Nick Carter Mysteries Triple Feature

Walter Pidgeon played Nick Carter in a series of 3 MGM films in 1939 and 1940 and the three films were released in the last few years by Warner Archives.The first film was, Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939) which saw Nick heading to California to investigate the theft of plans for an advanced aircraft and sabotage of the factory.This film is engaging and breezes by in 59 minutes. The mystery isn’t all that complex, but the film is interesting for its look at a time when the aviation industry was very young.Carter as portrayed on the film, jumped to conclusions and made plenty of surmises about people's guilt, some of which were far fetched but promised repeatedly, “If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize later.” A line that would be used in other films, though not as frequently as here.The second film was Phantom Raiders (1940) and it was probably the worst of the three. The film was expanded to 70 minutes, but really didn’t seem to know what to do with the extra time, so it opted for padding. You could start watching the film ten minutes in and really not miss anything.Carter is brought in on a case where several boats are being blown up at sea by the same company leading to massive insurance payoff. This film because of the first ten minutes (which gives away the plot) is much less of a true whodunit and more of a battle of wits between Nick and the villain which does work fairly well.The location shots are good and the plot progresses nicely. Other than the very boring first ten minutes, my big complaint is that Nick keeps trying to bow out of the case in a way that hardly seem consistent with the heroic reputation of the character.Finally, we have the best film of the series Sky Murder (1940) which has Nick investigating a murder that occurred in the air. The movie was one of those pre-war films that really dealt with the war in Europe and fifth columnists in the US. This 72 minute film was exciting, well-paced, suspenseful, and with some lighter moments included as well. In terms of B Detective movies, it didn’t get much better than this. This movie makes the whole set worth buying.Overall, I found this to be a very good series of films. The glaring flaw with the series was that the Nick Carter on the screen had very little relation to the Nick Carter off the books. Through fifty years of pulp fiction, Carter had been established as a resourceful tireless he-man who looked at danger and laughed in its face. Carter also surrounded himself with younger detectives who he was mentoring, thus the title master detective.Pidgeon plays Carter as much more typical Mystery Comedy lead. Carter’s no fool, but he’s also a bit of a lady’s man and in The Phantom Raiders he’d rather catch up with the ladies and take a vacation than bust up the ring.And as for assistants, Nick has Bartholemew (played by Donald Meek), a middle aged bee keeper and wannabe amateur detective who attaches himself to Nick with Nick’s sufferance more than anything else.It was Hollywood’s practice in the 1930s to pay to adapt characters to the screen and then shove these characters into the formula of the moment, which is why there was a series of Nancy Drew where Nancy was a little bit ditzy, and two Nero Wolfe films where Archie Goodwin was played as a typical punch drunk Lionel Stander character.Even with this flaw, these three movies are good in and of themselves. The stories are well-written and there’s plenty of action for a film of its era though it's not bloody. There were a couple of machine gun scenes in this series that were thrilling.Even Bartholemew works as a sidekick, particularly in the last two movies. While similar characters from the golden age of film usually became nothing more than annoying comic foils, Meek turns in a solid performance and Bartholemew actually becomes a valuable asset to Nick in the second and third movies, comfortable with a gun and with using some trick action to get the upper hand on the bad guys.The series stands up well. Only lasting for three installments meant that unlike Mr. Moto or The Thin Man, the Nick Carter series didn't stick around for one film too many.The DVD itself is up to the usual standard of Warner Archives with no thrills but three good and very rare films with decent transfers. The only mistake made was that Warner put Phantom Raiders before Sky Murder but this is only of trivial importance as it really doesn't matter which order you watch these in.

arrived on time, just as described, well packaged

I love mystery movies never saw these but always wanted to ,after seeing these I'll buy all the rest with Walter Pidgeon these are great and very entertaining. Looking at all the old cars and planes is a plus.

Great detective DVDs . Walter Pidgeon is amazing as this character, wish there were more movies.

The dashing, tall, dark-haired Nick Carter speaks in deep resonant tones. He is as cool as iced tea; no matter how dire the situation, he calmly deals with it. Unfortunately, his sometime-partner Bartholomew the Bee-man - a man who carries bees in his pockets and under his bowler hat - tests the limits of Nick's imperturbability; at one point, Carter becomes so exasperated with him, that he dumps him head-first into a rubbish can!"Nick Carter, Master Detective" (1939) (rating: 4.5) - The president of the Radex Aircraft Corporation is frustrated - in spite of their tight security at the factory, somehow, someway their new designs are being stolen and exploited by a foreign power . . . but how? He sends a company plane to pick up Nick Carter . . . . (Note: nice action in this film.)"Sky Murder" (1940) (4) - Ruthless fifth columnist will stop at nothing - including murder - to keep their nefarious movement secret, but when motorcycle cops find a murdered man lying amidst bundles of anti-democratic flyers, Senator Monrose is alerted, and through his well-connected friend Mr. Grand, they enlist the services of Nick Carter . . . ."Phantom Raiders" (1940) (2) - Apparently respectable men are defrauding a British insurance company by secretly blowing up their own ships at sea, blaming mysterious and unknown raiders. The insurance company's suspicions of their dubious claims are confirmed when an investigating agent from Scotland Yard is murdered. They seek the help of detective Carter . . . .Picture (DVD - 2013): 3. Subtitles: none. Languages: English only. Extras: trailers.

Until about a year ago, they would tell you in the description if the disc was a DVD-R (Made on Demand) or a pressed DVD. Now, we have to rely on reviews to find this out. Your typical purple dye DVD-R has about a 10 year lifetime. By the way, an M-Disc DVD-R (NOT purple dye type) has a very long lifetime, 100+ years. They are silver, not purple. Sadly, most studios won't pay the extra $2 to use these.My, how things have changed. In "Nick Carter Master Detective". A group of people is out spreading "anti-capitalistic" propaganda and the government immediately jumps in to try to catch them.Although not quite "A" movies, all three of these movies are definitely above average "B" movies.Excellent plots with terrific acting. Plenty of beautiful women from the 1940s.The picture and sound quality is excellent. 9/10. I'm very happy to have these in my 3000 DVD / Blu-ray collection.

I recently found this Walter Pidgeon triple play of the Nick Carter detective series and snatched it up as part of my growing collection of these vintage, often B-movies but with, at the time, pretty big names, and Walter Pidgeon was one of the big ones. There's Rathbone, Powell and Karloff among so many old-time greats and this series fits in just fine, and I received it sooner than expected, thanks.

There are three of these and definitely seemed to be going down hill from one to two to three. Walter Pidgeon, before stardom came his way, was charming and sassy in the first feature, became somewhat horny and a bit nasty in the second feature and went wholehearted horny and nasty in the third. At the price for the three, the first is a good enough deal, and you get a chance to see dear Walter with good material and start to sink with somewhat lousy material and almost completely sink with really lousy material.Thank goodness that MGM stumbled across Mr. Miniver and gave us all those years of the Walter Pidgeon we think fondly of to this day.

Over the years detective Nick Carter, first conceived as a newspaper serial back in the late 1880s, appeared in a various formats including novels, on radio and in the movies. With these three movies, MGM presented a better than average “B” movie budget (well, certainly, in comparison with the Poverty Row productions) with Walter Pidgeon impressing as the smooth talking, debonair detective.With the running time of just over an hour per story, Carter deals with plane saboteurs, foreign agents, Nazi agents and fifth columnists in well scripted stories, with “Nick Carter, Master Detective” the better of the trio and “Phantom Raiders” getting slowed down by being just a little too talkative. Throughout Carter is aided in his investigations by Bartholomew the Bee Man (Donald Meek) – or, rather, frustrated, just as the viewermight well be by his constant appearances – alongside flirtatious moments with several lesser known actresses.An enjoyable trio of films given a clear transfer to DVD-R (playable worldwide), a pity there wasn’t more of them.

Excellent quality, packaging sound and print. With the first movie being a stand out thrilling and entertaining 'b'. The other two are films are just plain bad. Worse they are boring too.