Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is the kind of thing that Hollywood hasn't made in decades - a solid, well written, well acted, well directed "B" Movie. With a running time just seconds under an hour there is no wasted time in this movie, and yet nothing feels rushed, either. The main plot is revealed very quickly, and a lengthy set up is not the least bit missed. By going straight into the main story about 10 or 15 minutes of character introductions and set up for the plot are avoided. We get to know the characters right away, and we find out what the story is all about in the first 5 minutes. And what a creative story, too! Legendary director Anthony Mann had a hand in writing the story, and his flair for Noir shines through (or, maybe I should say his shadows fall on the story).William Lundigan is well cast as the lead (a detective still trying to break a months old serial murder case), and Dorothy Patrick does an equally good job as a tabloid reporter trying to get a scoop. Jeff Corey is particularly good, too, as Lundigan's detective partner.Bottom line? Follow Me Quietly is a very good, well made thriller on the outskirts of Film Noir that feels just right in it's one hour running time. It's not rushed, but absolutely nothing drags, either. And there aren't any unresolved plot points, either. It's a shame that Hollywood doesn't make movies like this anymore (low budget, short run time, taut, well made thrillers). But I guess that kind of thing went to TV in series form. (But a 44 minute TV episode doesn't quite do as good a job of telling this kind of story as a 60 or 70 minute movie could.)

Don't waste your time on this stinker. The movie only runs an hour but you'll be thinking that it had to originally run longer and has been severely cut. There are no explanations as to what motivates the killer-we get some conjecture but never find out why this man has selected his victims ahead of time. What "evil" could a random housewife be responsible for? Why is his killing instinct motivated by rain? Actually he gets motivated by ANY falling water (as indicated in the lame chase/conclusion). Why? The scene where he replaces the dummy (known only to the police working the case)is mind boggling.Is the man omnipotent? How does he stay one step ahead of the police? If you want frustration then watch this film. It had possibility but comes up short very early on. Regarding those prior questions-they never get answered.

I saw this film when I was 10 years old and it has haunted me all my life. At first I could only remember a guy waiting in a room for someone to come back, but then there was the idea of a crazy murderer who goes bizerk when it rains and then the memory of all these dummies in the police station and the murderer gets in there somehow, I don;t know how, but as he is in the room someone comes in, a policeman, just to check out the dummies and the murderer goes and sits in a chair so he won't be discovered because he looks like all the other dummies that are sitting there, and as he is sitting he is facing a window...and we see that it is beginning to rain...and there is a close up of his hand gripping the arm of the chair...all this is from my memory of the film as a 10-year old - when I managed to discover what the film was with the use of IMDb and got a video and looked at it - it all seemed pretty harmless stuff - I saw the film in a little cinema in Shaftesbury Dorset with my brother. My parents left us there and had no idea what the film was. The memory of the American streets, and the cars and the black and white quality have all stayed with me...

Atmospheric 60 minutes from that terrific production unit at RKO of the 1940's. Cops are after a psycho-killer who calls himself The Judge and has set out to rid the world of evil. Unusually fine support from Paul Guilfoyle as the bereaved husband and Douglas Spencer as the bogus culprit. Even bland pretty-boy Bill Lundigan is convincing in the lead as the obsessed cop, along with sarcastic sidekick, the hawk-nosed Jeff Corey. I didn't even wince at the budding romance between Lundigan and reporter Dorothy Patrick since it too is well handled. (The scene in Lundigan's apartment with Patrick is actually quite suggestive for the time.)Director Richard Fleischer gets the most out of the material with a number of nice touches. Note how he has a masher block Patrick's entry into the cafe at movie's start, or how cafe cashier Nestor Paiva is sketched in as a colorful racing tout. It's minor details like these that help distinguish a memorable B-movie from a forgettable one. And of course there's that really imaginative piece of staging with the dummy in Lundigan's office. I doubt any audience, then or now, has failed to react to that clever jolt. That scene along with other grotesqueries (the police grilling) made me think that stylish director Anthony Mann had more to do with the production than a mere co-writing credit. My one reservation is with the climax. Yes, the chase is exciting, and using the water from the punctured pipes to trigger The Judge's psychopathic fear is another imaginative touch. However, the story has built up the mystery aspect, along with the madman's bizarre beliefs. In my book, that requires the climax come at night, in the dark, with only a last minute revelation of the character's identity. Frankly, I was disappointed to see the Judge revealed in broad daylight as familiar character actor Edwin Max. To me, that aspect does not measure up to the impressive build-up nor to the inventiveness of the rest of the movie. My guess is that Mann influenced the noirish scenes, while Fleischer was the lone hand in the chase finale.Be that as it may, Fleischer and Co. show again how much style and imagination can accomplish, even on a shoestring budget.