Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947)

Doctor A. Tomic of State U. discovers a chemical that will freeze people in place for 15 minutes. So Doctor L. E. Thale gets his girlfriend I. M. Learned, who happens to be the Dr. Tomic's assistant, to steal the chemical. So Thale and villains X-Ray, Gruesome and Melody use it to rob the First National Bank of $100,000. But Tess Truehart just happened to be at the bank, and she witnesses the robbery because she was in a phone booth at the time the gas was released, and I guess the gas can't penetrate phone booths. So Dick Tracy and Pat Patton track Gruseome from a bar called The Hangman's Noose, to Y. Stuffams taxidermy shop, and eventually to Wood Plastics by way of a hospital interlude. All the bad guy's die, and the last of that wacky gas gets out just in time for a comic freeze frame ending. Not as good as the first movie in this 1940's Dick Tracy cycle. Grade: C-