edwagreen Dreadful eerie 1946 film where a dying woman, who blames herself for the way her 3 children have turned out, tries to right a wrong with more drastically terrible things occurring.Driving her daughter to the very brink of insanity and beyond, the latter got that way when she was supposed to marry a man while already married and the latter two are confronted by her father, and of course, the gun goes off. The nasty mother chases the new husband away and presto, it's years later.With the old woman now supposedly dead, a young girl and others are brought back to the mansion. Seems that the girl is the daughter of the now crazy daughter, the latter constantly hearing a baby cry. All sorts of mayhem occurs and the old lady turns out to be alive while explaining why she set events in motion.Terrible film.

Mike Newton Re: the review of the Unknown by the reviewer from Kentucky. Republic Studios did not produce the I Love A Mystery series. It was Columbia Pictures. I have the original lobby card from the first film, "I Love A Mystery" (adapted from the radio play "The Decapitation of Johnathen Monk) and probably the only film in the series that was faithful to the radio series. The other two films simply used the characters of Jack Packard and Doc Long. My friend, Carole Mathews appeared in the first film, and signed the lobby card for me. She also provided me with a DVD of the film. Columbia also produced the Whistler film series, which for some reasons lasted longer. There were only 3 films made in the I Love A Mystery series and why they were discontinued is anybody's guess. Probably box office appeal.

Neil Doyle Although there's a little too much Southern exposition to set the stage for a present day story, THE UNKNOWN is a better than average programmer in the Columbia studio's "I Love A Mystery" series. Getting to the heart of the story takes up too much time at the start, but once the story starts dealing with the mysterious things going on in an old Southern mansion, it keeps building interest until the mystery is solved.The cast is an interesting one, even though there are hardly any big names involved. KAREN MORLEY is the troubled woman on the brink of madness, ROBERT WILCOX is her lover who has been banished from the grounds, JIM BANNON is Jack Packard, the detective, and BARTON YARBOROUGH is again his partner. JEFF DONNELL is the lady who stands to win an inheritance and MARK ROBERTS is the young lawyer designated to read the will.All of it is directed in nimble style by Henry Levin, an old hand at these sort of programmers and, despite the low budget, given some handsome settings.Summing up: Gets off to a slow start but gradually builds interest.

Norm-30 Back in 1946, A trio of films was made from the "I Love a Mystery" radio programs; this was one of them. (The other 2 were the "Devils' Mask" and the "Decapitation of Jefferson Monk"). This film is about the 2nd best of the series (with "Monk" being the best).Someone had told me that this film was based on the "ILAM" pgm, "The Thing That Cries in the Night", but it ISN"T! (The only thing it has in common is the sound of a baby crying).FAR too much time is given to the "history" and "family skeletons" of a Southern family (in fact, the film reminded me of "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte"!). Jack & Doc were added almost as an afterthought!And, unbelieveable as it seems, some of those Civil War people were STILL alive in 1946; this is stretching the imagination a bit TOO far!Carleton E. Morse had (potentially) great material to work with; this is one of his (very few) failures.Norm