Wow! Such a good movie.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

good back-story, and good acting

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

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.

***SPOILERS*** The "Crime Doctor" Dr. Robert Ordway gets caught up with an identity crisis in the movie "The Crime Doctor's Manhunt" in two people in the film having two different names, one real one fake, to hide their real identity! It's up to Dr.Ordway to find out who's who and why their trying to hide the fact from him and later the police just who they really are! All this confusion started when shell-shocked ex-GI John Foster came to Dr.Ordway's office to find out why he has lapses in his already shattered, from the war, memory and what's causing them! It's later that Foster's fiancée Irene Cotter shows up at the Doc's office telling him that her boyfriend is acting very strange and Dr. Ordway should follow up in his head shrinking treatments on him. As it turns out Foster never shows up to be treated which has Dr.Ordway go to Foster's usual hang out at the local carnival to see if he's responding to his treatment that he already gave him. Before he can talk to Foster Dr. Ordway finds him shot in the head outside his apartment by two hoods who are trying to dispose of his body. Faking to be drunk Dr. Ordway is left alone after being escorted to his "pad" by the hoods who are so stupid in that they let him, the one person who can identify them and send them to both prison and the electric chair, get away! The movie gets even more confusing then it already is when Irene's control freak sister Natalie shows up on the scene after a three year absence. It soon discovered, by the dead man's US Army dog tags, that John Foster is really Phil Armstrong Irene's fiancée who never bother to tell the Crime Doctor, when she visited him in his office, what his real name was? ***SPOILERS*** Dull and at times hard to follow "Crime Doctor" film with the "Crime Doctor" Dr. Ordway as usual doing all the heavy lifting and taking all the hits as he and police inspector Harry B.Manning track down who offed John Foster/Robert Armstrong and why! Natalie later has a falling out with the two hoods who murdered Armstrong over money and end's up offing them, by turning up the gas at their hideout, as well. The "Crime Doctor" soon sees through Natalie's act and uses himself, like he does in most of the "Crime Doctor" film, as bait to get her to slip up! Nothing to really write home about here that's we haven't seen before in the 'Crime Doctor" movies but that the "Crime Doctor" or the actor who plays him Warren Baxter is starting to get a wee bit tired of playing him being a detective instead of practicing his craft: Psychitry. That's by Dr.Ordway being forced by the writers and directors of the series to be a hard boil take it on the chin private eye instead!

... 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.

Fair entry in the Crime Doctor series with some interesting plot twists by screenwriter Leigh Brackett and direction by future horror master William Castle. Plot involves Dr. Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter) taking on a walk-in patient with amnesia-type symptoms and the dread of an occultist's prediction of a violent death. There is a creaky abandoned house, a dysfunctional family with a meek sister that was engaged to the victim, and William Frawley as a credible police inspector.Although sometimes billed as the best of the series, I found the acting somewhat dull and the short 61-minute film did not capture my imagination. I thought the Crime Doctor's Courage better. Menacing characters are presented and not developed – perhaps left on the cutting room floor. Interesting ending that is unlikely to be anticipated but explains all. Sixth in the series. Recommended.