The story is the usual Poverty Row murder mystery Swiss cheese, holes in the plot everywhere. On top of that, the director is William “One-Shot” Beaudine, who slapped together movies like the cook in charge of Big Macs at McDonald’s. This is one of eleven films that he churned out in 1942. Beaudine doesn’t have a vision; he has a busy schedule. So, forget about the plot. It’s a mixed-up and not very clever bit of business about a group of people being extorted for money by some anonymous fiend who signs his letters as The Black Panther. One of those people ends up dead and the police think the killer, and the person behind everything, is one of the supposed extortion victims hiding in plain sight. Okay, sure.
The only reason to see this is that it offers a rare showcase part for character-actor Byron Foulger. He’s been in a million of these things, usually as suspicious bank tellers, shady store managers and various other nebbishes, weasels and pencilnecks, none of them very threatening. Here though, Foulger gets to be funny—and pulls it off—as an exasperated husband and all-around nervous motormouth who’s Suspect No. 1 in the case. He’s a little like Billy Gilbert in His Girl Friday. The movie stalls out when Foulger isn’t on screen.