With William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick. 60 min.
A faceless dummy of a serial killer haunts a police department in this atmospheric noir thriller directed by Richard Fleischer. The dummy is created to represent an elusive strangler who calls himself “The Judge” and whom the frustrated detective Harry Grant attempts to reconstruct from a handful of clues, such as body size and suit fabric. Sure enough, as the dummy becomes more real, so logic, reason and sound judgement encounter the uncanny. Fleisher’s film is a forgotten gem, and can be interpreted in retrospect as the forerunner of “empathetic serial killer” movies such as the Hannibal Lecter series.