Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947)

Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome was the last of the four RKO Dick Tracy B-movies made between 1945 and 1947.

Chester Gould’s The Dick Tracy comic strip enjoyed huge popularity in the 1930s. Inevitably Hollywood took an interest. Republic made four serials in the late 30s and early 40s with Ralph Byrd as Tracy. The four feature films from RKO followed. Morgan Conway played Dick Tracy in the first two films and Ralph Byrd returned to the rôle for the last two.

Gould wrote the comic strip from 1931 until 1977. The two-way wrist radio that later became such a recognised trademark of the strip did not put in an appearance until 1946 and therefore does not feature in either the serials or the movies.

The movie opens with a sinister figure (Boris Karloff) entering a bar. We’re not surprised to learn that he is known as Gruesome. Karloff is not wearing actual monster makeup but he is subtly made up to look slightly monstrous. He’s looking for his buddy, a piano player nicknamed Melody. Melody tells Gruesome he has a job lined up. We never doubt for a moment that it’s a criminal enterprise of some sort. Gruesome goes to meet the guy organising the job and finds himself waiting in a scientific laboratory. Rather unwisely he uncorks a test tube and has a sniff. He then goes reeling out into the street.

A beat cop, assuming he’s a drunk, picks him up but by the time he gets him back to headquarters the supposed drunk is as stiff as a board and obviously dead.

Since this is Boris Karloff and he has star billing we know he can’t be really dead, and he isn’t.

Shortly afterwards Gruesome gets up off the slab in the morgue and walks out. This certainly puzzles homicide cop Dick Tracy.

It was that chemical that Gruesome sniffed. It has the effect of causing temporary total paralysis.

That chemical will be the key to pulling off a successful bank robbery. If everyone in the bank - the staff, the security guards, the customers - is paralysed then robbing the bank will be child’s play. It gets better. Afterwards the person remembers nothing of what happened around him during the period of paralysis. That means that not only can he not interfere with the robbery, he can’t be a witness. It’s the key to the perfect crime.

Of course in practice it turns out to be not so perfect. Dick Tracy’s girlfriend Tess Trueheart (Anne Gwynne) just happens to be in the bank at the time of the robbery and she was in the telephone kiosk so she escaped the paralysing gas. So Dick Tracy has a witness. Tracy gets another break as well, due to bungling by a member of the gang.

There’s not enough evidence to make an arrest. Tracy thinks the key is to find the source of that gas. A frightened scientist may offer a clue.

Tracy has to take a big risk to crack this case but he’s used to doing things like that.

This movie has hints of both the film noir and gothic horror visual styles. Content-wise it’s a typical hardboiled crime B-movie except for the addition of the science fiction element of the paralysing gas.

Ralph Byrd is a fine Dick Tracy and looks the part. Karloff plays Gruesome as a mean hoodlum and does a splendid job. Skelton Knaggs as X-Ray (one of the gang members) adds a subtle touch of weirdness.

This is a movie based on a comic strip and it does have a bit of a comic-strip feel, which is as it should be. It manages to be hardboiled and at the same time just a trifle outlandish and exaggerated. It’s an approach that works.

I have this movie in one of those Mill Creek 50-movie public domain collections. The transfer is remarkably good.

Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome is fast-moving well-crafted entertainment with a slightly unusual feel.

I’ve also reviewed the first two movies in the series, Dick Tracy, Detective (1945) and Dick Tracy vs Cueball (1946). Both are worth seeing.