THE FATAL WITNESS

 

THE FATAL WITNESS is a 1945 B movie from Republic Pictures that is fairly run-of-the-mill for the most part. Its climax, however, is so unexpected that the movie winds up being more memorable than one would expect. 

The movie, set in England, stars the elegant Universal Scream Queen Evelyn Ankers as Priscilla Ames, the ward of the curmudgeonly Lady Ferguson (Barbara Everest). The old woman is found strangled in her stately manor, and suspicion immediately falls on her dissolute nephew John Bedford (George Leigh). Bedford seemingly has an airtight alibi--he was in jail the night Lady Ferguson was killed, after causing a disturbance in a pub. The investigator on the case, William Trent (Richard Fraser), is convinced that Bedford is guilty, and he goes to great trouble to prove it--while also finding time to romance Priscilla. 

THE FATAL WITNESS isn't so much a whodunit, or even a how-he-done-it, as it is a will-he-get-caught? The murderer and how he was able to perform the deed is very clearly shown to the audience, and George Leigh makes John Bedford a very slimy and obnoxious individual. Inspector Trent's final attempt to get Bedford to reveal himself leads to an incident that throws the story into a totally different direction. What makes this twist more striking is that nothing in the earlier parts of the film even hints at such a resolution. I'm not going to spoil the ending, since it is the movie's high point--but I will say that it reminds one of various episodes from the many 1960s suspense anthology American network TV shows. (The plot of THE FATAL WITNESS was actually based on an episode of the radio anthology show SUSPENSE.) 

It is rather appropriate that Evelyn Ankers gets top billing in this film, as THE FATAL WITNESS feels in many ways like a Universal movie made during the same period. The story appears to be set in contemporary times, but there's no mention of World War II, and the England it portrays is rather generic in tone. These are attributes that showed up in plenty of Universal's B pictures. Director Lesley Selander (a prolific low-budget veteran) even throws in a foggy sequence set on the London docks that could have come from a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes picture. One thing THE FATAL WITNESS lacks compared to Universal is that studio's stable of notable supporting character actors, although long-time Universal stalwart Harry Cording does show up as a pub owner. 

If you happen to be a fan of the Universal chillers of the 1940s, or you are someone looking for a B movie with a twist that won't take up too much of your time, I highly recommend THE FATAL WITNESS.