If you like this movie and our channel, please subscribe: https://goo.gl/0qDmXe | On a Los Angeles street, Officer Hollis, a patrolman on his way home from work, stops a man he suspects of being a burglar and is shot and mortally wounded. The minor clues lead nowhere. Two police detectives, Sergeants Marty Brennan (Brady) and Chuck Jones (Cardwell), are assigned to catch the killer, Roy Morgan (Basehart), a brilliant mystery man with no known criminal past, who is hiding in a Hollywood bungalow and listening to police calls on his custom radio in an attempt to avoid capture. His only relationship is with his little dog.
Roy consigns burgled electronic equipment to Paul Reeves (Whit Bissell), and on his fifth sale is nearly caught when he shows up to collect on his property. Reeves tells police that the suspect is a mystery man named Roy Martin. The case crosses the paths of Brennan and Jones, who stake out Reeves’ office to arrest and question Roy. He suspects a trap, however, and in a brief shootout shoots and paralyzes Jones. Jones wounds Roy, who performs surgery on himself to remove the bullet and avoid going to a hospital, where his gunshot wound would be reported to the police.
With his knowledge of police procedures, Roy changes his modus operandi and becomes an armed robber. During one robbery he fires his semi-automatic pistol, and the police recover the ejected casing. Lee (Jack Webb), a forensics specialist, matches the ejector marks on the casing to those recovered in the killing of Officer Rawlins and the wounding of Sgt. Jones, connecting all three shootings to one suspect.
Captain Breen (Roy Roberts) uses this break to gather all of the witnesses to the robberies. They assist Lee in building a composite photo of the killer. Reeves then identifies Roy from the composite. However, Roy hides in Reeves’ car and attempts to intimidate him into revealing details of the police investigation. He barely eludes a stakeout of Reeves’ house.
Because the police do not realize that Roy has inside knowledge of their work, the case goes nowhere. Breen takes Brennan off the case in an attempt to shake him up. Jones convinces his partner to stop viewing the case personally and to use his head.
Plodding, methodical follow-up by Brennan, using the composite photograph, results in information that Roy, whose actual name is Roy Morgan, worked for a local police department as a civilian radio dispatcher before being drafted into the Army. Brennan tracks him down through post office mail carriers and disguises himself as a milkman to get a close look at Morgan and his apartment.
The police surround and raid the apartment that night, but Morgan, forewarned by the barking of his dog, escapes through the attic and uses the Los Angeles sewer system as a means of escape. The film continues with a dragnet and chase through the sewers. Roy is finally cornered by the police in a passage blocked by the wheel of a police car. As the police shoot tear gas at Roy, he staggers and attempts to fire at them. He is then shot down and killed. The final scene is notable for its resemblance to the final scene in The Third Man in which Orson Welles is chased through the sewers of Vienna. No known connection between the films has been established.
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Directed by Alfred L. Werker and Anthony Mann, produced by Bryan Foy and Robert Kane, story by Crane Wilbur, screenplay by John C. Higgins and Crane Wilbur, starring Richard Basehart as Roy Martin/Roy Morgan, Scott Brady as Sgt. Marty Brennan, Roy Roberts as Captain Breen, Whit Bissell as Paul Reeves an electronics dealer, James Cardwell as Sgt. Chuck Jones and Jack Webb as Lee.
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Source: “He Walked by Night” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 26 August 2013. Web. 26 August 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Walked_By_Night.
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you're not supposed to tell the entire movie and the ending, and spoil it for everyone.
Jack Web of Dragnet fame. I wonder what happened to him.
Looks like a preamble to the Dragnet TV series and movies, even has Jack Webb in a minor role.
So, are the 700 miles of tunnels under L.A. still empty, or do they now house the city's homeless?
I knew I've seen the guy playing "Paul" before; probably in dozens of roles. The appearance that just sprang to mind was the movie with Paul Newman, "Hud." He played the vet or government agent who tells the old man, Hud's father, that there's hoof-and-mouth disease in his herd and they all have to be destroyed. He only says "You got the worst thing a cattleman can have." or something close to that. A lifetime of ranching wiped out instantly.
Richard Basehart in "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sewer!"
54:11 That hospital building is now painted blue and it's the Church of Scientology!
Jack Webb in a crime drama set in LA! I didn't see THAT coming! Also Richard Basehart a decade before "Moby Dick" and almost two decades before his role as Admiral Nelson on the laughably bad "Voyage to the Bottom of the Barrel"…er, I mean "….Sea!"
This is a top-notch, suspenseful, well-crafted movie. I'm not sure I'd consider it a film noir, but rather a police procedural with noir atmosphere and elements. The typical noir protagonist struggles with a moral dilemma of some sort whereas the Richard Basehart character is a purely evil psychopath. And there is no femme fatale character. The film does have a very noirish atmosphere and is shot beautifully, so I would consider it borderline noir. But no matter how you classify it, it's an excellent, gripping movie. Thanks for posting it.
I recognized Jack Webb and willing to bet this was a preludge to the Dragnet Series starting in the ealry 50's and then in the mid to late 60's.
I wonder if the dog's name was changed, too, to protect an innocent dog? š
People who get into the police profession are amazing. The ingeniousness, foresight, and formidable aptitude of the collective minds of the force for good creates resounding respect, awe, and admiration.
What happened to his dog?
He used a revolver in the 1st shooting. No casings from that.
This is why there is White Privilege.
Police were often KKK members. Not ONE black cop on the force.
The cop killed was violating the guy's civil rights. To be stopped as a pedestrian and asked to give identification with no probable cause is a civil rights violation.
š£A film which seems to have influenced the series called Dragnet. Jack Webb (Joe Friday) had a supporting role.š«
A wonderful criminal story. I like in particular the well dressed American policemen with their hats.
they made this film in 1947 and it kept living for over 30 years! on radio and TV it was called "Dragnet"
A bycicle ready to ride the underground waterways would have been useful to the criminal- He could have escaped.
Iām here from watching Menace II Society
Pencil mustache? Cesar Romero?
WITNESS: the killer was a white male.
LAPD: Attention all Cars…..Pick up any Chinese, Japanese, black or Mexican you see on the street!
was this dirty little night-crawling perp with Hezbollah-Venezuela-North Korea? was he trying to bring their mini-nuke into Los Angeles thru the sewer maze? what was that little smart-ass Chinese guy telling the cops? (70+ years ago!)…..
Reed Hadley narrates.