Darkness Before Dawn [Or The Sunday Morning Movie...]"Follow Me, Quietly..."Starring William Lundigan...

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Critical reception

The New York Times was dismissive of the film and wrote, "There is no intelligent reason why anyone should heed the proposal of Follow Me Quietly...[f]or this utterly senseless little thriller is patently nothing more than a convenient one-hour time-killer between performances of the eight-act vaudeville bill. In it, William Lundigan, playing a blue-print detective role, takes forever, it seems, to uncover a mystery murderer labeled "The Judge." When he finally does encounter this conspicuously unattractive gent, he chases him into a refinery and destroys him. That's the end of "Judge" and film."^[2]

Critic Dennis Schwartz wrote of the film, "Follow Me Quietly is patterned after He Walked By Night. In this obsessive film noir, one oddly enough without a femme fatale, the police are the good-guys who take the viewer on a tour of a dark and cynical underworld that opened up in the postwar period. Fleischer leads us into this perverse noir world, but it only dallies with its noir atmosphere and instead turns into a straight mystery story—effectively filmed in a semi-documentary style that emphasizes police procedures over character studies or creating suspense over suspects."^[3]

 

Follow Me Quietly (1949) Directed by Richard Fleischer
Genre: Crime / Drama / Film Noir

One of the neatest thrillers to come out of RKO in the late '40s, Richard Fleischer's 59-minute Follow Me Quietly was the kind of box office success that made a rare bright spot on the studio's ledger books, at a time when they were losing money by the bushel on productions such as Mourning Becomes Electra and Androcles and the Lion.

Fleischer, working with a generally excellent cast and a nice, twist-laden script, keeps things moving so fast, and with such a veneer of eeriness about it, that not only does Follow Me Quietly overcome some moments of wildly illogical action, but positively revels in that action.

This is nowhere truer than the bizarre scene near the mid-point in the picture when the obsessive murderer substitutes himself for the faceless dummy in the office of Lt. Grant, the lead investigator;

Fleischer has maintained such an odd, off-angle tone and look to the movie up to this point, that the audience simply accepts the scene.

Only the romantic subplot involving Grant (William Lundigan) and reporter Ann Gorman (Dorothy Patrick) seems predictable in these surroundings, and it is more than made up for by the overall odd, obsessive tone of the movie, and a pay-off finale at the Los Angeles refinery that manages to echo White Heat and The Naked City while giving the suspense component a twist all its own.

Follow Me Quietly (1949) is a semidocumentary film noir directed by Richard Fleischer, with support from Anthony Mann in an uncredited position. The drama features William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, Jeff Corey, and others.^[1]

Plot

A mysterious killer, known only as "The Judge," kills anyone he considers worthless.

Detective Harry Grant (Lundigan) is assigned to track him down. With just a handful of clues, Grant constructs a faceless dummy to help his men conduct their investigation.

Police finally break the case after receiving an important clue...Follow This Link To Wiki and The  Spoiler Alert! The Ending...

Cast

• William Lundigan as Police Lt. Harry Grant
• Dorothy Patrick as Ann Gorman
• Jeff Corey as Police Sgt. Art Collins
• Nestor Paiva as Benny
• Charles D. Brown as Police Insp. Mulvaney
• Paul Guilfoyle as Overbeck
• Edwin Max as Charlie Roy aka The Judge
• Frank Ferguson as J.C. McGill
• Marlo Dwyer as Waitress
• Archie Twitchell as Dixon
• Douglas Spencer as Phony Judge