Whispering Footsteps is a comical title, rivaling Dreaming Lips for sheer surrealistic silliness. Stamped out by Republic Pictures with Howard Bretherton in the director’s chair, it’s a safe assumption that Whispering Footsteps, both the title and the film itself, was the product of a sleep-deprived crew rushing to complete it by the end of the year. This was Bretherton’s eighth and final movie of 1943 and his first set of the year that didn’t reek of gun powder and horse manure. Imagine my surprise when this seemingly auto-piloted ‘B’ turned out to be a disturbing and thought-provoking gem.
Clearly inspired by Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (released in January of 1943), Whispering Footsteps (released in December of 1943) is about the fear, guilt, and perversion that lies just under the surface of small-town America. While Hitchcock’s 108-minute-film takes pains to establish the Newton family and their home in Santa Rosa before the shadow of evil falls, Whispering Footsteps is far less naturalistic in its fast paced 54-minutes. Hitchcock’s film aims to put the viewer in Teresa Wright’s position—what would you do if your uncle was a murderer? This cheap Republic picture leaves you in the position of the moviegoer and posits the question, do sex crimes exist in Andy Hardy’s universe?
As the radio reports another female murder victim in Indiana, Marcus Borne calmly shines his shoes and puts on his jacket. The radio announcer describes the murderer exactly as the man we are watching: six feet tall, short brown hair, a handsome face, and a light-grey double-breasted suit. To top this off, we discover from the chatter around the breakfast table downstairs that Marcus has just returned from a vacation in Indianapolis. Marcus lives in Ma Murphy’s boardinghouse in the fictitious Medallion, Ohio along with a group that seem assembled from a casting call for “wholesome small-town types”: an annoying teenager that screams at the slightest disturbance, a gruff meter man, a weird milk man of indeterminate age (with a bright white head of hair!), a dowdy librarian (is there any other type?), and matronly Ms. Murphy, who, of course, speaks with an Irish lilt.
Marcus goes to work at the local bank where he meets a new customer, Helene LaSalle. She is quickly whisked away by the bank’s President Mr. Hammond, who just as quickly makes a pass at fashionably dressed—and unmarried—LaSalle. When Marcus takes his lunch break, he is followed by a pudgy plainclothesman (Cy Kendall—one of my favorite character actors).
With the introduction of Marcus’ cute former sweetheart, Brook Hammond, the scenario and cast of characters is set up like a row of dominoes. I’ll avoid detailing how it turns out but will just say the dominoes fall in a satisfying and unusual way. Gertrude Walker’s screenplay deserves credit for this movie’s success. An Ohioan herself (her formative years were spent in Dayton), Walker had seven writing credits with Republic starting in 1943 and was later credited with the story that The Damned Don’t Cry was based upon. According to Bill Kelly’s introduction to Stark House’s recent reprint of a pair of Walker’s novels, the screenplay of Whispering Footsteps was later reworked for her 1978 novel The Suspect.
Although Walker’s screenplay is solid, it is just one of many factors that make this movie so compelling. Ultimately, this film succeeds because it’s made in the modest-yet-dependable Republic house-style yet it has a chaotic, psycho-sexual undercurrent. Somehow, this makes the first glimpse of a murder victim feel dirty. Something truly is amiss when a serial killer has invaded the predictable studio-bound streets of Republic, U.S.A. At the risk of overstating the case for this minor picture, Medallion, Ohio feels much like David Lynch’s Lumberton, North Carolina.
Contemporaneous critics did not share my enthusiasm. Jack Cartwright of Motion Picture Herald called the story “dragging” and “flimsy.” The critic at Harrison’s Reports would’ve preferred a simple whodunit to this “moderately engrossing” picture with an “arbitrary ending.”
Audiences across America were able to take in Whispering Footsteps as it was co-billed with such titles as Big Boy Williams’ Cowboy Holiday, Ruth Terry as Pistol Packin’ Mama, Charles Starrett as Cowboy in the Clouds, and a variety of other titles. I wonder if this movie made any impact on these audiences, or if it was just unabsorbed fodder flickering away on the screen.
