The Last Warning **½ (1938, Preston Foster, Joyce Compton, Frank Jenks, Kay Linaker, E E Clive) – Classic Movie Review 12,162

Director Albert S Rogell’s 1938 Crime Club suspense thriller film The Last Warning from Universal Pictures stars Preston Foster, Joyce Compton, Frank Jenks, Kay Linaker, E E Clive, and Frances Robinson.

Jonathan Latimer’s hard-boiled 1938 Crime Club suspense novel The Dead Don’t Care makes an adequate if very minor detective mystery film with a pretty good mystery and a tense atmosphere.

Preston Foster gives a steadfast turn as wisecracking Detective Bill Crane, the tough private detective on the trail of extortionists, kidnappers and murderers, Joyce Compton is amusing as Dawn Day and E E Clive is fun as Major Barclay.

Raymond Parker plays John Essex, who has been receiving threatening letters, and hires Bill Crane and his sidekick Doc Williams (Frank Jenks) to go to his uncle’s country estate to investigate. But soon his sister Linda Essex (Frances Robinson) is kidnapped.

Universal released 11 mystery films in its The Crime Club series and this is the last one to feature the sleuthing team of Crane and Doc.

The film was released on 6 January 1939.

In 1937, Universal Pictures made a deal with the Crime Club, publishers of whodunits, allowing it to select up to four of its books annually for production as B-pictures. The Lady in the Morgue is the third in Universal’s Crime Club mystery series of 11 films between 1937 and 1939. The first is The Westland Case, based on the Jonathan Latimer novel Headed for a Hearse (1937), followed by The Black Doll (1938), The Lady in the Morgue (1938), based on the 1936 Crime Club novel The Lady in the Morgue by Jonathan Latimer and also with Preston Foster as private detective Bill Crane, Danger on the Air (1938), The Last Express (1938), The Last Warning (1938), Mystery of the White Room (1939), and The Witness Vanishes (1939).

The Crime Club series was made at a unit headed by producer Irving Starr.

A new management has taken over troubled studio Universal Pictures after the costly production of Show Boat (1936) and the Crime Club deal is an example of its willingness to make creative marketing tie-ins.

Also in the cast are Ray Parker, Albert Dekker, Robert Paige, Roland Drew, Orville Caldwell, Crane Whitley, Richard Lane, and Henry Brandon.

The Last Warning is directed by Albert S Rogell, runs 62 minutes, is made by Crime Club Productions Inc, is released by Universal Pictures, is written by Edmund L Hartmann, is shot in black and white by George Meehan, is produced by Irving Starr, is scored by Hans J Salter, Frank Skinner and Charles Previn, and is designed by Jack Otterson.

The cast are Preston Foster as Bill Crane, Frank Jenks as Doc Williams, Kay Linaker as Carla Rodriguez, E E Clive as Major Barclay, Joyce Compton as Dawn Day, Frances Robinson as Linda Essex, Raymond Parker as John Essex, Robert Paige as Tony Henderson, Albert Dekker as Higgs, Roland Drew as Paul Gomez, Crane Whitley as Slocumbe, Orville Caldwell as Wilson, Richard Lane as Steve Felson, and Henry Brandon.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,162

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