Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome *** (1947, Boris Karloff, Ralph Byrd, Anne Gwynne) – Classic Movie Review 5591

‘SLEUTH TRACY CLASHES WITH HIS DEADLIEST FOE!’

Ralph Byrd bows out in style as an ideal Dick Tracy (cinemawise, anyway, for a TV series followed for him in 1950-51) in director John Rawlins’s welcome 1947 last RKO Studios entry in a series of four. The modest but fast-moving and engaging final yarn has a very good cast and Boris Karloff adds an unexpected touch of class as the evil Gruesome.

Karloff’s Gruesome is planning a bank heist with the help of a scientist’s invention of a mysterious paralysing nerve gas that makes people freeze. This time Anne Gwynne plays Tess Trueheart, who witnesses Gruesome’s crime and calls in Tracy to track Gruesome for a showdown. That is young Lex (Tarzan) Barker driving an ambulance.

Also in the cast are Edward Ashley as Dr L E Thal, Jane Clayworth as Dr Irma M Learned, Lyle Latell as Pat Patton, Tony Barrett as Melody, Skelton Knaggs as X-Ray, Jim Nolan as Dan Sterne, Joseph Crehan as Chief Brandon and Milton Parsons as Dr A Tomic.

The screenplay is by Robertson White and Eric Taylor. The story is by William H Graffis and Robert E Kent, based on the comic strip by Chester Gould.

It is also known as Dick Tracy Meets Karloff and Dick Tracy’s Amazing Adventure. The alternative title is another time Karloff managed to get his name in the title before Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949).

It is preceded by Dick Tracy (1945), Dick Tracy vs Cueball (1946) and Dick Tracy’s Dilemma (1947).

Dick Tracy was spectacularly revived by Warren Beatty in 1990. The video market was flooded with copies of the old movies in the new film’s wake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obQxh2nWXWg

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5591

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