harrison,Small tells Andrews that if he wants to get more cash,he needs to start writing more populist material,such as a murder-mystery book.Despite being rather drunk,Andrews comes up with an outline which involves a man getting murdered in a locked room.Taking Small's advance payment,Andrews talks to Small's secretary Evelyn Green,who agrees to come along with him for some drinks.Saying farewell to Green,a very drunk Andrews suddenly decides that he can go back to Small's office and rip up the contract,so that he can become a free agent,and not have to dance round for Small's cash.As he tears up his contract,Andrews hears a strange noise from Small's office,which leads to Andrews soon finding out that his fictional mystery is about to be become real.View on the film:Name checking Humphrey Bogart,the screenplay by Harry Perowne & Martin Goldsmith has a deliciously black Comedy streak,as Andrews grinds his pulp novel up,by talking in a blunt manner to anyone he suspects of keeping the "blind spot" in Small's murder burning.Along with Andrews sharp, sarcastic Film Npir one-liners, Perowne and Goldsmith also give the title some excellent proto-Giallo shots,with Andrews solving of his own mystery novel being revealed in scatted fragments,which are connected up as Andrews uncovers the blind spot in his mystery tale.Emphasizing the Giallo elements,director Robert Gordon and cinematographer George Meehan use icy first person tracking shots and silhouettes to show how cloudy Andrews mind is.Looking absolutely burnt-out, Chester Morris gives an excellent performance as Jeffrey Andrews,with Morris showing Andrews trying to get out of his Film Noir dead-end,by regaining fragments of his unwritten,unsolved mystery.Entering the title basking in an atmospheric mist,the gorgeous Constance Dowling gives a wicked Femme Fatale performance as Evelyn Green,thanks to Dowling taking Green from a flirty secretary to a hardened dame,who finds herself under Andrews blind spot.

This was the directorial debut of Robert Gordon, whose debut is however not of earth-shaking importance, as he never shook the earth later on. The film is an entertaining low-budget B murder mystery, and Chester Morris and Constance Dowling both overact. Morris especially over-does it as a particularly obnoxious drunk early in the film. This is unfortunate, as the story requires us to have sympathy for him later on, and those who find abusive drunks hard to tolerate will have to be strong. The chief merit of this film is an extraordinarily ingenious twist to the 'murder in a locked room' motif. Several films have been made on the theme: 'how did the murderer escape from the room containing the corpse when the room was locked from the inside?' In this version, however, another ingenious layer is added to the conundrum. Here we have the drunken author (just mentioned) inventing a plot solution for this while he is intoxicated and forgetting it when he has sobered up. However, by that time, someone who heard his idea has actually carried out the clever plan and implicated Morris as the murderer! When Morris tries to track down the people he told the idea to when he was drunk, in the hope that they will remember it and enlighten him, so that he can clear himself of a murder charge, he runs into difficulties. The bartender to whom he told the idea is murdered, to stop him telling the solution of the crime. Those of us who like to solve things will inevitably be interested in this film, and will disregard the inadequacies of the production as being beside the point. Hence, murder mystery fans will find much in this film to intrigue them. And perhaps they will wish, as I found myself doing, that the excellent story idea had been carried out with a better film version, or indeed that someone would remake it and do it properly this time.

Jeffrey Anders is a down-on-his luck mystery writer who drunkenly blunders into his publisher's office one day with an idea for a new story. He has concocted a story where a dead body is found inside a locked, bolted room. He also has a simple solution for the mystery. Unfortunately, later his publisher is found dead inside a locked, bolted room and Anders can't remember the solution he told when he was drunk! Of course, Jeffrey is the main suspect since he was the last one to see the guy alive. He starts seeking out people he may have told the solution to. Then, those people start turning up dead as well. I liked this movie a lot. The suspects are pretty easy to narrow down once the love interest is cleared (she was the receptionist for the dead publisher and he always put the moves on her), but there's enough to keep your interest for 70 minutes and the acting is pretty good. Worth seeking out.

This film is a must for fans of noir and b-movies. The hero is a semi-alcoholic writer, wrongly accused of a murder committed while he was drunk.The actor plays this drunk so obnoxiously that he will have you cringing in your seat, begging for him to finally pass out. It's the acting equivalent of fingernails on a chalk board. What saves the movie and makes it worth seeing are the incredibly over-the-top lines the writer cooked up.These include: "the heat sapped my vitality like ten thousand blood-thirsty dwarves," "a ghost-writer is like drugs," "plagiarism is inscribing my name on another man's pen," and "when I want poetry, I read Walt Whitman."Good for a laugh.