Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

... might be a better title than the vague "Crime Doctor's Courage".The film starts by showing a young couple on their honeymoon. The new bride insists on going to the edge of a rocky cliff. Her husband (Stephen Crane as Gordon Carson) wants her to move away from the edge because his first wife died in an accident during the first week of their marriage just a year ago. She hit her head while swimming, it was ruled an accident, but the deceased bride's brother still thought it was murder.The couple argue. During the argument, Gordon's new wife pulls away from him, loses her footing and falls off of the cliff to her death. The sheriff calls it an accident, but the brother of the first wife believes that now Gordon is some kind of maniac that enjoys marrying women and then killing them in ways that look like accidents. His parting words to the sheriff are "Who will it be next year?".The answer to that question is Hillary Brooke as Kathleen Carson. She interrupts Dr. Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter) the psychiatrist on a vacation to sunny California that he is taking on doctor's orders. Kathleen has only been married one day and believes her husband could be insane. She asks Ordway to dinner to observe her husband. There are quite a few people at the dinner besides Ordway and the Carsons, and one of the servants is actually the first bride's brother who apparently has been popping up all over the place for the last year urging Gordon to either commit himself to an asylum or commit suicide before he kills someone else. Gordon is obviously troubled, retires to his study alone, and a shot rings out. Ordway and crime novelist Jeff Jerome (Jerome Cowan) burst in and find a gun near the body of Gordon, but the gun is cold. Somebody has tried to cover the murder of Gordon Carson with a fake suicide. But who could murder Gordon when he is locked inside his study and there are bars on the only window?Ordway finds his help unwanted by the local police, but he can't help coming across clue after clue. For one, the newly widowed Kathleen disappears right after the murder, hiding at the castle like home of the mysterious Braggas. A new will leaving everything of Gordon's to Kathleen was made out the day before Gordon's death. As for the mysterious Braggas, nobody has ever seen them out after dark, there is a portrait of them that is apparently 300 years old, they keep coffins in their basement, and they perform a dancing act at a local club in which one family member disappears and then just as mysteriously reappears. Did I mention that Miguel Bragga is in love with Kathleen? Could a vampire that can disappear and reappear at will possibly be the murderer? Watch and find out in this atmospheric entry to the crime doctor series. There are more suspects than I mention here, so it is not so cut and dried as you might think and remember, this is the crime doctor we're talking about, a man of science and reason, not Kolchak the night stalker! Highly recommended.

***SPOILERS*** One of the most strangest of all the "Crime Doctor" films has the "Crime Doctor" police psychiatrist Dr. Robert Ordway, Warner Baxter, go on vacation in sunny Southern California to sooth his nerves only to run into a pair of Spanish vampires who spend all their daylight hours in coffins and at night do an on stage brother and sister disappearing act.The Vamps Miguel & Delores Bragga, Anthony Caruso & Lupita Tovar, get involved with Dr.Ordway in an out of the way connection in the murder of Gordon Carson, Stephen Crane. Gordon who's two previous marriages ended with with the bride getting killed in a mysterious accident was just married to bride #3 the gorgeous Kathleen Carson,Hillary Brooke. It in fact was Kathleen who invited the "Crime Doctor" to the Carson Mansion where she was throwing a party so he can check out her husband Gordon whom, after being married to him for just one day, she suspects him to be a both homicidal lunatic as well as being completely off his rocker! Katheen had gotten these mysterious letters and newspaper clippings about Gordon that convinced her she made the wrong choice in marrying him!It's during dinner that one of Gordon's dead wive's brother David Lee, Dennis Moore, disguised as a waiter crashed the party accusing Gordon of murdering his sister. Hurt and humiliated in being accused of murder in front of all his friends including his wife Kathleen Gordon locked himself into an outer room and before the guests at the party could get the door open shot himself to death! Dr. Ordway smells a rat right away in that the gun that Gordon used to kill himself was ice cold, instead of warm, proving that it was planted on the dead Gordon after he was murdered. What's even more strange is that the Bargga's who were at the party are the only one's who could have pulled, Gordon's murder, it off in the fact they had the means, by making themselves invisible, to do it!****SPOILERS**** Dr. Ordway plays it both cool and straight in solving Gordon's murder not for once falling for the con-job that there in fact are such things as vampires which later turned out to be a red herring in order to cover Gordon's killers tracks. What really lead to Gordon's murder as well as number of other killings to cover it up was that fact that he married Kathleen! The killer was so obsessed with Kathleen that when he heard she left him for another man, Gordon Carson, he completely flipped out. Using the phony vampire angle that mystery writer Jeff Jerome, Jerome Cowan, provided him with the killer planned to get Kathleen back by both murdering her husband Gordon and at the same time pining his murder on the totally innocent Bragga's!This plan would have worked with the police, who fell for the phony vampire act, but not with the wise old and experienced "Crime Doctor Robert Ordway! After over 12 years investigating the strange and the unknown there's very little that the Doc doesn't know about con jobs and the shysters who try to use the supernatural to throw the police off their trail. In this case Dr. Ordway saw right away, through his friend Jeff Jerome, that the Bragga's were being set up to take the rap in Gordon's murder! The only thing left for him to uncover is who was the person who set them up!

Crime Doctor's Courage, The (1945) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Strange fourth entry into Columbia's series is your typical detective film until half way through when it turns into a horror film. The Crime Doctor (Warner Baxter) is asked to check out a husband who is on his third wife. The guy's previous two wives all suffered accidental deaths days after the wedding but there's a subplot with vampires thrown in. This is the third in the series that I've seen and it works the best because of how strange it actually is. I'm really not sure what made the writer turn to vampires but it makes for some interesting plot twists, although none of them really add up in the end. Baxter also seemed to do his best work here and the supporting cast is interesting if not totally successful.

It's Saturday, it's raining, and I think every movie should have at least one comment... so I just watched "The Crime Doctor's Courage" all the way through. It's a murder mystery with a typical cast of characters, and a couple of the usual suspects -- each with their own possible motive for the crime. The story starts abruptly and the viewer is thrown into the plot with no character development or storytelling whatsoever. I guess that's not too surprising for a B movie of this period. There are also some moments which look and feel like this is pre-WWII, but perhaps that is due to the writer's background in radio shows.The "Crime Doctor" is the sleuth who happens to be visiting California for some R&R from his psychiatry practice on the East coast. He hooks up with a mystery novelist friend with whom it is implied has been along for one or more previous mystery solving capers. The novelist occasionally fills the role of sidekick to our sleuth (AKA Dr. Watson), and also occasionally lightens things up with a bit of comic relief (sort of).There is also a somewhat simple, but not quite bumbling police captain who at times is annoyed by the meddling sleuth. And then there are the mysterious Braggas, a brother and sister who are dance artists at a night-club. The dance is sort of an interpretive dance that happens to be one of those moments which feels more like the 30's than the 40's. Though the story location is California, the Braggas appear to live in a castle!There was one plot element which managed to keep me somewhat amused, but I won't divulge any more than that because I always enjoy movies more when the story is discovered, rather than known in advance. (even though I can think of many, many, B films which would rate higher and it is difficult to say that watching this one is time well spent) I have not seen any other movies from the "Crime Doctor" series, so I can't make any comparisons.