THE RETURN OF THE WHISTLER

THE RETURN OF THE WHISTLER (1948). Director: D. Ross Lederman. 

Ted Nichols (Michael Duane) leaves his fiancee Alice (Lenore Aubert) in a hotel, then learns that she ran out during the night and disappeared. There's a private eye named Gaylord Traynor (Richard Lane) and Olin Howlin/Howland of The Blob and Them plays the hotel desk clerk. The story is initially suspenseful, but once you learn what's really going on about halfway through, it just peters out. This might have made an effective half hour mystery program, but it's certainly no great shakes as a movie -- or a mystery. Ann Shoemaker plays a sinister older woman, and Ann Doran of It! The Terror from Beyond Space has a brief bit as a bad girl. Aubert was also in I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as the evil Dr. Aubrey, who gets thrown through a castle window by the Monster. Narrated, sort of, by the shadowy "Whistler" of radio fame. 

Verdict: Just passable. **.