The Crime Doctor: A Pre-Code Thriller That Doesn't Know When To Quit

Is it worth your time?

If you have a thing for old, slightly dusty black-and-white mysteries where people talk in very specific, clipped sentences, sure. It’s for the folks who like seeing a plan go wrong in real-time. If you need pacing that moves faster than a turtle in mud, you might want to skip this one. It feels like a stage play that someone accidentally dragged a camera into. 🎥

Otto Kruger is the lead, and he plays that classic, cold-blooded type of guy. You know the one. He’s the criminologist who thinks he’s the smartest person in any room he walks into. When he finds out his wife is cheating, he doesn't just get mad. He starts a project.

The whole setup for the murder is so deliberate it’s almost funny. It’s like watching someone assemble IKEA furniture, except the furniture is a corpse and the instructions are written in ego. He’s so proud of himself. It’s gross, really.

I couldn't help but think about how some movies like The Raid have all this kinetic energy, and then you have this. This is the complete opposite. It’s all talk. Everything happens in offices or living rooms where people sit on chairs and stare at each other intensely.

The small stuff

• There’s a scene where someone is looking for a clue that is so obvious, you just want to yell at the screen.
• The lighting in the office scenes? Super moody. Sometimes it feels like they forgot to turn the lamps on.
• The side characters are mostly just there to look confused or worried.
• I’m still not sure if the dog in the background of the garden scene was supposed to be there or not. It kept sniffing the camera equipment.

Watching this made me miss the more chaotic energy of something like Dangerous Money. There’s a lack of grit here, even though the subject matter is technically pretty dark. It’s more interested in the mechanics of the frame-up than the actual messiness of killing a person.

There is a point where the movie just decides to stop being a mystery and starts being a lecture. It’s like the writers realized they had to wrap it up and just shoved the characters into the nearest courtroom. The transition is jarring, to put it lightly.

Is it a masterpiece? No. But it’s got this weird, chilly vibe that’s hard to shake. It’s the kind of movie that feels like it’s judging you for watching it. Which, honestly? That’s kind of a vibe.