Triskaidekaphilia: 'The Thirteenth Hour' (1947)

On the 13th of each month, I write about a movie whose title contains the number 13.

Somehow I've ended up writing about several forgotten media franchises for this feature, and the latest one I've stumbled on is The Whistler, which was primarily a radio drama that ran from 1942-1955, for a total of 692 episodes (per Wikipedia). It was popular enough to spawn a short-lived TV version in 1954 as well as a series of eight movies, produced from 1944-1948, of which The Thirteenth Hour was the seventh. In all its incarnations, The Whistler was an anthology series, sort of a noir/crime take on Tales From the Crypt, hosted by the title character, an omniscient and mischievous narrator only seen in shadows. For the movies, he was voiced by Otto Forest, and he provides commentary mainly at the beginning and end of The Thirteenth Hour, setting up the story of hapless trucker Steve Reynolds (the bland Richard Dix, who starred in seven of the eight Whistler movies as various unrelated characters).

At the beginning of the movie, Steve suffers the injustice of being convicted of drunk driving after, uh, driving drunk and then crashing into a gas station. The movie clearly has the perspective that drinking just a little bit should not disqualify Steve from driving, and he's convicted mainly because the officer on the scene is the ex-boyfriend of his fiancee Eileen (Karen Morley) and has a grudge against Steve. But that's not even what the movie is really about! Poor luckless Steve is then about to lose his trucking business because his license has been suspended (for actual drunk driving, remember) and he can't find a driver to take a time-sensitive route. So he drives the route himself, and is then ambushed by a mysterious assailant, who uses Steve's truck to run over the cop from the drunk driving arrest, framing Steve for the guy's murder.

This all happens very quickly (the movie runs only 65 minutes), putting Steve on the run from the law and trying to clear his name, which is the main plot of the movie. There are some fun noir elements as Steve confronts his shady trucking rival (who seems like the obvious choice for the culprit) and sneaks in and out of Eileen's house/diner, but most of the plotting is highly unbelievable, and the eventual reveal of the people behind Steve's framing is underwhelming, with confusing motives. I've never listened to any of The Whistler radio episodes, but if there were nearly 700 of them then presumably they were churned out quickly, with plenty of duds. But a feature film (even a cheap B-movie) should have a bit more scope and impact, and The Thirteenth Hour (whose title remains inexplicable to me) never transcends its episodic anthology origins.