That was an excellent one.

Redundant and unnecessary.

A Masterpiece!

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Unremarkable story of a newspaper man investigating the death of the jurors who wrongly corrected an innocent man who was eventually freed, but who committed suicide in a mental hospital by hanging himself and burning himself.If you can't instantly guess who the killer is really and who he is in the cast upon seeing him you're not paying attention.Okay story seems to be going nowhere for much of its running time. WHile never bad, there really is no tension because the plotting is so bad. We know way to much for it to ever work.Not bad, but not really worth losing 66 minutes to it either.

With a largely anonymous cast and a plot that is nothing to write home about, this little film from the 40's is still worth watching mainly for its noirish atmosphere and George MacReady's wonderful over-the-top performance as a wrongfully condemned man gone mad.MacReady plays Harry Wharton, a man who is wrongfully convicted of killing his sweetheart and sentenced to hang. He sits on death row for months while reporter Joe Keats, who senses Wharton is innocent, tries to track down the real killer. Hours before the execution, Keats comes up with the evidence that points to another and Wharton is pardoned. However, no pardon will fix the fact that Wharton's mind has snapped. He is admitted to a mental hospital, but nothing eases his misery and he ultimately sets fire to his room before hanging himself. His body is burned beyond recognition. Now, months later, reporter Joe Keats is refocused on the Wharton case. This time because half a dozen of the Wharton jurors have died mysterious accidental deaths in a short period of time. Keats believes someone is avenging Wharton's wrongful conviction and subsequent suicide, but he can't prove it. Along the way he falls for a beautiful female juror who doesn't care to cooperate with his investigation.If you watch it, you're going to know what's going on immediately. There is really no mystery here. However, it is amazing to watch what Columbia could do in the field of drama/noir/mystery during the 40's and 50's without nearly the resources of the other major studios or the star power. All the stuff you expect in such a film is here - the all night diner where reporters seem to congregate and the proprietor who's always handing out sage advice, the know-it-all reporter 40's style and his antagonistic relationship with a boss that still appreciates the reporter's craft and insight, the classy girl that the reporter sets his sights on and somehow winds up the center of the drama, and the mystery criminal that runs circles around multiple police departments and is only tripped up by one blood-hound of a journalist.Recommended for fans of post-war and almost post-war fare.

Though it wasn't part of the "I Love a Mystery" series (that wouldn't start at Columbia until the next year) "The Missing Juror" has the same writer, Charles "Blackie" O'Neal (Ryan O'Neal's father), and the same star, Jim Bannon. It also has the same breezy unconcern with plot credibility; like his script for the first "I Love a Mystery" movie, O'Neal's screenplay literally makes no sense, as well as being structured around one man impersonating another (I know I'm treading on the thin edge of "spoiler" here but IMDb's cast list actually gives the game away anyway) and supposedly not being recognized by two leads who know both people well. What saves this movie is George Macready's malevolent performance and, above all, Budd Boetticher's direction: Boetticher and cinematographer L. W. O'Connell take the film noir look to such extremes that some scenes are played out in almost pitch-black darkness and only flashes of light, along with the voices on the soundtrack, clue us in as to what's supposed to be going on. It's a pity Boetticher later specialized in Westerns and didn't make many more noirs — he was damned good at them!

This film, rarely seen on TV, is one of the great over-looked film noirs of the 1940's. Similar in tone to such noirs as the "Stranger On The Third Floor", the movie plays out as a noir-twist on the film "And Then There Was None" with George Macready at his nasty best.