When Warner Baxter returned to the screen after a two year absence his first role was as Robert Ordway - Crime Doctor. He was initially happy, hoping it would lead to character roles but it didn't and he was virtually a prisoner of the role for the rest of his life. But the series was one of the better ones and often featured actresses up and coming or soon to be on their way down.This entry has Ordway on a man hunt to find the killer of a returned soldier who seeks the Crime Doctor's help to cure him of complications arising from combat fatigue. Dr. Carey is now obviously by the wayside and Ordway is now working alongside gruff Inspector Harry Manning (William Frawley).The search starts at a boarding house where one of the tenants is the manageress of the shooting gallery where the murder weapon was stolen from. Meanwhile the two thugs who were seen with the body take their orders from a sultry dame who is a dead ringer for Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity". The shooting gallery gal turns Ordway's attention to a boarded up house where things go bump in the night and which also happens to belong to the family of the dead man's fiancée, Irene. Suddenly the focus is turned to Irene's sister Natalie who had disappeared a few years before. Where Irene is weak and indecisive, Natalie is strong willed and dominating and had left the house after an argument with her father, who wanted to free Irene from Natalie's domination.After a false start William Castle soon found himself one of the top directors in Columbia's B unit (he directed a few in the Whistler series as well as the superb "When Strangers Marry") and 15 years later he returned to the same startling story twist (sort of) in "Homicidal". Irene was played by Ellen Drew who found most of her splashier roles at the beginning of her career - after that she drifted into Bs but she definitely gave the character of Irene an aura of "other worldliness"!!

With the title of Crime Doctor in the series and Warner Baxter playing a psychiatrist in the role, the mental health issues of the criminal are what Baxter delves into in order to solve a given case. He's pretty respected by law enforcement and the police as personified here by William Frawley have no problem in asking for his assistance. I've always been surprised that the Crime Doctor was never taken up as a television series. The closest we've seen is recently is Jeff Goldblum on Criminal Intent who has and used that background to solve his cases when the show was still running.Dr. Ordway after meeting a young veteran with amnesia issues tries to keep an appointment and finds him shot to death with a pair of toughs trying to dispose of the body. Baxter does a beautiful drunk act to keep from ending up the same way. Later on Baxter meets Ellen Drew who was the fiancé of the deceased John Foster. She's a girl with a lot of issues herself and gives a dandy performance in this film.This was a good series for Warner Baxter and the episodes were always competently made although some were better than others. This one's a good prototype.

... because they usually have nothing to do with the actual subject of the film. You also have to make sure you don't blink during these short fast-paced films or else you'll miss something important. Here the film opens on a young man stumbling around an amusement park in a fog of amnesia. He's had several of these spells lately and goes to Dr. Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter in the title role) for help. Ordway goes to the place where the young man says he found himself stumbling about. After walking around awhile what does he see but a couple of men coming out of a boarding house carrying the body of the young amnesiac man who came to see him that day, a bullet wound to his head. The bad guys spot Ordway so he has to feign drunkenness and pretend that he thinks the dead body they are carrying is actually another drunk or he's afraid that he'll share the young man's fate. The henchmen buy the act and let Ordway go. Ordway goes straight to the police and together they raid the boarding house. Nobody has ever seen the men Ordway saw, nobody every heard a shot, and no sign of violence is to be found anywhere in the boarding house. Police Inspector Harry B. Manning (William Frawley) obviously respects Ordway from his past help in solving crimes, but this time thinks maybe the good doctor is imagining things.Ordway knows that he saw what he thought he saw, so he first has to prove there was a crime then find the criminals. In the process Ordway runs across the young man's fiancée, a mousy and wealthy girl who's so meek she's almost invisible, a boarded up old mansion that for some reason has a master bedroom that is still completely furnished, and the dead bodies of the two henchmen Ordway saw carrying the young man's body. They've been asphyxiated in their sleep by gas, only they're not in their own apartment at the time of their deaths. Who is going about causing all of this mayhem? Watch and find out.William Castle directed several Crime Doctor films, and they always have that touch of the macabre. Thus this film has not only the well constructed mystery typical of the Crime Doctor films, it has lots of atmosphere as well. Highly recommended.

While this isn't the best B-detective film ever made, it is different enough from the usual style that it's well worth watching. Warner Baxter's detective is a psychiatrist and instead of following the usual formula employed by Boston Blackie, The Falcon and MANY other film detectives, his films are a little more cerebral as well as more believable. There is also a real plus because the usual cop investigating the case isn't a total idiot, so I am very thankful for the role William Frawley played. The film itself is well-paced (being only 61 minutes long), interesting and offers a fun twist ending (though psychologically speaking, it was VERY far-fetched). Not a great film, but a welcome film since it is different enough that it doesn't just blend in with the crowd.