1947’s The Thirteenth Hour is the seventh entry of the Whistler series of B-picture noirs, and the last to star Richard Dix. In fact, this is the last film he would make, period, as he would not live much longer after it was completed.
For those unfamiliar with this series, the title character is merely an observer of events, without ever actually apparently intervening in any way. He simply provides the occasional smug narration and sometimes casts shadows on various walls. He may be a shadow, and knows strange tales that lie in the hearts of men, but he’s not the Shadow.
In this final performance, Dix runs a small trucking company and is one of the drivers. He has some sort of long-running beef with local cop Regis Toomey, and I don’t recall this ever being explained satisfactorily. Toomey is all too happy to take Dix to jail on a DIU after the man had a drink at a birthday party for fiancée Karen Morley. It just happens Dix had run off the road to avoid hitting a drunk driver on a collision course with him. We never learn anything more about that other driver, despite a setup making it appear they will factor into the plot to a greater extent. Oh, and I forgot about the hitchhiker he picked up on the way, who suddenly disappears when Dix stops after that near-miss. That person also does not come back into the picture at any point.
Dix’s license is suspended, leaving him at a crossroads when a man who is apparently his only other driver gets sick. A load of perishable goods is in jeopardy, so Dix drives the load himself. Experiencing engine trouble on the road, he hooks up some loose wires, only to get knocked unconscious by a man hiding in the back. As if that isn’t ridiculous enough, the guy is wearing a mask like he’s a Mexican wrestler. That man now steals the truck, speeding past the cop who arrested Dix before. The masked driver gets pulled over, but backs up the truck over the cop and his motorcycle, killing the man.
Now Dix has been framed for murder. Talk about not being able to catch a break. And who is going to believe a story like what happened to him? Hell, I just watched all this happen and I don’t believe it. It’s no surprise Dix goes on the lam.
What I’ve described so far feels disjointed, and yet there’s so much more happening in such a short film. It somehow always feels like too much and too little are going on at all times. There’s also a competing trucking company trying to buy him out, and which runs a stolen car racket. Similar to The Fugitive, there’s also a mystery man with a missing appendage, though this guy only lacks a thumb. When stolen diamonds are introduced into the plot, I just kind of shrugged with indifference. When a server at the diner is revealed to be duplicitous, I was well past caring. A bigger twist towards the end has another character double-cross our hero, and I swear this change in their nature doesn’t jive with an earlier scene we saw them in. Lastly, a weird bit has Morley’s young son (Mark Dennis) reading the book Studies in Necrophobia, which we also saw in the first Whistler film, suggesting there is some sort of shared world these otherwise unrelated films occupy.
The Thirteenth Hour is superficially enjoyable, but only because it has some manner of action of weirdness in almost every minute of its runtime. And yet, what sticks in my mind is the options available at the diner run by Morley. One sign advertises they have “spaghetti & meatballs” and “spaghetti & ravioli”. The latter is an odd item. I wonder if that comes with bread and a side of mashed potatoes. They also advertise veal, and yet this restaurant’s proprietor is not one of the villains.
Dir: William Clemens
Starring Richard Dix, Karen Morley
Watched as part of the Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray box set Columbia Noir #6: The Whistler