The third and final entry in the I Love a Mystery series with Jack Packard (Jim Bannon) and Doc Long (Barton Yarborough). The story this time centers on a mystery at a spooky Southern mansion. Melodramatic acting from some but nobody stinks up the joint. Karen Morley stands out. Bannon is his typically bland but inoffensive self. Perhaps it's the Southern setting but Yarborough is even more Huckleberry Hound than usual ("Hey son, look a-yonder!"). Good time-killer. Better than the second film in the series, but not as good as the first. Overall, this series provided three B mystery films that were pretty good. Not without flaws, particularly with the lackluster detectives themselves. But the stories were interesting and enjoyable with lots of moody atmosphere.

Very odd to see someone state that Jeff Donnell is the biggest-name draw here, given that the star is Karen Morley. Granted, Morley wasn't the biggest movie star ever, but, I'd think that Dinner at Eight and Scarface alone would provide her a bigger profile than Donnell. And she also managed to appear in a few other special, noteworthy flicks, such as The Mask of Fu Manchu, Gabriel over the White House and Vidor's great, if flawed, Our Daily Bread. Even The Sin of Madelon Claudet and Mata Hari.Plus, Morley's pretty boss in this film. She really anchors it and makes her character quite a sympathetic one. It really is her film.As for the rest -- it's a fun, minor little B-mystery with nice horror touches. As are the other I Love a Mystery flicks. Nothing great, but certainly fun for mystery, horror and B-movie fans, the kind of small, old, and old-fashioned movie that deservedly endears itself to certain kinds fans (I'm one of them).Plus, this one had really nice Southern Gothic atmosphere. I love it when a cheap film can effectively create and define a relatively small space and generate a real (especially spooky) atmosphere. (Can you tell that I'm a big-ass Val Lewton fan? Or that Horror Hotel/City of the Dead is one of my very favorite horror movies?)I just saw all three of the ILaM flicks on TCM the other early AM and enjoyed the other two similarly. Fairly ambitious in ideas and plot twists, far less so in their makers' ability to turn those thoughts into fully-realized cinema – and fun, old-fashioned treats, all in all. Bannon is hardly a great actor, but he sure as heck is nice to look at, and Yarborough has his moments. And each film has a few special bonuses in its "case-specific" cast: I Love a Mystery has the great Nina (My Name is Julia Ross) Foch and legendary screen creep George Macready; The Devil's Mask has Anita ("Ginger's Mom") Louise and Frank Mayo, an actor who intrigued me greatly just a while back on TCM with his terrific starring performance in Vidor's keen silent melodrama, Wild Oranges (talk about creating and defining a small, atmospheric space!), making me wish he'd been given so much more to do in his career; The Unknown has not only has Morley and Donnell but also, for the Val Lewton fan, The Leopard Man's James Bell!Matthew

(Spoilers) In this the third and last of the "I Love a Mystery" movies no one ends up losing their head like in the two previous one's, "The Decapitation of Jefferson Monk" and "The Devil's Mask", but we do have Rachel Martin, Karen Morley, lose her mind in it.Rachel was secretly married to Richard Aronld, Robert Wilcox, which had her outraged father Capt. Selby Martin, Boyd Davis, throw a fit when he found out about it! With Selby pulling out his revolver he and Richard struggled until it went off and blew the captain away. That if anything annulled the marriage between Richard & Rachal with him being accused by the dead captain's wife Phoebe, Helen Freeman, of murdering him! Now 20 years later there's a will to be read to the surviving Martin clan in what Phoebe, who passed away the week before, wants to be done with the Martin Mansion, and everything thats goes along with it, in the Kentucky Blue Grass country.It's when private eyes Jack Packard and Doc Long, Jim Bannon & Barton Yarborough, are hired by this mysterious Adam Franklin to see that the mentally challenged Rachel Martin's 20 year old daughter that she had with the on the lamb Richard Arnold Nina, Jeff Donnell, gets her share of the Martin fortune. That has Phoebe's two reclusive sons Eddie & Ralphie,James Bell & Wilton Graff, go on the warpath in them wanting the mansion and everything in it including Joshua the butler, played by J. Louis Johnson, all for themselves!Things get really complicated later on when Phoebe's last will & testament that to be read the next morning is somehow lost from the Martin family lawyer's Reed Cawthorne, Mark Roberts, briefcase! The biggest surprise of all is the unexpected arrival of Richard Arnold, whom Phoebe Martin hated like poison, showing up for the reading at the late Phoebe's written request! ***SPOILERS*** Someone out there in Blue Grass country doesn't want Phoebe's lost will to be found or read in that whoever he or she is wants to keep things the way there were all these years. And with both Nina and her estranged father Richard, who was lost at sea for the last 20 years, about to get part of the Martin estate that person was willing to go so far as murder! In he or she keeping them from getting anything that Phoebe was to leave to them in her will! It's no big surprise who this mystery man really is and by the time he's exposed by Jack Packard & Doc Long you just about lost interest, together with the cast of characters that's in it, in the movie. That's unless your willing to suffer through the films final torturous confusing and not making any kind of sense at all ten minutes!

"The Unknown" (1946) is a surprisingly entertaining and atmospheric mystery inspired by the "I LOVE A MYSTERY" radio program. It is actually one of three Republic B-movies based on the program, all featured straight arrow detective Jack Packard and his corn-pone partner Doc Long (Barton Yarborough). In "The Unknown" Jack and Doc are hired to escort young Nina Arnold (Jeff Donnell) to her ancestral mansion in Kentucky for the reading of her grandmother's will. The twist is that Nina was placed in foster care as an infant and will be meeting her mother Rachel (Karen Morley) for the first time. The mansion is spooky with her grandfather's body buried behind the fireplace and a mausoleum full of seemingly restless ancestors located outside the house.I was very surprised at how well written and nicely paced this film was. It's a good yarn with a lot of misdirection and some unexpected plot elements. Although Bannon and Yarborough are the series regulars, top billing for "The Unknown" went to Morley. Deservedly so as it is clearly her film, she plays an addled woman who never recovered from the loss of her baby daughter. She keeps a baby crib in her bedroom and hears a baby crying throughout the film. The was probably Morley's best performance, shortly after she fell victim to the HUAC hearings and worked very little in the industry from that point. The other two "I LOVE A MYSTERY" thrillers are also quite entertaining but neither has anything to match Morley's performance.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.